19.11.06

נועם מירז / מזריצקי מספר על עבודתו המעניינת ברחבי העולם

I am enjoying my work and consider myself very lucky having worked around the world (besides visits like in Korea last week).

My first "overseas" assignment was in 1996 in Tucaman, Argentina (800 miles north of Buenos Aires), where we installed four (4) GE made LM-6000 units.  Those are aka (also known as) aero-derivative gas (combustion) turbines that are actually standard jet engines coupled up to a 40-50 MW generator (depending on the intake air cooling system).  A flying Boeing 747 is generating energy equal to 160 to 200 MW for flying 400 people somewhere - what a waste of heat!!!  Talking about green-house effect.

Later in 1997/1998 I commissioned two large GE frame units, 9FA, 200 MW each with a 200 MW steam turbine in South Bangkok, Thailand. Those power plant made gas turbines (much heavier than jet engines...) are fitted with heat recovery steam generators on the exhaust, making 'free' steam for the third unit (that is a combined cycle plant, combustion and steam cycles).  Making the overall power cost per kW  less expensive, or in technical terms getting more electrical power out of the supplied fossil-fuel btu (heat energy units) content.

In late 1997 I worked in Dalian, China, for Westinghouse.  There we installed two 350 MW coal-fired power plants designed by Sargent and Lundy out of Chicago, much like the units near Hadara (aka 'Midway' power plant, also designed by S&L in Chicago).

In 1999 I worked in Guatemala (under contract to MSE Power) for a company called ORMAT out of Yavnah, near Tel Aviv.  ORMAT installed seven geothermal turbines, we installed the substation for the electric power output connection to the grid.

In 2000 I worked for Siemens on hydro power plant in the Philippines (the plant was Casacanan, near the city of Cabanatuan, where the Japanese POW camp was, showed in a recent WWII movie).  That was actually an irrigation project (much like Hover Dam near Las Vegas) that generated electric power as a by-product.    

In 2001/2002 I worked for BP (British Petroleum) in Great Yarmouth, UK (in East Anglia, the eastern most bulge).  There Bechtel (San Francisco based engineering company) with GE (Schenectady, NY, near Albany, NY, based company) built single shaft combine cycle plant using GE's Frame 9FA, 265 MW combustion turbine coupled up with 135 MW steam turbine which was fed with steam generated by HRSG (heat recovery steam generator) on the combustion turbine's exhaust path.  Those two turbines drove a 400 MW single generator.  HRSG is basically a furnace-less boiler, the heat source is the exhaust flue gases.

In 2003 we installed, for Deltak out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, ten (10) HRSG's on GE's Frame 5 existing combustion turbines in an LNG (liquefied natural gas, aka cooking gas in Israel) in Aceh, Indonesia, where a year later (Dec 26, 2004) the tsunami hit.  There it was Texaco existing LNG plant where they burned plant produced gas in boilers to make steam for the process of cleaning the natural gas (for cooking application in Korea, Japan, and Israel) and decided to install the HRSG's to save energy.  

In the States now we are heavily engaged in the wind farms power generation, which is relative new to the USA (about 10 years old).  These wind turbines grew from 200-300 kW each ten years ago to 3 MW each now days.  In one project going on in Texas (Buffalo Gap II) today we are installing 155 wind turbines (those are GE made, older design, 1.5 MW each only, 232.5 MW overall).  In Buffalo, NY (near the Niagara falls), we are installing eight (8) new Clipper units, 3 MW each (those units have serial numbers 0001 to 0008...).  Speaking of a cutting edge technology...

Enough said.  Thanks, Noam.