The government''s plan to use naphtha for power generation hit a snag as refineries are not ready to give a firm commitment to set up Isomerization Plants for supply of fuel on long-term basis, sources in the Petroleum Ministry told Business Recorder.
Sources said the Secretary Petroleum had convened a meeting on the proposal of the Ministry of Water and Power on October 29, 2010 to discuss the pros and cons of the matter. However, the meeting remained inconclusive due to divergent views of the two ministries. The main purpose to use naphtha as fuel in power generation was its price. Naphtha is less expensive as compared to furnace oil but slightly more expensive than natural gas.
"Naphtha is certainly more corrosive because it has a higher percentage of sulphur compounds because of which it wears down a power plant faster," sources said. There are reports that power producers using naphtha in the absence of their preferred fuel, gas, are increasingly having to cope with not just the higher operating costs involved in doing so but may thereby reduce the life of their plants, sometimes by as much as 75 percent.
According to an Indian expert the life of some plants may come down from 20 years to five years. Gas, he argues, is homogeneous, naphtha has got small liquid particles. At the time of burning, it increases the temperature to more than 1,100 degrees centigrade, which leads to heat spots, which affect the life of the plant. Presently, Pakistan''s thermal power plants are based on furnace oil or gas or dual technology, but no plant is burning naphtha as fuel to generate power.
Experts say that naphtha is costlier than LNG. A plant running on naphtha needs an annual overhauling as compared to those using gas that need to be overhauled every five years. Scientists admit that naphtha is more corrosive than LNG, but some say the comparison is unfair because, given a choice, no power plant would prefer naphtha over LNG.
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