Low-NOx burners order for Spanish power plant

Foster Wheeler Energia has been authorised by Endesa, Spain's largest utility, to proceed with the supply of low-NOx burners and to upgrade the mill classifiers on Units Four and Five at Endesa's Compostilla II power plant in Spain. The contract, valued at about US$7.6 million, will be included in the company's first-quarter 2006 bookings. 'This is another important environmental retrofit win for Foster Wheeler', said Eric Svendsen, CEO at Foster Wheeler Energia.

'It reinforces our leadership in the Spanish environmental equipment market'.

'In addition to demonstrating Endesa's continued confidence in Foster Wheeler's products and services, this latest award extends our long-term relationship with Endesa'.

Units Four and Five, each rated at 350MW, have Foster Wheeler arch-fired boilers.

Each unit is equipped with 24 vertical double cyclone burners and six ball mills.

Each ball mill currently has two static classifiers.

The new adjustable mill classifiers will reduce the unburned fuel loss and will allow fine-tuning of combustion.

The low-NOx burners will have preheat nozzles and advanced overfire air ports.

The use of overfire air achieves NOx reductions beyond those of a low-NOx burner alone.

Together, these modifications will permit Endesa to meet EU emission regulations while firing hard-to-burn local anthracite.

Endesa awarded Foster Wheeler an earlier contract in 2004 for the supply and testing of six low-NOx vertical burners and four adjustable classifiers for Compostilla Unit Four.

Having achieved the expected results during the testing and evaluation period in 2005, the firm will now complete the second stage of the retrofit (42 burners and eight classifiers) under the latest contract.

Endesa will carry out the installation of the adjustable classifiers with the unit in service, and will install the low-NOx burners during an outage scheduled for 2007.