Vinh Tan thermal power plants apply technology in dust control

Proactive solutions

According to reports, every year, EVN’s Vinh Tan 2 and Vinh Tan 4 thermal power plants consume about 9.57 million tonnes of coal and generate about 1.86 million tonnes of ash and slag, of which the rate of ash and slag generation of Vinh Tan 2 Thermal Power Plant accounts for 80 percent and Vinh Tan 4 at 20 percent. This rate increases each year, but still has not met requirements.

Clean, green landscape at Vinh Tan 2 Thermal Power Plant - photo: VGP

Director of Vinh Tan 4 Thermal Power Plant Vu Thanh Hai said that although the plant’s ash and slag have been certified by the authorities for use as construction materials, and cement additives, its yellow color has not been preferred in the market.

In addition, the plant is far from the northern market, resulting in transportation difficulties. Therefore, it is seeking solutions to ash and slag transport by sea.

According to Hai, to prevent dust from dispersing into the surrounding environment, in addition to installing the ESP system, the plant has also strictly implemented synchronous solutions that have recently brought high efficiency.

They include regular inspections on production areas that are likely to generate coal dust, send more watering trucks and mist spraying trucks to keep the humidity for the entire coal storage area, as well as industrial cleaning teams to promptly clean all the areas in the plant to promptly prevent dust from contaminating the surrounding environment.

Vinh Tan 4 Thermal Power Plant is covered with green trees

In addition, the plant has proactively updated information about unusual weather phenomena, regularly monitored wind direction, wind speed, and temperature to increase humidity in coal storage areas and have quick responses.

Dust control rate of over 99.6 percent

Accordingly, both factories have invested and installed ESP systems with dust treatment efficiency of over 99.6 percent. The ESP system is installed separately for each power generation unit.

Specifically, Vinh Tan 2 Thermal Power Plant has improved and converted oil burning from HFO to DO, and also putting the ESP system into operation right from the furnace startup.

Vinh Tan 4 Thermal Power Plant has used supercritical (SC) boiler technology with imported bitumen-subbitumen coal fuel to limit dust generation, and the amount of remaining dust in the exhaust smoke is very low.

Apart from the ESP system, these thermal power plants have also equipped SCR systems to treat NOx and FGD systems for treatment of SO2. In addition to these solutions, the two thermal power plants also actively do the cleaning and plant trees around the coal storage and in the isolation area between residential areas and Vinh Tan Power Center to set up a secondary fence for dust prevention.

Currently, the emission parameters of the thermal power plants have been automatically monitored continuously and transmitted to Binh Thuan Province’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment for monitoring and supervision around the clock.

The results of periodic air monitoring in the plants and surrounding environments since power generation units of the plants came into operation in 2019 have all met Vietnam Standard QCVN 05:2013/BTNMT.