Plant in Hekinan city sets very high environmental-safety standards
JOINING a trip sponsored by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) to Japan's largest coal-fired power plant in Hekinan city last week, members of the Krabi community and academics said they were impressed with the plant's environmental m
The Hekinan Thermal Power Station, overlooking Kinuura Bay in Aichi prefecture, produces a total of 4,100 megawatts and comprises five units. The first three – each producing 700MW – were built in 1991, 1992 and 1993, while the last two, which produce 1,000MW each, were built in 2001 and 2002.
The plant’s station and coal yard occupy an area of 1.6 million square metres, and the latter is regularly sprinkled with water and surrounded by an 18-metre-high wind-fence to reduce dust. Australia is the main supplier of coal, providing 57.6 per cent, while Indonesia provides 27.1 per cent. It is unloaded from ships and sent to the station on covered conveyor belts.
The plant also owns another 480,000sqm of reclaimed land, which is used for ash disposal. Each year 1 million tonnes of coal ash is produced by the plant, which is either sold or recycled – with more than 80 per cent of it going into making cement. The rest is buried on the plant’s site.
In addition, the plant has also nurtured a green area covering about 25 per cent of its total space.
The plant has placed great importance in minimising pollution and therefore includes a wastewater treatment system; a flue-gas denitrification facility – to treat exhaust gas with ammonia (efficiency 80-90 per cent); a flue-gas desulphurisation facility – to treat sulphur oxides with limestone liquid (efficiency 96.5-97.1 per cent); and an electrostatic precipitator to reduce dust.
In addition to being a state-of-art facility, the power plant also won the trust of the community. Mayor Masanobu Negita said the plant operator, Chubu Electric
Power, signed a contract with the government, Hekinan city and three other regional cities pledging to maintain environmental safeguards. While city officials closely monitor the power plant’s activities, the plant itself keeps city authorities posted on a monthly basis and lets people access information and test results upon request, Negita said.
The four community representatives from Krabi said they felt relieved to see that a coal-fired power plant in Japan could function normally without polluting the environment or damaging local fishing or agriculture. They said Egat needed to adopt transparent best practices if it intended to win public trust for the new coal-fired plants it has planned.
Egat has so far insisted Thailand needs more power from coal, as the cheap fuel can ensure energy security. It is planning four new coal-fired plants, each producing 800MW with coal imported from Indonesia. The plants would be located in coastal provinces, said Paisith Tantulaphongse, assistant chief of Egat’s power plant development planning division.
However, Egat has faced resistance from local communities near the potential sites, mainly because of reports of communities’ bad experiences with the authority’s Mae Mo power plant in Lampang province.
