BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 20
By Elnur Baghishov – Trend:
The use of gas condensate in Iranian power plants will not solve the fuel problem, said Mohsen Tarztalab, Managing Director of Iran’s Thermal Power Plants Holding Company, Trend reports citing the company’s website.
According to Tarztalab, currently, it is not possible to generate a large volume of electricity from gas condensate in the country.
“Although proposals were made in the last Iranian year (March 20, 2020, through March 20, 2021) for the use of gas condensate in power plants in Iran, this work was stopped due to increased air pollution and the bad smell of mercaptan (methanethiol),” he added.
The director noted that in order to use gas condensate in power plants, a number of opportunities must be created at power plants and refineries to eliminate the bad smell of mercaptan. At the same time, the use of gas condensate will increase electricity generation costs by 4 times.
“As for the use of coal as fuel in Iranian power plants, the Supreme Energy Council of Iran has decided to use coal in power plants. According to this decision, coal-fired power plants with a generation capacity of about 5,000 megawatt-hours of electricity should be built in Iran by 2041. These power plants will be built in remote areas of cities and settlements,” Tarztalab said.
The director stressed that at present, the Tabas coal-fired power plant is being built in Iran. One of the units of this power plant will be launched by 2024. It was also decided to conduct a comprehensive study of such power plants in the country.
According to him, about 40 percent of electricity generation in Iran is accounted for by coal-fired power plants.
As reported, the total capacity of Iran's power plants (thermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, renewable, and so on) is currently about 85,559 megawatt-hours. About 81 percent of which is accounted for thermal power plants.
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