The RCEC facility is a new 600-megawatt (MW) natural gas and steam combined-cycle power plant being built in Alameda County, California, USA.
RCEC is the first power plant in the country to be built under a voluntary agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency to meet stricter limits on greenhouse gases and other emissions. It is a combined- cycle plant powered by cleaner burning natural gas and is significantly more efficient than older fossil fuel generating stations still in operation. RCEC’s combined-cycle power system will capture the exhaust heat from gas turbines to produce additional electricity.
Power plants are major industrial consumers of water to support their operations—chiefly for power plant cooling, steam production and other production processes. But with the United States and international communities seeking to preserve the world’s dwindling supplies of fresh water, the public and the private sectors have begun collaborating more closely to increase the deployment of industrial water recycling technologies.
GE‘s 400 gallons-per-minute brine concentrator and mixed-salt crystalliser will utilise a skid-mounted design to help Bechtel reduce field construction costs.
The plant is expected to enter commercial service in 2013 and supply energy to the San Francisco Bay region. GE’s ZLD equipment is scheduled to be delivered between the fourth quarter of 2011 and first quarter of 2012.