A Chinese enterprise has developed a gas engine which can not only use natural gas, petroleum gas, and coal-bed methane, but also low-concentration methane gas, CCTV.com reported.

The gas engine, developed by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, is being used at a power plant in southwest China’s Guizhou Province to generate electricity from the methane gas buried deep under the ground.

The engine has been operating for 1,476 hours, generating 1.04 million kilowatt hours of electricity, Ren Xiaohui, chief designer of the gas engine disclosed, adding that the process is mostly automatic.

The successful development of the engine also indicates that China has now become a world leader in using low-concentration methane, as its foreign peers can only use high-concentration methane, Ren noted.

The methane gas, as an exploitable clean energy, will only produce water and carbon dioxide after full combustion by producing 21 times less of carbon dioxide emissions, helping both the environment and the economy.

In the past two months, the power plant has generated nearly 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity, creating a profit margin of about 30 percent, said Meng Haitao, general manager at a Guizhou-based energy company.

Nearly 60,000 kilowatt hours of electricity can be generated in the plant on a daily basis, which can meet the demand of about 20,000 families, the manager added.

Moreover, Ren noted that unlike diesel engines, the gas engine can reduce harmful emissions by 50 to 80 percent.