The End of Steam Power Machines? China Launches New Energy Conversion Technology

Jan. 19—China is the first nation to have installed commercial CO₂-driven turbines for commercial electric power production. It is a small, dual-turbine pilot plant with two 15 MW turbines that use waste heat at a steam smelter to produce electricity. For the particular industrial waste heat application, the efficiency is 50% higher than that of a traditional steam turbine cycle.

The new technology is based on the unique property of highly pressurized and 500°C-hot supercritical CO₂, which unifies the super-high energy density of a liquid with the low resistance of a gas to produce, with a very low thermal loss ratio, electric energy in a space approximately 4 to 10 times smaller than conventionally used steam turbines today.

This technology was developed and deployed by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), and can be used in the future to increase the conversion efficiency of 4th-generation nuclear reactors to well over 50%—and, thanks to its small size, also in ocean ships as well as spaceships, according to the Chinese Institute of Mechanics.