The Power Plants Components Division (PPCD) provides custom engineered equipment such as tubular heat exchangers and pressure vessels for electric power generation plants. The main focus of PPCD’s business concentration is the large and complex heat transfer equipment essential to the operation of a power plant. Prominent among such capital equipment are main steam surface condensers, feedwater heaters, component coolers, moisture separator reheaters and auxiliary heat exchangers used in the nuclear steam supply systems.

A coal-fired Power Plant located in Alabama Running on Holtec's Surface Condenser

A Combined Cycle Plant located in Texas Equipped with Holtec's Steam Surface Condensers

Much of the manufacturing capacity in the U.S. for building large, capital heat transfer equipment has been lost in the past 20 years to overseas manufacturers leading to a parallel (and inevitable) decline in the domestic design capabilities. In this period, PPCD has emerged as a bastion of equipment design know-how with a solid resume consisting of a large number of completed projects. The result has been a dramatic growth rate in PPCD’s contracts in recent years.

Dr. William S. Woodward: Executive-in-chargeFrom its initial emphasis on fossil fueled power plant equipment, PPCD has recently shifted its business focus towards renewable energy plants. PPCD is implementing Holtec International’s belief that the company can play a vital role in the emerging technologies for coaxing electric power from the sun. The design of efficient heat transfer equipment and systems to convert the collected heat from the Sun to electrical energy is a vital need to make solar energy plant’s practicable. Holtec is collaborating with other major players in the solar energy industry to make solar power a viable energy generation technology.

Providing reliable, efficient, and robust heat transfer equipment for geothermal power plant's is another area of "green" energy in which PPCD is poised to make a seminal technical contribution.

The key to PPCD’s ongoing success is its internationally recognized expertise in developing innovative heat exchanger designs, a corporate creed that emphasizes client satisfaction, backed by precision and quality fabrication. Indeed, when it comes to heat exchangers, Holtec engineers have, proverbially speaking, "written the book". The book, "Mechanical Design of Heat Exchangers and Pressure Vessels", by K.P. Singh and Alan I. Soler of Holtec International (Arcturus Publishers, 1984) is, even to this day, the only book on this subject in the English language.

Since the early 1970s, Holtec engineers have participated extensively in developing national consesous standards such as the TEMA Standards, HEI Standards for nuclear heat exchangers, air cooled condensers, water cooled condensers, and the ASME boiler and pressure vessel Codes.

Several of Holtec’s engineers are globally recognized experts on heat exchanger design. Working with the company’s Nuclear Power Division (NPD), PPCD provides unique expertise in designing unconventional heat exchangers such as those used in space, cryogenic, and high-energy (blast and impact) environments.

Holtec engineers have published stores of technical papers on heat exchanger design and analysis, most of them in the permanent literature. These Holtec papers have significantly influenced the development of heat exchanger methodology for over three decades.