New Business for Water Treatment Companies from Power Sector

The nation’s need for new power plants has generated a flood of new business for water treatment companies.That’s the word from USFilter, the Palm Desert-based water management company, that reports approximately $175 million in systems and services sales to the North American power market in the last 12 months.

"We are seeing accelerated construction of new power plants," said Andy Seidel, USFilter President and CEO, "as well as more innovative approaches to water management. It’s creating new opportunities for us, and we expect this trend to continue well into the current decade if not beyond."

Seidel said his company estimates the need for new power plant construction to approach $250 billion. Most experts in North America, he said, forecast an increase of 210,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity in the next five years and 400,000 MW by the year 2020. Cogenerators would need an additional 75,000 MW by 2020.

According to Vice President Dick Cheney’s Report to the President on Energy Needs, "Over the next 20 years, the U.S. will need 1,300 to 1,900 new power plants, which is the equivalent of 60 to 90 new power plants a year." The best way of meeting our energy goal, says the report, is to "increase energy efficiency by applying new technology – raising productivity, reducing waste and trimming costs."

USFilter’s scope of water management systems and services for the power industry includes pre-treatment, boiler feed make-up water, cooling water, condensate treatment and wastewater treatment, as well as replacement parts, plant retrofits and upgrades, mobile water treatment, customized service contracts and outsourcing.

USFilter also offers Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) solutions that minimize liquid waste from cooling tower blow-down. The recovered water is treated and reused in other plant processes or turned into a dry salt cake that can be easily transported.

One of USFilter’s new projects is for Constellation Energy Group’s new High Desert Power Project in Victorville, Calif. The 750-megawatt plant will be the first new major power plant to be built in Southern California in more than a decade. USFilter will provide a wide range of integrated technologies to meet the power plant’s water treatment needs, including pre-treatment of raw water, treatment of cooling tower blow-down, and treatment and recycle of all wastewater. Commercial operation is scheduled for July 2003.

In another project, USFilter is providing a boiler feed water system consisting of reverse osmosis and CDI-LX systems for the Consolidated Edison East River Repowering Project in New York City. Designed to treat 6,700 gallons a minute, the water system will include the largest electrodeionization installation in the world.

USFilter is also supplying a 744 gallon-per-minute (gpm) water treatment system for boiler feed make-up, and a 7,000 gpm pretreatment system for the Hermiston Power Project, owned and operated by Calpine (CPN) Corporation in San Jose, Calif.

This 540MW combined cycle power plant, located in Northeastern Oregon near the town of Hermiston, will use water from the Columbia River for plant make-up. The plant is scheduled to go on line in the summer of 2002.

While the need for clean water in new plants is significant, the need for water conservation and waste reduction in existing facilities are emphasized in a recent report by the U.S. Department of Energy. The report states, "…reducing environmental impacts associated with air pollution, carbon dioxide, water usage and solid waste generation [is needed to] bring many older plants in compliance with more stringent environmental standards and prolong their useful life."&

Source: USFilter