Energy and economic assessment of Small CHP in China: Comparison between Internal Combustion Engine and Gas Turbine

Abstract

China is the world’s leading consumer of energy. Co-generation is considered an effective way to reduce energy consumption and environmental pollution. Small Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems can fulfill the electrical and thermal consumption of large facilities that require high demands of heating and power. Internal combustion engine (ICE) is the most established and widespread technology for the combined production of heating and power. Gas turbines (GT) are a relatively new technology for CHP. These two technologies differ in regards to energy efficiency, annual availability, and investment, operating, and maintenance costs. A detailed study was conducted in order to compare the main features of ICE and GT technologies for models below 1MWe. This paper is intended to provide a comparison between ICE and GT technologies and to analyze the energy production, operating and maintenance costs.

Keywords—Cap-and-trade, Health impacts, Mortality, NOx, NOx emissions, Point sources