CHP in Deutschland

Power, Aug 1, 2005

Recently, BASF Aktiengesellschaft (Ludwigshafen, Germany) officially inaugurated a new, 440-MW combined heat and power (CHP) unit (Figure 2) at its main chemical plant on the Rhine River. Home to BASF's corporate headquarters and main research center, the sprawling, 135-year old Ludwigshafen site occupies almost 3 square miles and hosts the world's largest integrated chemical production facility. The site already had a CHP plant, which was run by the German utility RWE, but BASF realized it wasn't large enough to meet the chemical plant's growing energy needs. So BASF hired Siemens AG of nearby Erlangen to build a much bigger one.

In 2004 the Ludwigshafen site consumed a whopping 42 billion pounds of steam and 6.3 million MWh of electricity. The new, combined-cycle CHP unit will supply 1,433,000 lb/hr of steam to the chemical plant and generate 90% more electricity than the one it replaced. At the heart of the plant are two Siemens SGT5-3000E gas-fired combustion turbines, each rated at 180 MW, and a Siemens SST-800 steam turbine-generator rated at 90 MW.

"Investing in the combined-cycle plant will make BASF more energy independent. We now generate 65% of the electricity Ludwigshafen needs, compared with 15% previously," said Ernst Schwanhold, head of BASF's Environment, Safety & Energy Competence Center. The $287 million CHP project also will help ensure the competitiveness of the Ludwigshafen site. "We have built a high-capacity, ultra-efficient power plant that will supply the site with inexpensive electricity and steam for a long, long time," said Dr. Albert Heuser, Ludwigshafen site manager.

The gas and steam turbines supply 3.5 times more electricity per pound of steam than conventional CHP plants without gas turbines. Compared with a coal-fired power plant, the CHP plant emits about 40% less carbon dioxide. "The new plant will help us meet our corporate goal of reducing our emissions of CO2 by more than 1 billion pounds annually beginning next year," Heuser added.

The CHP plant took just 21 months to build. Siemens has a contract to handle servicing of the turbines for their first 100,000 operating hours, or about the next 12 years.