Power From Steam The Plant Already Makes
A nitric acid plant gives off a lot of heat, and Yara's site at Poppendorf near Rostock uses that heat to make steam. On 21 October Everllence, the engine and turbomachinery maker formerly known as MAN Energy Solutions, announced that it will supply a steam turbine-generator train of about 13.5 MW for that plant, including the generator and the control system. It is to be installed in the nitric acid production area and will feed the site's own grid.
The new train does not need extra fuel. Two steam turbines already drive Everllence compressors in the acid plant; their exhaust steam, at 12 bar, will go to the new unit, which expands it to 4 bar. At full load the unit passes up to 75 tonnes of steam per hour. Everllence says this raises the energy efficiency of the site and cuts its carbon footprint, and quotes Hassan Ajami of its turbomachinery business: process steam is a valuable energy resource.
Built In Bengaluru, Tested For The German Grid
The turbine will be made at Everllence's works in Bengaluru, India, which the company says carries global responsibility for steam turbine power generation up to 45 MW. It follows API 612 and gets extra design and quality inspections, plus a mechanical test run on the Bengaluru test bed that went into service in 2024. On the electrical side the train must meet the German connection rules for generating plants on the grid (VDE-AR-N 4120), and Everllence ran dynamic electrical simulations together with Yara to check that.
Everllence also points to the history: its turbomachinery has been running at Poppendorf since the 1980s. Holger Tewes, head of sales and project management for steam turbines, says the chemical industry asks above all for availability, reliability and efficiency. The release gives no delivery date or contract value.
What The Release Does Not Say About The 4 Bar Steam
The question an operator would ask first is what happens to the steam after it leaves the turbine at 4 bar. If the site has a use for it, the turbine adds electricity to a heat flow that was needed anyway. If it ends up in a condenser, the unit also creates a heat rejection duty that the plant did not have before. The announcement is silent on this, so no one can say yet which of the two applies here.
It is a small project next to the gigawatt orders of the week, but it shows a pattern that is easy to overlook in power plant work: the cheapest megawatt is often the one made from energy that is already flowing through the site. The same logic drives cogeneration with gas engines, where the heat from the jacket water and the exhaust decides whether the plant pays.
Sources: Everllence
