BHEL starts supplying super critical boilers

Chennai, April 4 (IANS) Power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) is expecting more orders for its super critical boilers and thereby save on its royalty outgo to technology partner Alstom.

"We learnt the super critical boiler technology and have bagged the first order for our own super critical boiler," A.V. Krishnan, executive director, told IANS over telephone from Tiruchirapalli.

"We are not paying any royalty to Alstom, with whom we have a technology transfer agreement," he added.

Super critical boilers used in power plants are those that can operate at a very high temperature.

BHEL has bagged orders for three super critical boilers of 660 MW capacity.

"This is the first and only order we have for our own super critical boilers. We are confident of bagging more," Krishnan said.

According to him, BHEL last year developed and commercialised a 300 MW sub-critical controlled circulation boiler that can fire blended coal to counter Chinese competition in the segment.

"The Abhijeet group putting up a 300 MW power project in Andhra Pradesh had got offers for such a boiler from a Chinese company. We scaled down our own 500 MW boiler and designed the 300 MW boiler as per the requirements of the customer," Krishnan said.

He said BHEL had also completed the conceptual design of an 800 MW advanced ultra super critical steam generator and would test the materials in an existing boiler.

"The conceptual design takes care of the material design, ordering of the material and validating them in a running boiler. Only after testing the materials we can go ahead with the boiler design," Krishnan said.

The development of 800 MW advanced ultra super critical boiler is a joint effort of BHEL, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and NTPC.

As per plans, the IGCAR will design and develop the 800 MW advanced ultra super-critical boiler that can operate at a pressure of 350 bar (a measure of steam pressure) and at a temperature of 700 degrees centigrade.

IGCAR has the expertise is in equipment design, development of materials that can operate at very high temperature. It will also draw out the equipment manufacturing codes and standards.

BHEL will manufacture the boiler and other equipments while power generator NTPC will be the end user to produce power.