Experts from China and Sweden have developed a cheaper and environmentally-friendly desulfuration technology for coal-fired power plants, using industrial waste.

By using the technology, the Juhua Thermal Power Plant in east China's Zhejiang province, can replace lime with calcium carbide slag, a polluting waste produced in large quantities by chemical plants.

Compared with desulfuration facilities operating in China which use lime, the plant using the new technology can cut the production costs of its new desulfuration facilities by half and their per-unit desulfuration cost by two thirds.

Huge amount of calcium carbide slag produced by chemical plants are normally dumped and piled, occupying lots of space and causing environmental contamination.

Chinese experts came up with the idea of using calcium carbide slag for lime as a desulfuration substance for the plant when considering importing desulfuration technology from Swedish company ABB.

Experts with the Swedish companies first turned down the suggestion as unheard of but later, after experiments, accepted it.

Sulfur dioxide is one of the major air pollutants produced when coal containing sulfur is burned. It leads to acid rain which damages human health, crops, and buildings.

Swedish experts say a trial operation has shown that desulfuration facilities using the technology are capable of removing up to 98 percent of the sulfur in smoke from coal-fired power plants.

Coal produced and used in southwest China and many other places in China contains excessive sulfur, and as coal is China's dominate energy producer, the use of low-cost and environmentally-friendly desulfuration technology is important for China.

(Xinhua News Agency November 9, 2001)