POWER BROKER : PROCESS FOR MORE EFFICIENT ENERGY READIED FOR MARKET.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

The proponents of a method to operate power plants up to 50 percent more efficiently proclaimed Thursday that their technology is ready for commercialization after five years of testing at a Canoga Park pilot facility.

The technology is the creation a Russian immigrant, Alexander Kalina, who arrived in the United States 18 years ago with $5 in his pocket. His processes may save billions of dollars through cuts in fuel usage and pollution.

``It's amazing to me that this has worked so well,'' said the 61-year-old Kalina. ``As a rule of thumb, I've learned to expect things not to work.''

Kalina's company, Exergy Inc., staged a demonstration Thursday at the Canoga Park plant, which has a 6.5-megawatt capacity and has sold power to Southern California Edison since 1992. General Electric has agreed to commercialize the technology at two locations in the 50- to 150-megawatt range.

``I think we're over the hill and will attract an avalanche of interest now,'' Kalina said. ``The power generation industry has been looking for opportunities to boost efficiency and lower costs while trying to meet more stringent environmental regulations. The Kalina Cycle meets those needs.''

Exergy - which has invested more than $13 million in the plant - signed a deal this week with Ebara Corp. for a 4-megawatt plant in Fukuoka, Japan, using the Kalina Cycle technology. Kalina said he expects most interest to come in building new plants rather than retrofitting existing facilities.

The technology uses a mix of water and ammonia rather than water alone to supply the heat recovery system generator in a power plant. The system can be used with any fuel, geothermal source or excess industrial heat.

Kalina, 61, founded Exergy in 1988 and attracted enough interested investors to finance construction of the 6.5-megawatt Canoga Park plant in 1991 at the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Technology and Engineering Center. For the last two years, the Canoga Park plant has been on automatic operation.

Kalina projects that geothermal plants can post an efficiency gain of up to 50 percent while coal-fired plants will operate 20 percent more efficiently with the technology.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Alexander Kalina stands in front of his increased-efficiency Kalina Cycle power plant in Canoga Park.

(2--Color) Plant manager Ralph Sinclair, right, leads a tour of the power plant.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News