India is emerging as an important market for Forney due to the construction of new coal-fired power plants, repair & modernization of aging units, efficiency improvement projects and new air pollution control regulations. Mike Babb, Vice President Asia Sales talks about Forney’s growing presence to serve the bourgeoning market opportunity.
India has over 168,000 MW of coal fired generation and nearly 10,000 MW of new coal fired capacity coming online each year. What is Forney’s current capability to service this growing market opportunity in India?
Forney has maintained a permanent office in India for many years. Forney through our agent, Lucent Marcons has an extensive sales representative network in India. Lucent Marcons is well known and very active in the India Power market. Forney’s experience base includes over 60 Indian power plants, with the earliest dating back to 1976. Forney’s installed base in India exceeds 25,000 MW.
India burns a lot of low BTU coal with ash content in excess of 40%. Will high ash content coal have a negative impact on flame detection specifically when burners are taken out of service and during mill purging? What would be the advantages of Forney’s flame detection products?
Forney developed the IDD IIL (low band) infrared flame detector specifically to detect flames in the India market as their coal composition does cause significant challenges. We have over 2 decades of experience in this market with the IDD IIL/ IDD IIU sensors and various legacy amplifiers. The most recent systems have these sensors coupled with our “new” IDD 9000, 2 channel flame amplifier which has synchronized channels, this feature was specifically developed for extended performance in the Indian market on tangential boilers.
Forney has been successful in obtaining preferred vendor status from NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) for all boiler modernization projects and have landed significant supply contracts via our distributor Lucent Marcons.
Read more about Forney’s flame detectors in India.
How do you see the market in India for Forney’s coal ignition and flame scanner products?
Forney is well known in the India flame scanning market and across all boiler makers; Forney igniters and flame scanners are “standard equipment” with most of the Chinese boiler OEM’s who import boilers into India. These include Harbin, Dong Fang, Shanghai Boiler, Beijing Babcock, etc. We continue to actively service the India market both directly in India and through the boiler companies importing equipment into India.
The bulk of the locally built boilers such as BHEL use their own oil guns and ignition systems. Therefore, in 2015 we have localized our own High Energy Ignition System via Lucent Marcons in a “localization” move to allow Forney to compete on price.
How can Forney technologies improve boiler ramp time?
Boiler ramp time is governed by a lot of issues related to heat transfer and thermal expansion. Forney’s oil guns and igniters can be ramped to full load in the amount of time it takes the control systems to react. Our oil burners are never the limiting factor in boiler ramp time, in fact it is quite easy for us to make too much heat too fast. Ramp rates need to be verified and controlled within the operational parameters of each boiler design.
What is Forney’s experience base in India for new and retrofit applications?
We have been in India for over 40 years and at 63 sites totaling over 25,000 MWs.
Can the customer specify Forney ignition products to the boiler OEM such as Doosan, GE-Alstom, BHEL or any of the Chinese Boiler OEMs? What steps have been taken to supply these products to the India power market?
Yes, the customer can. Forney is also well known and widely utilized by most of the Japanese, Chinese and Korean boiler makers who import into India as they know us and know we are well supported in India.
Recently, India has finalized stringent emission control regulations for NOx that require power plants to achieve emissions as low as 50 ppm. Does Forney offer any products to lower NOx emissions?
The NOx target is generally for an operating boiler (coal). Our oil gun (or possibly gas gun) is used to get the process started, our oil gun is basically an oil injector into a coal burner, all the mixing and emission control is part of the coal burner and the boiler controls.
Oil gun technology fully matured several decades ago with low NOx consideration already designed in. We offer ignition products made from quality materials to designs which are well proven to be robust. Forney is known as making durable hardware suitable for the extreme conditions around a coal boiler.
