Co-generation is the combined production of useful thermal energy and electricity (Combined Heat and Power, CHP) from the same primary fuel. CHP can take on many forms and encompasses a range of technologies, but will always be based upon an efficient, integrated system that combines electricity production and heat recovery. By using the heat output from the electricity production for heating or industrial applications, CHP plants generally convert 75-80% of the fuel source into useful energy, while the most modern CHP plants reach efficiencies of 90% or more (IPCC, 2007).
Production efficiency
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SectorsObjective
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SectorsObjective
Fuel cells make it possible to efficiently convert the energy stored in several kinds of gases, among which hydrogen and methane, into electricity. Although the concept, according to which fuel cells operate, was already discovered in 1839 by William Grove, the first development only started in 1932 through Francis Bacon’s exploratory work. It was only in the early 1960s that significant efforts were put into fuel cell development, when NASA decided that fuel cells were to become the principal replacement for batteries in spacecraft (Bacon, 1969 and Schoots et al., 2010).
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SectorsObjective
Fuel switching, or the replacement of fossil fuels with a high carbon content with low-carbon fuels, is one of the principal methods suggested to reduce CO2 emissions from energy consumption in the near future. Since natural gas has a lower carbon content than coal or oil, switching from coal to gas as the primary fuel for electricity generation can result in a 50% reduction of CO2 emissions per kWh
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SectorsObjective
Coal gasification technology, often referred to as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), is the process of gasifying coal to produce electricity. The coal is gasified by burning finely-crushed coal in an environment with less than half the amount of oxygen needed to fully burn the coal. Essentially, the coal is not burned directly but undergoes a reaction with oxygen and steam. This produces what is known as synthetic gas or “syngas.” This gas is then combusted in a combined cycle generator to produce electricity.
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SectorsObjective
Co-generation is the combined production of useful thermal energy and electricity (Combined Heat and Power, CHP) from the same primary fuel. CHP can take on many forms and encompass a range of technologies, but will always be based upon an efficient, integrated system that combines electricity production and heat recovery. By using the heat output from the electricity production for heating or industrial applications, CHP plants generally convert 75-80% of the fuel source into useful energy, while the most modern CHP plants reach efficiencies of 90% or more (IPCC, 2007).