Renewable power generation Babcock & Wilcox

RENEWABLE POWER GENERATION

The Babcock & Wilcox Group is a USA-based provider of design, engineering, manufacturing and construction services to the energy and power industry. The company has a strong base in Europe with its Danish operation Babcock & Wilcox Vølund A/S – a company dedicated to converting household waste and biomass into thermal energy.

Babcock & Wilcox (B&WV), headquartered in Baberton, Ohio, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of equipment and technologies designed to serve the global power generation industry, including nuclear, renewable and fossil power. Today it has many high-profile customers throughout the world, both industrial and government. Its products find application in a large number of sectors, including construction, fossil power, nuclear, pulp and paper, and industrial power.

At the core of the company’s business is its production of a wide range of boilers. It offers chemical recovery, marine, heat recovery steam generator and waste-to-energy boilers, amongst many others. Alongside this, its service includes a full range of boiler replacement parts and auxiliary equipment in order to keep its clients’ equipment operating at optimum levels.

Nuclear power services

In the area of nuclear power the company’s range of products covers commercial nuclear plant components, including reactor vessels and recirculating steam generators. It is also

currently in the process of deploying its B&W mPower™ reactor – a scalable, modular, passively safe, advanced light water reactor system. It is capable of generating capacity in 180 MWe increments to match its customers’ specific load growth projections. It is expected that the reactor will help reduce the risks associated with deploying nuclear power and become a cost-effective solution to US energy needs whilst also lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

The group has won many high profile contracts in the area of nuclear power. For example, in 2010 its subsidiary Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear Operations Group, Inc. won a $2 billion contract for the manufacture of nuclear components to support the US defence programmes, including the manufacture of naval nuclear power systems for submarine and aircraft carriers. The second release of this order, for $600 million, was received in January 2012.

Environmental activities

Babcock & Wilcox is also dedicated to greener energy solutions, integrating environmental protection into its new boiler and power system design processes as well as helping clients develop their existing plants to meet the ever-tougher global environmental regulations. Its environmental products include solutions for, amongst other things, carbon dioxide control, emissions monitoring, mercury control and nitrogen oxides control.

The company also has a strong base in Europe in the area of converting household waste and biomass into thermal energy. Headquartered in Esbjerg, Denmark, and 100 per cent owned by The Babcock & Wilcox Company, Babcock & Wilcox Vølund (B&WV) offers its customers an exceptional degree of multinational synergy, namely over 140 years of thermal energy production in North America plus 75 years of experience in Europe.

The two businesses, however, are not images of each other. B&W in the USA is a world-famous boiler manufacturer for the power and utility industry, while Vølund is concerned with waste related plants, and to some extent, biomass combustion systems.

In addition to dedicated waste combustion systems, B&WV has developed a second line of technology for use in the combustion of biomass, providing either full systems or components if they are required by other companies. Biomass can be described as fast-growing crops such as different types of wood, straw etc, or it could be more exotic items such as nuts, agricultural by-products such as rice husk, the remains of cotton plants after the crop has been picked, and so on. In Finland and Sweden the forestry industry also produces a considerable amount of biomass as a byproduct of its normal operations.

As an example of the company’s work in this area, in 2011 B&WV was awarded a contract worth more than $30 million to design and supply a boiler, combustion system, emissions control components and other equipment for the expansion of a waste-to-energy, combined heat and power plant in Lidköping, Sweden. The project is scheduled for completion in early 2013.

New developments

Babcock & Wilcox is continuing to diversify and expand its portfolio of products and services. In December 2011 it announced the acquisition by one of its subsidiaries of

Anlagenbau und Fördertechnik Arthur Loibl GmbH (Loibl), a privately held Straubing, Bavaria, Germany-based manufacturer of material handling equipment. Loibl is a German-based supplier of material handling products, serving a variety of power generation and industrial markets in Europe, which will be complemented with the introduction of Allen-Sherman-Hoff’s fly ash and bottom ash handling technologies.

Brandon C. Bethards, president and CEO of B&W, commented at the time: “Loibl’s outstanding reputation, advanced technology and more than 50 years of experience will be valuable additions to B&W’s portfolio of products.”

R&D will also continue to be an important focus for B&W in its development of new products and services, as it has been since its founding in 1867. From the initial improvements of Wilcox’s original safety water tube boiler to the first supercritical pressure boilers, and from the first privately operated nuclear research reactor to today’s advanced environmental systems, innovation and the new ideas of its employees have placed B&W at the forefront of safe, efficient and clean steam generation and energy conversion technology. n