Firm Markets Clean Coal-Power Technology

Coal angers environmentalists, frustrates states with plenty of the cheap but dirty-burning fuel--but brings smiles to the faces of Pyropower Corp. executives.

That’s because San Diego-based Pyropower, a wholly owned subsidiary of Helsinki, Finland-based A. Ahlstrom Group, is designing industrial and utility boilers that burn coal and other dirty fuels without damaging the environment.

Pyropower has six projects under way, including:

An industrial boiler outside Chicago that is funded for $4.3 million by the State of Illinois. The state anticipates that the boiler, which began operating last month, could signal a turnaround for the state’s depressed coal mining industry.

Making Illinois-mined coal environmentally safe to burn could add $500 million to the state’s economy by creating as many as 4,000 new jobs, according to the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources.

In smog-ridden and coal-poor San Bernardino County, a Pyropower coal-fired industrial boiler designed for California Portland Cement Co. fired up in June and, in the process, became Southern California’s first new coal-fired boiler in 20 years.

A 100-megawatt coal-fired unit that was designed for the Colorado-Ute Electric Assoc. has attracted cautious attention from the utility industry. The unit, scheduled to open in 1987, marks the first use by a U.S. utility of the Pyropower technology.

The Colorado-Ute unit is one of three fluidized bed projects under way, Compas said. The two others will use fluidized bed combustion systems designed by Combustion Engineering and Foster Wheeler.

U.S. utilities, although interested in the fluidized bed technology, have been slow to place orders, according to William Compas, vice president of Pyropower.

“These (utility) guys were burned badly by (expensive) nuclear plants,” Compas said. “Although there are some mavericks who will take a chance, (most are) gun-shy about any new technology.”

Pyropower, however, is not shy about its “circulating fluidized bed” combustion technology, which generated $55 million in sales during 1984. The technology cleanly burns high-sulfur coals, petroleum coke, anthracite coal wastes and waste fuels including wood, Compas said.

As fuel is fed into Pyropower-designed furnaces, a steady stream of air keeps the fuel “floating,” which provides for a “cleaner” burn, company officials said. Fuel that fails to completely burn is then circulated into the furnace for complete combustion.

Crushed limestone that is blown into the furnaces creates a chemical reaction that eliminates the sulfur dioxides generally blamed for creating acid rain.

Pyropower grew out of a partnership involving Ahlstrom and La Jolla-based GA Technologies, which was considering the technology for use in nuclear-powered boiler applications. GA abandoned its part of the boiler project after the Three Mile Island radioactivity leak, the resulting regulatory explosion, and skyrocketing construction costs knocked the bottom out of the nuclear reactor industry.

When GA Technologies withdrew from the partnership, Ahlstrom created Pyropower as a wholly owned subsidiary, with former GA executive Eric Oakes as its president. Compas, another GA veteran, joined Pyropower just over a year ago. The company has taken advantage of a general industry slowdown and grabbed managers from boiler giants such as Babcox and Wilcox.

Pyropower is chasing utility and industrial customers that want both electricity and co-generated heat or steam that can be used to slash production costs, Compas said, adding that the company is also developing projects in which it acts as an owner-operator.

Last month, Pyropower and General Electric signed a marketing agreement that will “identify, screen and develop selected co-generation projects incorporating Pyropower’s (technology) into GE’s proven power generation systems,” according to a GE executive.

GE has predicted that during the next five years, the market for solid fuel-fired co-generation plants could swell to $5 billion.