Power engineering, as an important business link in the Company goodwill chain, i.e. various activities aimed at developing goodwill towards the Company, is at the same time an effective solution environmentally. Thanks to the use of the co-generation process, which means that electricity and heat are generated simultaneously, we make substantial savings in fuel, and consequently – a lower emission of pollutants, in particular CO2. Many recipients seem not to be aware of the differences in system and technological production processes, instead, what matters for them are continuous and uninterrupted supplies, and, increasingly in recent years, the environmental friendliness of energy sources. PKN ORLEN, by expanding into the power engineering industry, will be able to fully respond to customer demands. Power engineering is one of the new elements of the Company strategy.
PKN ORLEN’s Combined Heat and Power Plant is the largest industrial plant of the kind in Poland, in terms of its heat and power capacity. Its basic fuel is heavy furnace oil, the so-called soft asphalt, whose share in the total amount of combusted fuel exceeds 95%. The supplementing fuel is post-refinery gas. Basic production devices include: 8 steam boilers of 2024 MWt total thermal capacity and 6 turbine sets of 345 MWe electrical capacity. The turbines are supplemented with reduction and reduction-cooling stations.
The CHP co-generates electricity and heat in the form of processing the steam and hot water necessary for the purposes of crude oil processing at the Company’s production units. In addition, it supplies electricity and heat to external recipients located within the premises of the Production Plant in Płock, mainly companies not connected to PKN ORLEN’s organisational structures. Moreover, it is the only source of heat for the municipal heating network and has over 70% share in heat supplies to the city of Płock. This business is performed in compliance with power engineering laws, based on six licenses granted by the Urząd Regulacji Energetyki (Polish Energy Regulatory Office) for the production, distribution and trade in electricity, and for the production, transport and distribution of heat. PKN ORLEN’s Combined Heat and Power Plant has been modernised and is the most state-of-the-art facility of its kind in Poland, fully computerised and operative, compliant with all national and EU environmental protection and process safety standards, and it generates power media at optimum costs.
In order to reduce pollutant emissions into the atmosphere and adjust the emission levels to meet Polish and EU environmental protection standards, the steam boilers in the Plant were fitted with oil-gas burners with low NOx emission, distributed control systems (DCS) and devices for the constant monitoring of burning processes. The Soft Asphalt Hydrodesulphurisation Unit operating within the Production Plant in Płock since 1999 has been supplying the CHP with desulphurised liquid fuel, thanks to which sulphur dioxide emissions have been reduced by over 50%.
We are working on a detailed modernisation programme with a view to adjusting the Plant boilers to the values determined in draft EU directives which are planned to come into force after 2015. The programme implementation is scheduled for 2012–2016. One very effective way to reduce the negative effect of power engineering on the natural environment is the simultaneous generation of electricity and heat within the same process, namely co-generation. The process is characterised by a high total annual efficiency of energy conversion, which in the case of PKN ORLEN CHP exceeds 84%, compared to separate generation of electricity and heat. Thus, co-generation of electricity and heat results in substantial primary fuel savings, which in turn leads to lower pollutant emissions into the atmosphere, in particular reduced CO2 emission in the production of electricity.
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