With its latest generation of gas engines delivering improved performance, engine manufacturer Himoinsa expects growth in its home European market. Manuel Aguilera, gas project manager told Gas to Power Journal: “Our growth will revolve around new business opportunities in Eastern Europe, in France or in the UK, markets in which the demand for gas generator sets is growing at a higher rate.”
Overall, Himoinsa expects the gas market in Europe to start picking up this year and grow by around 1.9% per annum from now to 2020. The UK is seen as particularly strong opportunity in the medium term, thanks in part to the country’s capacity market mechanism.
Yanmar engines hit 10,000 hour up time
Powering this growth are Himoinsa’s new Yanmar engines which deliver maintenance intervals up to five times longer than standard equipment, Aguilera, explained. The Yanmar product range includes both diesel and gas-powered generator sets with maintenance periods stretching up to 10,000 hours. This allows greater uptime and reliability and has already spurred interest from operators around the world.
“We are working on new tri-generation projects, referred to as CCHP (Combined Cooling Heat and Power), which in addition to supplying electricity and heat with generator sets for cogeneration applications, also supply cold through an absorption machine, thereby saving fuel and reducing emissions. These projects are having a great reception in regions with high temperatures, as is the case of the Middle East,” he said.
Cross-industry demand for distributed gas solutions
From its research base in Spain, Himoinsa has been active in pushing the boundaries of small-scale gas power equipment across several industry verticals. The firm recently supplied gas generator sets for the of the Biomedical Research Laboratories of the University of Murcia in Spain as well as working with energy firm Transgas to develop solutions for Romania’s oil and gas sector.
“Four HGP-100 T5 NG generator sets on stand-by guarantee the supply of the control equipment of the gas compression station,” Aguilera commented on the Transgas project, adding that, ”within the oil and gas sector, we also supply power to a plant in Colombia where they extract the crude oil that feeds the generator sets with gas from the wells.”
The manufacturer also recently announced a novel solution for the fishing industry having supplied gas generator sets to feed several salmon farming centres in Chile. Located in remote areas without access to the grid, the salmon farms require continuous supply to avoid risk of discharges into the marine environment and Himoinsa’s solution was chosen due to its reliability.
Himoinsa continues to pursue new research as it seeks to improve not only efficiency and output but storage capacity for its gas generator sets. “Our engineering department is working to increase the storage capacity of our entire rental range of LPG-powered generator sets. Our goal is to find ever more efficient solutions that make better use of the space within the sets so that we can incorporate tanks of greater capacity without increasing the size of the unit. We believe that this is an improvement that will be very well received in the market,” Aguilera concluded.