Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) and Marubeni Corporation (Marubeni) have jointly received an order for two steam turbine-generator sets, each rated at 1000 MW, for ultra-supercritical (USC) coal-fired power generation units of Korea East-West Power Co., Ltd. (EWP).
The two turbine-generator sets will be installed in the Unit 9 and Unit 10 power plants under construction at EWP’s existing Dangjin Coal Fired Power Complex and will serve to meet increasing electricity demand associated with the country’s economic growth. Delivery of the turbines and generators is slated to begin in 2013.
MHI and Marubeni participated in the bidding process as a consortium. MHI will supply the turbine-generator sets while Marubeni will be responsible for their transport and for provision of auxiliary equipment. MHI will manufacture the turbines in-house while Mitsubishi Electric Corporation will provide the generators.
The Dangjin Coal Fired Power Complex is located approximately 70 kilometers southwest of Seoul. Units 9 and 10, currently under construction represent Korea’s first 1000 MW USC power generation systems and the country’s largest coal fired power plants to-date. MHI has already delivered 13 USC units in Japan and other countries, but the new Korean order marks the company’s first export of USC components exceeding 1000 MW.
Supercritical turbines are designed to operate at steam parameters above critical point of water: 22.1MPa (about 220 times greater than normal atmospheric pressure) and 374.2ºC. In actual use, they will operate in an environment of about 250 times atmospheric pressure and 566ºC. In the case of ultra-supercritical units, the temperature will be further raised to 593ºC. This leads to much higher electrical efficiency than conventional coal fired plants.
EWP is one of six electricity generating companies spun off from Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) in 2001 in line with the Korean government’s power industry privatisation policy. EWP presently has a power generation capacity of 9500 MW, approximately 13 per cent of the nation’s total capacity.