The Hindu Business Line : BHEL (R&D) bags Rs 18-cr orders

THE Corporate Research and Development (R&D) of BHEL here has bagged orders worth Rs 18 crore, achieved a turnover of Rs 12 crore, and has consolidated core research capabilities as well as established new Centres of Excellence during the financial year 2003-04.

The BHEL (R&D), which spent Rs 85 crore on research, also filed 18 patents in India and a few in the US. The Centres of Excellence in Simulators, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Permanent Magnet Machines (PMM), set up with an investment of nearly Rs 10 crore, have all gone into operational mode, according to the Executive Director, Mr S. Balagurunathan.

Giving an overview of the year's performance, Mr Balagurunathan told newspersons that the Corporate R&D secured the Rs 10.77-crore order from Uttaranchal Jal Vidyut Nigam for coating underwater parts of the Maneri Bhali Hydro Power Station. This was a major success for the coating technology developed by it. The main hydro plant is being built by the BHEL, Hardwar.

Another important task given to the BHEL is to set up a 100 MW, Integrated Gassification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant for the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh. "An inter-ministerial steering group on IGCC has asked us to prepare the feasibility report," he said.

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister, Dr R. Chidambaram, is co-ordinating this project. A national R&D committee has been set up. Senior officials of the Heavy Water Board (HWB), under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology (DST), NTPC and BHEL are its members.

The R&D's collaborative project with the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which resulted in the development of "Power Pac-G" a software solution for the power sector, has led to the duo bagging an order in Libya. TCS and BHEL have signed an MoU to jointly market the product in India and abroad, Mr Balagurunathan said.

With about 5 major orders from the power sector, Railways and turbines; participation in major national R&D projects, growing response to the surface treatment technologies and permanent magnet machines, life extension of power plants etc, BHEL R&D hopes to contribute substantially to indigenisation, saving of foreign exchange and strengthening BHEL units' technological capabilities, he said.

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