Chennai, Jan 31 (IANS) Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) is looking at South Africa for marketing its circulating fluidized bed combustion (CFBC) boilers, needed for power and industrial applications.
And the power equipment maker is open to joint ventures there for this purpose.
“South African coal is similar to what is available here and hence we are looking at that market for our CFBC boilers. If the South African regulations want us to partner with a local outfit then we are open to that,” A.V. Krishnan, executive director, BHEL’s boilers division, told IANS.
In CFBC technology, India ranks next only to European countries such as Germany where boilers of 400 MW capacity have been developed.
According to him, BHEL is waiting for its four CFBC boilers supplied to mining-cum-power generating company Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) to stabilise and generate power at a steady basis at their peak load.
“We will showcase the boilers supplied to NLC as the reference projects while pitching for projects,” Krishnan said.
BHEL had supplied four CFBC boilers to NLC. While the two 250 MW units are located in its home town and near the pit head at Neyveli in Tamil Nadu, the other two units (2×125 MW) are in Rajasthan. Both the CFBC projects – Neyveli and Rajasthan- ran into technical problems delaying their commissioning.
Krishnan said: “One 250 MW CFBC boiler was lit up Sunday. The second unit will be lit up soon. The two 125 MW CFBC boilers supplied to NLC’s Rajasthan unit are functioning well.”
He said BHEL has an order book of around Rs.147,000 crore, of which the boiler division’s share is around Rs.37,000 crore.
