Bandar Abbas Thermal Power Plant is the major source of pollution in Bandar Abbas, capital of southern Hormozgan Province, director general of Hormozgan Provincial Directorate of Department of Environment said.
“The plant is expected to reduce emissions this year when it receives higher levels of natural gas,” Bargh News reported Habib Masihi as saying.
The largest power plant in the south, the station is responsible for supplying 60% of the province's electricity.
Basically gas-fired, this power station has a nominal capacity of 1,320 megawatts. To operate at full capacity, it needs 6 million cubic meters of natural gas per day as feedstock; however, it barely receives 25% of this amount.
The city of Bandar Abbas is supplied gas via a 12-inch pipeline from Qeshm Island off the Persian Gulf.
The amount of gas delivered via the pipeline is 2 million cubic meters per day, of which 1.5 mcm is allocated to the power plant, and the rest to industries and CNG filling stations.
For network stability and preventing power outages, the Bandar Abbas plant is forced to use mazut to make up for the lack of gas feedstock.
Making a bad situation worse, gas supply to the plant is usually cut in the cold seasons when temperature falls and priority is given to households for heating purposes.
The plant is waiting for the installation of another gas transmission pipeline. However, from the total 30 km length of the pipeline, 22 km has been laid and work has been put on hold for hitherto unknown reasons. Normally, funding is the main problem.
Fighting Air Pollution
Almost 95% of thermal power plants across the country are gas-fired. These have a small share in air pollution as emissions from gas combustion are way below those from other fossil fuels like diesel and mazut.
As air pollution concerns in Iran take on more serious dimensions like in other countries, concerted efforts are being made to put a final stop to the use of mazut as feedstock in power plants.
The government has ordered power plants and refineries to use gas instead of dirty feedstock and make use of reserves and rising output from the South Pars Gas Field.
Iran has abundant natural gas deposits and it is more cost-effective to use gas for power generation instead of other liquid fuels.
Gas production capacity has reached 810 million cubic meters a day, the majority of which comes from the giant SP field.
Use of diesel and mazut, especially in the cold seasons, along with the near permanent phenomenon of temperature inversion in winter, have a serious negative impact on air pollution.
Domestic power plants consumed 67 mcm of gas two years ago (March 2018-19). Diesel and mazut consumption in the period was 6 billion liters and 3.5 billion liters, respectively.
