By Allan Jamail
June 27, 2023 – Channelview, Texas Cogeneration, a Cogeneration Plant owned and managed by funds and accounts managed by affiliates of Ares Management Corporation (“Ares”), has become the 13th member of the Houston CCS Alliance. It joins the existing members in advancing the Alliance’s mission to reduce industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the Houston area, one of the nation’s largest concentrated sources of CO2, and make it the model for an emerging, lower-emission world that supports jobs, economic growth, and prosperity.
The Houston CCS Alliance is a coordinated effort among some of the world’s most innovative energy, petrochemical, and power generation companies to advance the development of carbon capture and storage in the greater Houston industrial area. Members include: Air Liquide, BASF, Calpine, Channelview Cogeneration, Chevron, DOW, ExxonMobil, INEOS, Linde, Lyondellbasell, Marathon, Phillips 66, and Shell.
Allan Jamail, North Channel Star writer, has spent many years in the energy generation industry, now having 61 years affiliated with the AFL-CIO unions serving the nation’s energy industry. There are 41 power generation plants in Harris County and several are considered to be cogeneration plants.
Cogeneration can notably reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. While simple cycle applications can have 40-50 percent efficiency, by combining heat and power systems can yield up to 90 percent efficiency. This is helping to decarbonize the electric power grid, district, heating systems and factories.
The term cogeneration refers to the combined production of electricity and heat. These two forms of energy are produced simultaneously through a single plant. The ultimate aim of the cogeneration plants is to exploit the heat dissipated by power plants.
Generally electricity and heat are produced separately. To produce electricity, thermoelectric power plants dissipate thermal energy in the environment. The thermal energy produced comes from fuel conversion.
It therefore seems clear that if a user needs at the same time electricity and thermal energy, one can expect to realize a system that produces both electric-generated are obviously due to lower fuel consumption.
Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time.
Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise-wasted heat from electricity generation is put to some productive use. Combined heat and power (CHP) plants recover otherwise wasted thermal energy for heating. This is also called combined heat and power district heating. Small CHP plants are an example of decentralized energy. By-product heat at moderate temperatures (100–180 ºC, 212–356 ºF) can also be used in absorption refrigerators for cooling.
Obviously not all the heat dissipated in the environment can be recovered; a portion is always dispersed in the combined production cycle.
A plant can be defined “cogeneration” only if it satisfies a set of performance indexes defined by the Electricity Authority (AEEG) introduced to ensure that there is effective fuel economy and that energy production is not too much unbalanced towards electricity alone.
Cogeneration plants arise from the need to increase the efficiency of power generation systems by exploiting the heat dissipated by the plant for other purposes. The advantage comes from reducing fuel consumption. The improvement obtainable is measurable in a reduction in the consumption of 35-40%. There is another important advantage associated with reducing pollutant emissions. Another feature, resulting from logistical factors, is the need to locate the cogeneration plant close to the end user plant, a factor that reduces transmission energy losses coming from distribution and transportation.