NEWS RELEASE                                   AUGUST 2009

China to Dominate the NO_x Market as a Purchaser and a Supplier

In a spectacular market shift, China is transitioning from a 100 percent importer of power plant catalyst to the world’s largest supplier with eight companies gearing up to deliver 73,000 cubic meters of selective catalytic reactor catalyst per year.  Much of this capacity will be in place by 2010.  These capacity estimates have just been compiled in NO_x Control World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company.

China has a rapidly growing demand for electricity.  Coal-fired power plants will continue to be the dominant source of electric power.  NO_x emitted by these power plants creates ozone and resultant smog.  China’s topography, like that of Southern California, magnifies the negative impacts.  As a result, the Chinese government with strong public support is moving rapidly to install the latest pollution controls.

With the new capacity additions, China will have 38 percent of the world’s catalyst manufacturing capacity and the U.S. will be the second largest producer with 22 percent.  Twenty years ago all the power plant catalyst production was in Europe and Japan.  European production is down due to the Haldor Topsoe decision to move its production to the U.S. and KWH to move production to China.

China has a very large power plant construction program.  By 2020 there will be over 900,000 MW of coal-fired boilers.  Over 60 percent will be fitted with SCR.  This 540,000 MW of SCR compares to a worldwide total today of 300,000 MW.  The McIlvaine forecast for SCR at U.S. coal plants in 2020 is 290,000 MW.  Germany will have less than 20 percent as much SCR as China and no other country will have even 10 percent as much.

Next year (2010) China will retrofit 11,000 MW of existing plants with SCR and will start up 30,000 MW of new coal units with SCR for an increase of 41,000 MW.  This is more SCR capacity than exists in any country except the U.S. and Germany.  At international prices of over $200,000/MW, this represents a system market of $8.1 billion.  However, costs in China are less than 50 percent of the international average.  Nevertheless, this does represent a big market for suppliers of components such as ammonia pumps, fans needed to overcome the additional resistance of the SCR, continuous emission monitors, optimization systems, and static mixers. 

The systems will be supplied by Chinese companies.  This contrasts to the history of flue gas desulfurization where most of the systems installed to date have been partnerships between Chinese and offshore companies.