Heller-type Cooling System Developed in Budapest a Great Success in China

Hungary Today 2023.07.20.

A visual plan of the Chinese power plant

A Chinese subsidiary of MVM EGI, is working on a contract worth around ten million euros for a private Chinese company. The Heller cooling system that has been ordered is a Hungarian invention that has been a market success for almost 80 years, reports Világgazdaság.

Both electricity and heat will be produced by the Chinese power plant, whose two 350 megawatt cooling systems will be supplied by MVM EGI’s Chinese subsidiary. MVM EGI has already sold several such Heller systems in China over the last twenty years. The latest order, agreed on back in March, was expected at the time to be worth more than €10 million.

The plant will be built in Xinjiang province, with the exact name of the Hungarian subsidiary, MVM EGI Cooling Technologies (China) Co., Ltd. The announcement only reveals that the contractor is a local private company, but it could be a two-block coal-fired power plant in the city of Hetian (Hotan), listed as a reference project this year, with construction having started in 2021.

The plant will meet the electricity needs of the surrounding municipalities and provide hot water for district heating.

The Heller system has been in use for more than 50 years. Its big advantage is that it does not use water to cool the plant. The solution was developed in 1954 by two professors at the Budapest University of Technology, László Heller and László Forgó.

Heller-Forgó cooling tower at the Tricastin nuclear power plant in France. Photo via Wikipedia

MVM EGI designs, manufactures, and implements projects for wet and dry cooling systems and ash cleaning. Its technology is used in the power industry, biomass power plants, oil and gas power plants, and other industrial fields. According to its website, it has completed more than 500 projects. References include Russia, Turkey, the Middle East, the Balkans, China, and Eastern and Central Europe.

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Last year’s list included work for two 1,000 megawatt power plant blocks in China, a waste recycler in Poland, a Russian thermal power plant, and four domestic projects, Bonduelle, Civil Waste Recycler, and Borsodchem.

MVM EGI generated sales of around HUF 7.5 billion (EUR 2 million) last year, roughly half of the figure a year earlier.

Fact

Founded in 1948, the Energy Management Institute (EGI) was tasked with rebuilding the energy infrastructure after the Second World War. By the 1990s, it had become the dominant energy design, manufacturing, and construction company in Hungary, with 1,300 employees, and significant exports. In 1992, it was acquired by the GEA Group of Germany, and in 2003, the resulting GEA EGI acquired a subsidiary in Beijing and a heat exchanger plant in Vucsüing, 80 km from Beijing. After several changes of ownership and renaming, EGI and its two Chinese subsidiaries became MVM Zrt. in 2020, and the name was changed to MVM EGI.

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Via Világgazdaság, Featured image via mvm.hu