The No. 9 generation unit of the Beilun power plant, China's largest coal-burning electric plant, has been put into operation after 168 hours of full-load trial operation in Ningbo City of east China's Zhejiang Province, said its operator National Energy Corporation on Monday.
Multiple technologies, such as flue gas condensation, were applied in the one-million-kilowatt unit, resulting in a 60-percent reduction in pollutant emissions.
With the official commissioning of Unit 9, the plant's installed capacity of thermal power reached 7.34 million kilowatts.
There have been nine generating units at the Beilun power plant, including Units 8 and 9, each with a capacity of one million kilowatts.
Thanks to advanced technologies, the two units, both put into operation this year, have a coal consumption of 257.24 grams per kilowatt hour for power supply, setting a new benchmark for energy efficiency of similar units in China.
"With the commissioning of Unit 9, the Beilun power plant's nine units can generate approximately 176 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day at full load, which can power more than 20 million households. The plant's annual power generation is expected to exceed 40 billion kilowatt-hours, supplying plenty of electricity to the whole east of China," said Sun Cheng, head of the engineering department at the Zhejiang Beilun power plant of National Energy Corporation.
New generation unit of China's largest themal power plant starts operating in Ningbo
The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) on Monday called for enhanced surveillance of viruses of animal origin, as recent hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks have sparked global alarm.
The 93rd General Session of the World Assembly of Delegates of the WOAH kicked off on Monday in Paris, France. WOAH's Director General Emmanuelle Soubeyran and other experts attending the session stressed that strengthening the surveillance of animal-borne viruses and improving early detection capabilities are crucial to reducing public health risks.
Citing a recent WOAH report, Soubeyran noted that approximately 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases worldwide originate from animals. She emphasized the importance of intensifying research into cross-species transmission pathways of viruses.
"What is important, maybe for us, is to really understand how there is a jump from wildlife to humans or to farm animals. So that's very important to understand, to make research, to understand how this spillover is appearing," she said.
In a recent statement, WOAH said that the hantavirus is an animal-borne virus primarily hosted by rodents. It said that effective rodent management based on an integrated ecological approach is an important measure to reduce the risk of human infection. Continuous monitoring and early detection mechanisms, it added, are essential for mitigating public health risks.
"It has a zoonotic origin and it's quite fatal in humans. There are different serotypes or strains of hantavirus and not each strain is affecting humans, but only one of them is transmissible from human to human. So surveillance is important because of the early detection and to avoid fatalities in humans and to guide the communities to take precautionary measures and to invest in health emergencies on the human side," said Tahreem Khalid, Animal Health Information Officer at WOAH.
Through enhanced animal surveillance, improved laboratory capacity, and facilitated information sharing, the organization aims to strengthen countries’ abilities to respond to risks and promote cross-sectoral collaboration under the "One Health" framework.
World Organization for Animal Health urges tighter monitoring of animal-borne viruses
