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Weekly selected highlights in flow control, treatment and combustion from the many McIlvaine publications.

• Wednesday webinar important to all combust, flow, and treat suppliers
• Large Hot Gas System Suppliers face a Market Sea Change

 Wednesday webinar important to all combust, flow, and treat suppliers

McIlvaine will conduct a webinar on November 8th to explore a big change in the hot gas APC market.

You can register at: Hot Topic Hour Schedule and Recordings

The webinar will be a template for leveraging   IIoT and Remote O&M for all the system, component, and consumables suppliers. IIoW utilizes the data analytics provided by IIoT and provides the interconnection between end users, suppliers, and subject matter experts to create the TCOs and more importantly create new products with lower TCOs.  The interconnections need to be as prolific in IIoW as in IIoT.  There is a need for subject matter ultra-experts and decision systems.  The webinar will provide examples of both.  It is all part of all the following interconnections

·        Supplier personnel in each product group and geography interconnecting with peers around each of the 1000 large purchasers of combust, flow and treat products. purchasers)

·        Owner-operator personnel in each plant and in each role interconnecting around processes and products used in more than one of the plants (McIlvaine has a beta site for BHE Energy)

o   User controlled groups expanding scope to create decision systems and through digital technologies become international (Can suppliers work with the Dry Scrubber Users Group and create an international dry scrubbers decisions group?)

o   Supplier controlled groups focused on total cost of ownership studies (Can the hydrate users group become an international hydrate decisions group?)

·        Creation of Subject Matter Ultra Experts (SMUEs).   Tomorrow's experts will master the massive TCO data generated from IIoT.  The SMUE will need to be very focused and to continually utilize and help create the decision systems around his specialty.  The suppliers of the high-performance products with the lowest TCO products will benefit from the SMUE validation of their claims.  Outstanding examples of SMUES will be presented.

Large Hot Gas System Suppliers face a Market Sea Change

Companies such as B&W, GE-Alstom, MHPS, Longking, and Doosan have the knowledge and resources to navigate the sea change in the hot gas APC market and to greatly increase profits. However, those who fail to adjust are likely to lose market share. Niche players and suppliers of components also must navigate a new market route.

This is a risky business. APC companies such as Donaldson and AAF have avoided it and focused on lower temperature applications and standard equipment sales. There are good historical reasons for avoidance. The market has been subject to extreme volatility due to environmental regulations. In the good times there were many new entries. In the bad teams many declared bankruptcy or merged. On the average the profits have been anemic. On the other hand, the investment has been low. So, the return on invested capital in some cases has been very high. In other cases, investors have suffered 100 percent losses. So, it has been a risky business. Thanks to IIoT and Remote O&M the market will undergo a sea change which will reap big rewards for those who properly navigate it. 

The IIoT and & Remote O&M will add 125% to the total market. This segment will be steady and take advantage of the large installed base.

The U.S., Europe, Japan and the OECD countries have now retrofitted air pollution control equipment on most of the hot gas stacks. China has retrofitted most of its plants in the last ten years. The retrofit market is still big in India and certain other developing countries. The new systems market will continue to be robust thanks to the expansion of coal-fired generation in many Asian and African countries. As long as there were big new markets, suppliers neglected the revenue opportunity from the installed base. In the future, expenditures to operate and maintain systems will exceed the expenditures for new systems. This ratio will increase over time as all hot gas operations are fitted with air pollution control systems.

NAES, at its Logan and Carney plants, is demonstrating the benefits of IIoT and Remote O&M for hot gas air pollution control. Both plants have dry scrubber systems. The successes were the focus of speeches and discussions at the recent DSUA conference. A third party specializing in dry scrubber technology continuously monitors the systems and can suggest changes at any time.  There are weekly meetings with plant staff to discuss not only remedies to problems but ways to improve the systems. This has resulted in patented bag designs which are licensed back to the bag suppliers. It has resulted in improved valve maintenance procedures and provides the details for valve suppliers to improve their designs. Savings are millions of dollars per year.

The big potential of IIoT & Remote O&M is to facilitate improvements not just avoid problems. The myriad of continuous total cost of ownership analyses provided by the process management system is not directly actionable. There is a need for a new breed of subject matter experts. We call them subject matter ultra-experts (SMUES) who will be much focused on a very narrow niche and then continually analyze the massive information being generated.

Who holds an edge on SMUES? This will be an important question in predicting the fate of the various players. We guesstimated the rankings of five companies just for illustrative purposes.  These may be the top ranked players. So, a # 5 position does not imply the company is not a leader.

Experience and current R&D create SMUES. GE is clearly the IIoT skills leader but MHPS has launched an aggressive program with remote monitoring centers. Longking is the only one of the five without combustor knowledge. One the other hand Longking has installed more hot gas systems than any of the others in recent years. It has more dry scrubbing systems. Longking has a number of innovative products such as hybrid precipitator baghouses. MHPS installed a 400,000 cfm R&D system whereas the others were content with 10,000 cfm systems. Its innovative gas to gas heat exchangers have proven benefits.

B&W has been a technical leader over the decades. The GE Alstom (Combustion Engineering) group has a very large installed base of precipitators, scrubbers, and NO_x control systems. The acquisition by GE could be important one way or another. Doosan, with the acquisition of Babcock Contractors some years ago, established its global position.

This ranking system is heavily weighted to coal-fired power. FLSmidth is a leader in cement.  Andritz is a leader in pulp and paper. GEA is a leader in smelting. However, coal-fired power is the biggest market. So those who dominate this segment have an advantage.

All of this will be discussed on Wednesday. You can join us free of charge with registration at Click here to Register for the Webinars

 Bob McIlvaine can answer questions and can be reached at: rmcilvaine@mcilvainecompany.com 847-784-0012 ext. 112.