Effective technologies for high environmental standards

Fossil fuels contain solar energy that has been stored by plants and animals and transformed into hydrocarbons over millions of years. Today we are using this energy in our conventional power stations to generate electricity.

Important fossil energy sources are hard and brown coal. All these coal fired power stations comply with the high environmental protection standards. In addition, increasing the efficiency of power stations is a constantly pending task for our engineers and technicians.

The fuel for a portion of these power stations originates from German coal mining and from the mining of own brown coal deposits in the Lower Saxon coalfield near Helmstedt. The hard coal fired power stations near the coast in contrast make use of imported coal.

The use of coal is not without problems, because its combustion releases substances that can be harmful in pertinent concentrations. These substances must be as far as possible retained and disposed of. This is primarily done by installing effective technologies for the removal of dust, NOx and sulphur from the flue gases – flue gas purification. In addition, fuel consumption can be reduced by efficiency-increasing measures.