Niederaussem Power Station is a lignite

Lignite

Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, or Rosebud coal by Northern Pacific Railroad,is a soft brown fuel with characteristics that put it somewhere between coal and peat...

-fired power station in the Bergheim

Bergheim

-Places:*Heidelberg-Bergheim — a district of Heidelberg in Germany*Bergheim, Bavaria — a municipality in Bavaria, Germany*Bergheim, North Rhine-Westphalia — the capital of the Rhein-Erft-Kreis district in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany...

 Niederaussem

Niederaussem

Niederaußem is a city part of Bergheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, located 18 km west of Cologne. Niederaußem has 6000 inhabitants.Niederaußem is supraregional well-known by the power station Niederaußem.- History :...

/Rhein Erft

Rhein-Erft-Kreis

The Rhein-Erft-Kreis is a district in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Neuss, district-free Cologne, Rhein-Sieg, Euskirchen, Düren.-History:...

 circle, owned by RWE

RWE

RWE AG , is a German electric power and natural gas public utility company based in Essen. Through its various subsidiaries, the energy company contributes electricity and gas to more than 20 million electricity customers and 10 million gas customers, principally in Europe...

. It consists of nine units, which were built between 1963 and 2003. It has a total output capacity of 3,864 MW

Watt

The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...

 and a net capacity of 3,627 MW. According to the study Dirty Thirty, issued in May 2007 by the WWF

World Wide Fund for Nature

The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...

, Niederaussem Power Station is the third-worst power station in Europe in terms of the relation of energy efficiency to CO₂ emissions

Exhaust gas

Exhaust gas or flue gas is emitted as a result of the combustion of fuels such as natural gas, gasoline/petrol, diesel fuel, fuel oil or coal. According to the type of engine, it is discharged into the atmosphere through an exhaust pipe, flue gas stack or propelling nozzle.It often disperses...

.

Initial construction

In the autumn of 1960 the construction work for the blocks A and B (150 MW) began. The location was selected because of the possibility of an extension. The supply of brown coal was ensured by seams on a north-south course ("Garzweiler"). Before blocks A and B first produced power, the construction work for the first 300 megawatt power station block location in Niederaussem began. That block went on-line in the summer 1965. Between 1968 and 1971 three further power plants with improved technology were developed. With the building of the two 600 MW plants a large jump forward occurred. These plants were added to the grid in 1974. At that time the plants at Niederaussem produced a total of 2,700 megawatts.

mid 1990s

In the middle of the 1990s the output was again increased. In order to reach the limit values of the new environmental protection regulations, in 1986 the work for a flue gas desulphurating plant began. That work was completed in 1988. The flue gases are led in scrubbers and cleaned by a lime water mixture. Only the cleaned and cooled down exhaust gases are then warmed up to 75^oC (167^oF) again and carried by the chimneys to the outside air. During the flue gas purification, gypsum

Gypsum

Gypsum is a very soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO4·2H2O. It is found in alabaster, a decorative stone used in Ancient Egypt. It is the second softest mineral on the Mohs Hardness Scale...

 from the lime water mixture, which is processed beside the power station in Auenheim by the company Pro mineral, is produced.

1997 to present

With the building of the block brown coal power station with optimized equipment technology (BoA) a new chapter at the power station Niederaussem began. Between 1997 and 2002 the most modern brown coal power station block of the world with a gross achievement of 1,012 megawatts (950 MW net) developed with a far higher efficiency (43%) than the other plants (as low as 31%). RWE invested €

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

1,200 million into the project. Beside the new power station block, whose building is with a height of 172 metres one of the tallest industrial building in the world, the largest cooling tower

Cooling tower

Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers rely...

 in the world (200 metres), which serves also as chimney of this unit, had already been built. By the development Niederaussem became one of the largest and most modern coal-fired power stations of the world. The official opening of the new block took place in the summer 2002. In the presence of Wolfgang Clement

Wolfgang Clement

Wolfgang Clement is a German politician. Clement was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany . He was Premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1998 to 2002 and Federal Minister of Economics and Labour from 2002 to 2005.Wolfgang Clement is an Honorary Member of the...

, the then North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

 Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

 and Gerhard Schroeder the then Federal Chancellor the new power station went on to the grid.

Since 21 July 2006 RWE spent €40 million building a fluidized bed drying unit with waste heat technology (WTA) as pilot project for the drying process of the raw brown coal. In addition the free waste heat of the power station is used. It is hoped that in the next few decades efficiencies can be achieved to so as to increase over-all efficiency of electricity production by brown coal to 50%. The largest and most modern power station is an example to the industry.

2006 Fire

An incident in the power station Niederaussem occurred on 9 June 2006. At 1:15 o'clock a fire caught hold in block H of the coaling station. The fire spread to two further coaling station blocks. Later the flames seized nearly the entire area of the "old power station", and a large, black smoke cloud ascended, which spread many kilometres to the north-west. The power station's own fire brigade could not control the fire and sounded the alarm. About 300 rescue forces from the entire Land

States of Germany

Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

responded. The damage to property went into the two digit million-range. Even by the late evening of the next day the fire was not completely extinguished. The spread of the fire was contained by recently developed fire precautions in the other sectors of the power station so that only the coaling station was affected.