Japanese Steel Company Doubles Capacity of Power Plant

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Kobe Steel Limited (OTC: KBSTF.PK) (Tokyo, Japan) has finished commissioning of their second 700-megawatt (MW) unit (PEC 90000016) of their 1,400 MW $1.3 billion wholesale Shinko Kobe Power Station (Plant 1037150) in Kobe, Japan. Kobe Steel with the addition of a coal/oil-fired unit has become the largest independent power producer (IPP) in Japan. Kansai Electric Power Company who let tenders for the power in 1996 and 1997 and Kobe Steel responded with the proposal of the 1,400 MW Power Station is receiving all the electricity produced.

Kobe Steel utilized their experience with internal experience with structural steel, internal generation and fuel procurement to build the units. Each unit or power train consists of two pulverized coal/oil-fired atmospheric circulating fluidized bed boilers and two steam turbine/generator sets. Construction and testing for operations took three years for each phase. Construction of Phase I started in spring of 1999 and was completed in the spring of 2002. Phase II started construction in spring of 2001 and just went commercial.

Environmental issues were a large part of this project in that since the plant was in the city they had to do modifications to existing steel plant to curb the emissions in addition to installing best available control technologies (BACT) to control NOx, SO2, and PM (Particulate Matter) to insure that they were at levels lower than those at start of construction.

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