ECOMB AB, a Sweden-based combustion engineering company has announced that the commissioning of its proprietary Ecotube system for NOx reduction at a new biomass-fired power plant boiler (120 MWth) on the French island of Martinique in the Caribbean could be completed in March - largely as planned.
According to ECOMB, it was worse for the Italian client, Lombardy-headed AC Boilers S.p.a. Due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), ACBoiler’s staff were denied entry into Martinique, a French territory in the Caribbean, by the end customer and the plant owner France-headed energy utility Albioma S.A.
Although ECOMB’s work was to some extent dependent on planned jobs by AC Boilers, part of this work could instead be carried out by another subcontractor (American company). In this fluid situation, the Ecotubes were deployed and a first tuning of the combustion process was completed.
After a few initial tests, the performance guarantees for nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions succeeded with a large margin, a result that was also in line with ECOMB’s expectations.
Martinique is completely closed to foreign companies and there is a risk that the entire formal project completion, hand-over, and associated final payments originally set for April 30, 2020, will be delayed.
comprises retractable lances – Ecotubes – that are equipped with injection nozzles. Various agents can be introduced
through the nozzles at high pressure and velocity into the furnace media. The Ecotubes are strategically positioned
within the furnace enabling the injected agents to create a radically improved mixing of the combustion products,
resulting in destruction of laminar gas columns and the formation of completely mixed turbulent flow patterns (illustration courtesy ECOMB).
