According to a report in the Birmingham (AL) Business Journal, Birmingham-based Electric Controls & Systems Inc. has earned $12-million design-build contract for a cupola melting system for China’s Weichai Power Co. Ltd..
It will be the first such installation in that country with hot-blast recuperative systems for pollution control. "We use all the hot gases from the melting process to heat the fresh air that must be injected back into the process," EC&S president Greg Bray told the paper.
The capacity of the cupola was not reported. The report indicates the design is being applied at several sites in the U.S., with as many as 20 bids pending for future installation.
Weichai manufactures diesel engine blocks for heavy construction vehicles in China’s Shandong province. The new cupola system will be manufactured in the U.S.
The project is structured as cooperative agreement with Weichai, and calls for EC&S and its partners to design, fabricate, construct, and offer ongoing engineering assistance for cupola system, and is open-ended to the possibility of supplying up to four more such systems. Total potential value is at least $50 million, according to the report.
According to Bray, the system is being designed together with the ESCHER division of Maumee Valley Fabricators Inc., Toledo, OH; Wrib Manufacturing Inc., Danville, IL; GMD Environmental Technologies Inc., Dallas; and Kodiak Group, Grayling MI.
Bray told the paper his company was awarded the contract because of the environmental technology involved and the sophistication of its presentation.