Atlas Copco fuel gas compressors to serve Saudi plant

Atlas Copco’s Gas and Process division has won an order for three centrifugal gas compressors to serve the power-generation industry in Saudi Arabia. The machines will be used in a natural-gas-fueled power plant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

The contractor constructing the plant is a joint venture between two large engineering, procurement, and construction companies: Arabian Bemco Contracting Co. Ltd., based in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and GS Engineering & Construction Corp, based in South Korea. The end user is Saudi Arabia’s largest national public utilities operator, Saudi Electric Company. 

The facility, known as PP-12, will be one of the biggest combined-cycle power plants in the region, expected to start commercial operation by 2014 with a net output of 2 175 MW. The Atlas Copco compressors will feed gas turbines, which produce electricity, with natural gas at the required pressure level of 33 bars.