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'Combustion Engineering' (C-E) was an innovative American engineering firm and leading firm in the development of power systems in the United States with approximately 30,000 employees in about a dozen states at its peak. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, C-E owned over two dozen other companies including National Tank Company and the Morgan Door Company. Former workers have gone on to hold leadership positions in major engineering firms and governments around the world. The company was acquired by Asea Brown Boveri in the late 1980s.^[1] The boiler and fossil fuel businesses were purchased by ALSTOM in 2000,^[2] and the nuclear business was purchased by Westinghouse Electric Company also in 2000.^[3]
==Combustion Engineering History^[4]

Contents

Company Merger

Company Growth

Company Aquisition by ABB

External References

References

External Links

==

Company Founding

Combustion Engineering was organized in 1912 through the merger of the Grieve Grate Company and the American Stoker Company, two well-known manufacturers of fuel burning equipment. The company was originally headquarterd on 11 Broadway in New York City. C-E's signature boiler equipment was the English designed Type-E stoker. C-E also offered several other types of underfeed stokers in addition to the Type-E. During the 1920s, all of C-E's stokers were fabricated in manufacturing plants along the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh.
In 1925 C-E entered the steam boiler business, beginning with a steam boiler installed at the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, MI. C-E also acquired two boiler companies in Chattanooga, TN to augment its manufacturing capabilities.

Company Merger

During the Great Depression, C-E formed a partnerhip with the Superheater Company. The Locomotive Superheater Company was founded in 1910 to further the use of superheated steam in locomotives. The Superheater Company's primary manufacturing facility was located in East Chicago, Indiana.
The Superheater Company and C-E eventually mergered in 1948 under the name of Combustion Engineering-Superheater, Inc. in 1953, the name Superheater was eliminated and the company took the more familiar name - Combustion Engineering, Inc. At this time, C-E primarily designed and built boiler assemblies for conventional power plants; those powered by coal and oil.

Company Growth

In the mid-1950s, C-E also expanded its operations into oil and gas exploration, production, refining, and petrochemicals with the acquisition of the Lummus Company located in Bloomfield, NJ.
In 1955, C-E's nuclear power activity began during this time with the design and construction of a prototype marine nuclear propulsion system known as S1C built adjacent to the C-E facility in Windsor, CT. the S1C prototype was operated by C-E for more than 10 years as an R&D and Naval training facilty. The S1C contract was subsequently awarded to Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL), who operated the unit until its decommissioning and dismantlement in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
C-E was one of the major suppliers of boilers for US Navy steam-powered warships. Among many other warships, all of the 46 Knox class frigates built during the 1960s and 1970s were equipped with a 1200 PSI C-E power plant.
In the 1960s, C-E began selling nuclear power steam supply systems. The first commercial nuclear steam supply system was sold to Consumers Power Company of Michigan for the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which is still in operation. C-E competed aggressively with General Electric and Westinghouse in this domain.
C-E was generally credited with a superior design, evidenced by the fact that the megawatt yield of its nuclear reactors was typically about 10% higher than that of comparable Westinghouse plants. The basis for this increase in efficiency was a computer-based system called the Core Operating Limit Supervisory System (COLSS), which leveraged almost 300 in-core neutron detectors and a patented algorithm to allow higher power densities.

Company Aquisition by ABB

In 1990 C-E became a wholly owned subsidiary of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), a Swiss-Swedish multinational conglomerate based out of Zurich and one of the largest electrical engineering companies in the world.
C-E's financial debt and lingering asbestos liability brought ABB to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s. ABB was able to resolve asbestos claims filed against Combustion Engineering and Lummus Global in 2006 with billion-plus dollar settlement agreement.^[5]

External References

★ Asea Brown Boveri

★ Alstom Power

★ Westinghouse Electric Company

References

1. The ABB Group: Timeline
2. Alstom - Power Plant Laboratories; Windsor, CT
3. Westinghouse Nuclear: Timeline
4. Combustion Fossil Power, , Joseph G, Singer, Combustion Engineering, Inc., ,
5. ABB asbestos claims resolved

External Links

★ Official website