Optimal Choice of the Best Available Technologies for Russian Thermal Power Plants

Federal Law no. 219-FZ of July 21, 2014, “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Environmental Protection’ and certain Acts of the Russian Federation” establishes new principles of environmental policy aimed at significantly reducing the negative anthropogenic environmental impact. Currently, efforts are underway to change over to a system for technological regulation of negative environmental impacts using the best available technologies (BAT). For this purpose, industry-specific technical reference regulations (TRR) on BATs have been developed, the purposes of which are to determine a list of marker (polluting) substances, technological indicators of their emissions, and a BAT list recommended for implementation. In this case, the values of technological parameters for marker substances are determined for various types of fuels depending on the year of the boiler plant commissioning and its capacity. To reduce the emission of TPP marker (polluting) substances, regulation ITS 38-2017 recommends to introduce one or several different practically tested BATs, the total amount of which is pretty large, and their introduction on existing equipment is determined by such factors as fuel type, equipment capacity, required degree of hazardous emission reduction, design features of a boiler plant, etc. When introducing BATs at existing thermal power plants, a real problem arises of choosing efficient air-protection measures with allowance for various interrelated factors, performance characteristics, and specific design and operational parameters of the operating equipment. In this regard, the purpose of this work is to develop an algorithm for the optimal choice of BATs with allowance for a particular TPP. As a result, the algorithm should form a list of BATs recommended for implementation at a particular power unit based on the corresponding initial parameters and select a technology from those proposed by a certain regulation. The developed algorithm will allow environmental and technical services to take into account the variety of factors influencing the choice of BATs as well as to reduce decision-making time, reduce the cost, and improve the efficiency of air-protection measures subject to introduction.