Yokogawa Electric Corp. (Tokyo) announced that it has acquired all shares of Danish company Dublix Technology ApS, a provider of solutions that improve the efficiency of waste-to-energy (WTE) and biomass power plants. The addition of Dublix’s combustion control and boiler performance enhancement solutions to Yokogawa’s lineup of control, monitoring, and maintenance systems will enable the provision of solutions that make both WTE and biomass power plants more efficient and profitable.
WTE and biomass power plants incinerate fuels such as municipal household waste, waste wood, wood pellets, palm seeds, bagasse, and rice husks. Given that the fuel contains mostly non fossil portions, less fossil CO2 is produced. Moreover, as this kind of fuel provides a more reliable supply of power than other renewable energy sources, demand for such power generation as a distributed power source that supplies power to nearby communities is increasing.
Plants that rely on this fuel source burn it to produce steam in a boiler, and a steam turbine extracts the energy from the steam to drive a rotating shaft in a generator that produces electricity. One issue at such plants is that the combustion of these fuels can be unstable due to inconsistent composition with varying calorific value and moisture content, resulting in significant fluctuations in the amount of generated steam. To achieve stable steam generation for the high-quality supply of power, it is desirable to have in place a highly efficient means for the control of the combustion process.
Dublix answers these needs by providing design, operation, maintenance, and customized solutions that improve availability and efficiency while reducing the environmental impact of both WTE and biomass power plants. Dublix currently operates in Europe, North America, and Asia.