Abstract: To achieve carbon neutrality, an essential part lies in exploring ways to reduce carbon dioxide on a large scale during the coal-fired power generation process. CHN Energy New Energy Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.(CHN Energy Institute), relying on the 150,000-ton coal-fired power plant, has initiated a comprehensive demonstration project for the capture and storage/utilization of CO2 emitted from coal combustion. The project is a pioneering work aimed at low-cost and large-scale carbon reduction technology, which features a full-chain development model concerning capture, transportation and utilization/storage. The project provides comprehensive support for the low-carbon development of coal-based energy in the future and ensures energy security.
Challenge
The ecological and environmental toll of global climate change is intensifying, with extreme weather events occurring with alarming frequency. Shaped by China’s resource endowment — rich in coal, poor in oil, short in gas — coal has long dominated the country’s energy mix. While coal-fired power has underpinned economic growth, it now stands as the principal obstacle to achieving the dual carbon goals of peak emissions and carbon neutrality. Decarbonizing coal power is therefore central to the dual carbon agenda. Exploring new pathways for large-scale CO₂ abatement during coal combustion is critical. Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) is a key near-, medium-, and long-term deployment in China’s low-carbon transition, but the core technological bottleneck remains: how to slash the high cost of CCUS and achieve commercial-scale deployment.
Solution
CHN Energy Institute has built a 150,000-tonne-per-year post-combustion CO₂ capture, storage, and utilization full-chain demonstration project at the Jinjie Power Plant — China’s largest carbon capture installation on a coal-fired unit. Beyond accumulating operational experience for full-unit and fleet-wide CCUS deployment, the project is systematically driving down capture costs.
Core technology: Targeting the cost bottleneck, the project has developed a novel blended amine absorbent system compatible with phase-change absorbents and ionic liquids, innovatively integrating inter-stage cooling, split-stream desorption, and MVR flash evaporation into a next-generation energy-saving process, achieving high-efficiency, low-energy-penalty CO₂ capture from coal-fired flue gas. A comprehensive whole-chain assessment covering the full CCUS value chain has been conducted to construct an integrated carbon reduction solution for large thermal power plants.
CO₂ resource and energy utilization: The captured CO₂ becomes a valuable carbon and renewable resource for synthesizing a range of chemicals, energy products, and materials, generating economic returns that improve project viability. Ultimately, the project aims to deliver a definitive carbon-reduction solution for large thermal power plants, enabling coal-fired power generators to pioneer the clean, low-carbon energy transition and serve as a sector-wide demonstration model.
Strategic positioning: CCUS represents a critical medium-to-long-term technology option for effective GHG control, providing evidence and leverage for China in climate negotiations, global burden-sharing, and climate governance leadership, while optimizing the energy mix, safeguarding energy security, catalysing the power sector’s low-carbon transition, and setting a demonstration benchmark for the 2030 peak and 2060 neutrality goals.
Impact & Value
Political & strategic: Given China’s massive carbon emissions, low-carbon coal-based energy development provides critical evidence and leverage in global climate negotiations and governance, with clear strategic and political dividends. The CCUS technology portfolio, as an effective medium-to-long-term emission control pathway, gives China technological confidence to assert greater influence in the international climate arena.
Industry demonstration: The Jinjie 150,000-tonne CCUS project — China’s largest on a coal-fired unit — offers replicable engineering benchmarks and an operational data foundation for the nationwide and even global retrofit of coal-fired power stations for carbon reduction, a milestone for the power sector’s low-carbon transformation.
Economic: Converting captured CO₂ into chemicals, fuels, and materials generates economic returns that improve CCUS’s commercial viability and accelerate technology industrialization.
Technological breakthrough: The novel blended amine absorbent and the inter-stage cooling + split-stream desorption + MVR flash evaporation energy-saving process represent the cutting edge of domestic carbon capture, achieving high-efficiency, low-energy-penalty capture and offering a Chinese solution to the global challenge of reducing CCUS costs.
Social leadership: The project, aligned with China’s dual carbon goals, demonstrates a central SOE’s responsibility and innovation in tackling global climate change, providing confidence and a reference for decarbonizing other high-emission sectors.