An Old Story of Steam Boiler Proposal
Together
With Company in Tampere, Finland
In
the second half of 1980’s, a rich local businessman with textile
plants in Istanbul and Edirne, called us. In his textile plants,
energy costs were getting high. To be competitive in the
international markets, he was considering to invest in a new power
plant to utilize cheap local coal available nearby to meet the energy
and steam demand of the plants. Thrace Saray local coal has very low
calorific value (1500-2000 kcal/kg LHV) and very high moisture
content (50-60%). Our North American based joint venture partner
advised that they had no matching thermal power plant designed for
this coal.
We
had no internet at that time. We reviewed available literature and
technical magazines to find an appropriate boiler supplier with
reliable references with similar coal firing experience in the world.
Then we found a boiler company in Finland, in Tampere, called
Tampella Oy. They were firing a similar coal with a new bubbling
fluidized bed combustion technology at high output capacities. Today
there is nothing left unknown for this technology. There are
thousands of similar references in operation.
So
we made first contact through a fax machine. The company asked for
coal samples to fire in their test stand to see if they could design
appropriate design to match combustibles. We transferred the request
to our investor. Since they were textile exporters to Europe, it was
very easy for them to mobilize for the transportation of 50-ton coal
sample from a coal mine to Tampere, Finland. Then we made travel
plans to go to Tampere to witness the coal firing tests in their
laboratory. Today there are 2-daily Thy flights from Istanbul to
Helsinki, but back then in 1980’s, we had only one flight per week.
So
we chose the Lufthansa, Ankara-Munich- Helsinki route. From the
Helsinki airport we took a train to the city center then moved to
local train to Tampere for three more hours. We checked in our city
hotel late at night. The next day, our Finnish company met us at the
breakfast lounge, took us to their head office for an exchange of
information. Then after lunch, we were invited to the test lab to
observe the test combustion. The boiler design was consistent, the
test was satisfactory. We drafted our cooperation and license
agreements, agreed on scope split, an tentative timetable to finalize
our joint proposal. The next day we returned home through the same
route.
At
that time, Finnish engineers had no international experience, all
their references were in their home market. Their new basic design
took some time to complete. Their income expectations were high above
prevailing market prices. Anyway, they completed their design, priced
their scope, and advised details of non-critical parts in our scope.
So we made estimations to price our scope, plus a steam turbine and
its auxiliaries, both scopes were brought together. Then we submitted
our final joint proposal to our end customer in Istanbul.
During
the evaluation period, Finnish engineers came to Turkey, visited us
in Ankara, then we together visited the client in their Istanbul
head office and Edirne plant.
The
owner of the textile plant was an experienced mechanical engineer
with a post-graduate degree from a reputable European university. He
could speak English, French and German since. I suppose he could
also speak Spanish and Italian.
In
his Istanbul office, he had priceless oil paintings of famous
painters from Ottoman period. From time to time, he was inviting me
to his office and asking clarifications of our proposal, where I
would often spend the whole day in his office. During that time, I
was witnessing his daily work load, his business transactions,
marketing sales, logistics, finance, operation, staff problems.
Sometimes I had got a headache watching as his life was not
enviable.
On
the weekend, on Friday evening, he would fly to the west coast of
Ireland, boarding on his ocean boat, with a 10-men professional crew
for training to prepare for an upcoming international sailing race
on the Atlantic ocean. On Monday morning he was back in his office.
In
the end, our investor was not pleased with our high proposal price.
Finnish engineers were not salesmen and they were not so responsive.
Other competitors could not supply their counter proposals. All my
documentation was stored in a single 3.5″ floppy disk in Word and
Excel files. Since there are no longer available 3.5″ floppy disk
readers slots in the existing PC computers, I had to transfer all
those files to a USB stick to write this article. All letters,
cooperation agreements, minutes of meetings, cooperation agreement,
confidentiality agreements, estimation calculations were all stored
on that 3.5″ floppy.
Today
there is no need to transport coal samples abroad. There are test
facilities in Turkish research institutes, Tubitak Marmara Gebze And
in Metu Chemical engineering combustion laboratories. They have all
the necessary facilities to test coal samples in bubbling and
circulating fluid bed combustion chambers.
We
had further contacts to understand the proposal evaluations, but it
was not promising. There were no easy cheap, but unreliable far east
proposals at that time. Due to ongoing economic difficulties, ups
and downs of market forces, the investor company had gone into
survival turmoil. The Finnish boiler company was sold to an US
conglomerate together with all its technology and know-how.
I
got peer criticism from my own company, “that coal was hopeless,
with no possibility to fire, you wasted company resources and you
furnished consultancy without getting paid”. I don’t think so.
We proved that local coal could be fired with appropriate fluid bed
technology. It was an intelligent game between us. We had demand, we
had a sound design, and financing was available.
If
the client was satisfied with design and price, we could end up with
an order. We had an highly intelligent businessman, and we had the
beauty of joint work.
---
Haluk
Direskeneli, is a graduate of METU Mechanical Engineering department
(1973). He worked in public, private enterprises, USA Turkish JV
companies (B&W, CSWI, AEP), in fabrication, basic and detail
design, marketing, sales and project management of thermal power
plants. He is currently working as freelance consultant/ energy
analyst with thermal power plants basic/ detail design software
expertise for private engineering companies, investors, universities
and research institutions. He is a member of ODTÜ Alumni and Chamber
of Turkish Mechanical Engineers Energy Working Group.
This
article is written for the "EurasiaReview" news web site.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/haluk-direskeneli/
Ankara,
24 June 2017
posted by yuvakuran at 8:37 PM
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