Babcock-Hitachi Cleans Up $112 Million Flue Gas Desulfurization Plant Orders in Spain and Portugal

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The European Union (EU) directive setting emission limits for sulfur oxide (SOx), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and dust, which will come into force on January 1, 2008, is pushing power utilities to reduce emissions and apply cleansing technologies to new and existing power stations. This is leading to a wave of contracts for flue gas desulfurization (FGD) plants.

Six orders for FGDs, worth $112 million, have been booked by Babcock-Hitachi Europe (BHE) (Oberhausen, Germany) and its Japanese BHK sister company, for parent company Hitachi (Tokyo, Japan) in Spain and Portugal. BHE and BHK will design and supply the FGDs.

In Spain, the units will be installed at the 556 MW Abono II and 350 MW Soto III thermal power plants, and in Portugal, four units will be installed at the 314 MW x 4 Sines thermal power station. Installation of the units will be completed and commercial operation stated from August 2007.

The Spanish orders came from Hidroelectrica del Cantabrico (Madrid), and in Portugal from Companhia Portuguesa de Producao de Electricidade (Lisbon), which is part of the Energias de Portugal (NYSE:EDP) (Lisbon, Portugal) group, along with consortium partner Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios.

BHE is also the engineering contractor for two new gas-fired power plants in Spain and is supplying full engineering services for Cas Tresorer on Mallorca and Arranco II on Gran Canaria. The scope of the contract includes the commissioning of both of the 200 MW power plants. The construction contractor for the Endesa (NYSE:ELE)(Madrid)-owned plants is Duro Felguera (MADRID:MDF).

In 2004, BHE made a move into the European FGD market, with an order for four units for the Kozience 800 MW power plant (4 x 200 MW) in Poland. In May, Shigeharu Mano, President and CEO of Hitachi’s Power System Group, said, “We are committed to expanding out presence in this market by providing high quality and relevant environmental products. Our proven track record and worldwide experience of building turnkey power generation facilities make Hitachi a leading ‘total solution’ provider to meet the industry’s growing need to address power generation and environmental protection."

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