CINF established the thermal power engineering branch in 1994 as one of the earliest in China for cogeneration engineering design , it is equipped with 19 disciplines incl. disciplines of thermal engine, chemical water, coal transfer, dedusting, electrical engineering, thermal control, communication, general layout, architectural and structural engineering, tailing storage facility, water supply and drainage, heating and ventilation, environmental protection, environmental impact assessment, CAPEX and OPEX estimate, thermal engineering, municipal gas, etc. It is competent to undertake the consultation and engineering design of urban heating projects of any scale and thermal power plants with of <125MW unit capacity.

CINF is mainly involved in the engineering and research of the power plant for resource comprehensive utilization, self-powered stations, boiler houses, urban heating, metallurgical plant waste heat power generation, in the popularization and application of the circulating fluidized–bed combustion technology and cogeneration technology for resource comprehensive recycling from the inferior coal, stone coal, coal gangue papermaking biomass garbage to turn the “waste” into wealth and improve the environment. It has designed hundreds of thermal power projects with unit capaurban 1.5MW～100MW and low pressure, sub-medium pressure to high pressure stream in the field of metallurgy, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, light industry and municipal works, etc. To Make most of the off-gas and waste heat generated from the metallurgical process, CINF has developed the straight-through type and multi-stack waste heat boilers, which have been successfully applied in many metallurgical enterprises. Besides, CINF has also undertaken a large number of urban heating works, incl. urban thermal power plant, centralized heating boiler houses and urban heat supply pipeline. With thorough research on the urban heating technology and heat supply pipeline direct embedment technology, CINF has built up abundant experience in terms of engineering design of thermal power projects, with industrial practices of over 60 medium-scale and small-scale thermal power plants and self-powered stations.

In terms of gas works, CINF is mainly involved in the design of coal-to-gas projects, gas-fired boiler power generation, gas-steam combined cycle power generation, urban gas pipeline network and community gas station. The fuel gas includes coal gas, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. CINF is quite experienced in the design of industrial coal gas production plant with single-stage and 2-stage furnaces and Ender furnace, natural gas-steam combined cycle power generation station and community bottle group gas supply station. In terms of gas station design, CINF has undertaken the engineering design of many gas stations in respect of cold and hot coal gas production, purification and transfer and distribution with design capacity of 20,000～2.50 million m3/d.

In terms of industrial gas engineering, CINF is mainly involved in the design of oxygen station, hydrogen station, air compression station and inert gas supply station like nitrogen and argon and in the gas generation new technology popularization and application. CINF has undertaken the engineering design of various cryogenic gas generating stations with design capacity of 50～15,000m3/h, and recently it has made great technological progress in the exploration of new oxygen generation technology and has designed many VPSA oxygen stations of 20～10,000m3/h, the largest capacity at the time. CINF has big technological advantages in the hydrogen generation, and has designed over 50 oxy-hydrogen stations with capacity of 24～1,200m3/h. Besides, CINF has mastered technologies for hydrogen generation by natural gas pyrolysis, methanol pyrolysis and ammonia decomposition. The large centralized hydrogen recovery and purification technology developed by CINF in 1960s’ has been widely applied in many rare metal smelters in China.