Combustion Engineering's History and Asbestos-Intensive Products
Combustion Engineering, Inc. was incorporated in 1912 as a successor to earlier boiler engineering enterprises and quickly established itself as one of the leading designers and manufacturers of large-scale combustion and steam-generating systems in the United States. Headquartered in Windsor, Connecticut and operating major manufacturing works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, C-E served the full spectrum of industrial and utility customers over its seven decades of independent operation — supplying boilers to electric utilities, chemical plants, refineries, paper mills, steel mills, and the United States Navy.
Combustion Engineering's products were, by the nature of their application, intensive users of high-temperature insulating materials. A C-E utility boiler generating electricity for a major metropolitan area might operate continuously for decades, producing steam at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures measured in hundreds of pounds per square inch. Every square foot of boiler casing, every foot of steam piping, every valve and fitting in such a system required thermal insulation to maintain efficiency, protect workers from burn hazards, and prevent heat from migrating into surrounding structures. Throughout most of C-E's operational history, asbestos-based materials were the industry's preferred solution to these insulation requirements.
The range of asbestos-containing products associated with Combustion Engineering is notably broad. C-E boilers were insulated with asbestos block insulation, asbestos cement, and asbestos-containing refractory castables. Associated piping was covered with asbestos pipe insulation. Flanges and expansion joints were sealed with asbestos gaskets. Valve packings were made from asbestos rope or tape. The combustion chambers and furnace sections of boilers were lined with asbestos-containing refractory cement designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of active combustion. Even the boiler casing itself, in some designs, incorporated asbestos millboard as a fire-resistant lining beneath the outer sheet metal skin.
C-E also manufactured and sold refractory products — high-temperature resistant cements, castables, and coatings — as a separate product line marketed to customers in the metals, glass, petrochemical, and power industries. These products contained significant proportions of asbestos fiber to enhance their thermal and mechanical properties, and they were used in applications far beyond C-E's own boiler installations. Workers across many industries who applied, mixed, or removed these C-E refractory products — at facilities that may have had no other connection to Combustion Engineering boilers — were exposed to hazardous asbestos dust as a result.
The Chattanooga, Tennessee manufacturing facility was a major center of C-E's boiler production operations. Workers at Chattanooga who fabricated, assembled, and insulated C-E boilers accumulated significant asbestos exposures over the life of the facility's operation. Similarly, workers at C-E's Windsor, Connecticut headquarters and engineering facilities encountered asbestos through their work on boiler design, fabrication oversight, and quality control activities.
Shipyard, Naval, and Power Plant Worker Exposure
Like Babcock & Wilcox, its principal competitor in the large industrial boiler market, Combustion Engineering supplied steam-generating equipment to the U.S. Navy for installation aboard warships. C-E naval boilers were installed aboard destroyers, destroyer escorts, cruisers, and other vessels in the U.S. Navy's fleet, particularly during the mid-twentieth-century expansion of American sea power that preceded and continued through World War II and the Cold War.
The asbestos hazards faced by Navy personnel aboard ships with C-E boilers were essentially identical to those created by B&W and other boiler manufacturers: the engine and boiler rooms of these vessels were constructed with heavy asbestos insulation on every hot surface, and the day-to-day operations of the propulsion plant — as well as the periodic overhauls required to maintain seaworthiness — repeatedly disturbed this insulation and released asbestos fibers into the confined, inadequately ventilated spaces where sailors worked. Navy veterans with mesothelioma who served aboard ships with C-E boilers have valid claims against the C-E trust, and an experienced asbestos attorney can determine which vessels in a veteran's service record carried C-E equipment.
Shipyard workers — whether employed by government-operated naval shipyards or by private shipbuilding and repair contractors — faced acute high-dose asbestos exposures during the new construction and major overhaul of vessels equipped with C-E boilers. The installation of a new boiler system in a vessel under construction is among the most asbestos-intensive activities in the shipbuilding trades: installers and insulation workers apply hundreds or thousands of square feet of asbestos insulation in confined hull compartments, often working overhead and in cramped positions that made dust control nearly impossible with the methods and equipment available through most of the twentieth century. Mesothelioma rates among shipyard workers from this era have been documented at levels far exceeding those of the general population.
Electric utility workers constitute another large and well-documented exposure group for C-E products. Combustion Engineering was a major supplier of utility boilers — large-scale steam generators used by electric power companies to produce the steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. Utility boilermakers, operators, and maintenance workers at power plants equipped with C-E boilers spent years or decades working in proximity to asbestos insulation on the boilers and associated piping. Routine maintenance tasks — replacing gaskets, repacking valves, repairing damaged pipe insulation, cleaning the boiler's interior surfaces — repeatedly disturbed asbestos-containing materials and created exposure opportunities that accumulated over long careers.
Industrial refinery workers, chemical plant employees, and workers at other heavy industrial facilities where C-E boilers and combustion systems were in service represent additional exposure populations. C-E's commercial reach in the industrial boiler market was substantial, and the company's products were found in major industrial complexes throughout the United States and internationally. Workers at these facilities were exposed to C-E asbestos products not only through the boilers themselves but also through the C-E-branded refractory and insulation products used throughout these facilities.
ABB Acquisition, Bankruptcy, and the C-E Trust Formation
In 1990, Combustion Engineering was acquired by ABB Ltd. — the Swiss-Swedish multinational engineering company formed through the 1988 merger of ASEA and Brown Boveri. At the time of the acquisition, C-E's asbestos liabilities were already substantial, as the first major wave of asbestos personal injury litigation against boiler and industrial equipment manufacturers was well underway. ABB believed that the asbestos claims could be managed through a structured settlement program and that C-E's valuable manufacturing assets and engineering capabilities justified the acquisition despite the liability exposure.
Throughout the 1990s, the volume and cost of asbestos claims against C-E continued to grow beyond initial projections, as more workers and former Navy personnel from the peak exposure decades of the 1940s through 1970s began receiving mesothelioma diagnoses. The cost of defending and resolving these claims strained C-E's finances even within the ABB corporate structure. ABB explored various strategies for containing the asbestos liability, ultimately concluding that a bankruptcy reorganization of C-E's asbestos-burdened operations was the most practical approach.
In February 2003, ABB's Combustion Engineering subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The bankruptcy proceeding was specifically structured to address C-E's asbestos liabilities through a trust mechanism under Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code — the same legal framework used by other major asbestos defendants to channel all present and future asbestos claims to a trust fund while allowing the reorganized business to continue operations free of that liability.
The Combustion Engineering Settlement Trust was established pursuant to the reorganization plan confirmed by the bankruptcy court. The trust was funded with a combination of cash, insurance proceeds, and other assets allocated from the C-E bankruptcy estate and from ABB's contributions to the settlement. The trust's mission is to evaluate, administer, and pay all qualifying asbestos personal injury claims attributable to C-E products and operations, using standardized medical and exposure criteria established in the trust distribution procedures.
C-E Products and Facilities Implicated in Asbestos Exposure
| Product / Facility | Asbestos Application | Primary Exposure Population | Era of Peak Exposure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utility Steam Generators | Asbestos block insulation, castable refractory, gaskets | Power plant workers, boilermakers | 1920s – 1970s |
| Naval Boilers | Asbestos insulation, packing, gaskets | Navy sailors, shipyard workers | 1930s – 1970s |
| Refractory Cements & Castables | Asbestos fiber-reinforced high-temp cement | Industrial maintenance workers, contractors | 1920s – 1970s |
| Industrial Combustion Systems | Asbestos-containing combustion chamber linings | Refinery/chemical plant workers, boilermakers | 1930s – 1970s |
| Boiler Gaskets & Valve Packing | Compressed asbestos sheet and rope packing | Pipefitters, maintenance mechanics | 1900s – 1980s |
| Windsor, CT HQ Operations | Engineering and oversight of asbestos component use | C-E engineering and administrative staff | 1912 – 1990 |
| Chattanooga, TN Boiler Works | On-site asbestos insulation application to boilers | C-E fabrication and assembly workers | 1920s – 1970s |
The C-E Trust Fund: 15.3% Payment Rate
The Combustion Engineering Settlement Trust currently pays approximately 15.3% of the full liquidated value of approved asbestos personal injury claims — a rate that places C-E among the better-funded active asbestos trusts and reflects a more favorable balance between trust assets and projected total claims than is seen at trusts with much lower payment percentages. For a mesothelioma claim valued at its full liquidated amount, a 15.3% payment percentage represents a meaningful lump sum payment, though still a fraction of the claim's full value.
The trust processes claims in several disease categories, with mesothelioma assigned the highest medical criteria tier and the highest base compensation values. Other qualifying conditions include asbestos-related lung cancer (for claimants who can document significant asbestos exposure and meet smoking history requirements), asbestosis confirmed by pulmonary function testing and imaging, and other asbestos-related pleural diseases including pleural plaques and pleural thickening when accompanied by functional impairment.
Claimants seeking to maximize their compensation from the C-E trust should understand the trust's exposure documentation requirements. Unlike claims against a direct-litigation defendant, trust claims are evaluated administratively — a claims processor reviews submitted documentation against established criteria and makes a determination about approval and payment level. The quality and completeness of the documentation submitted significantly affects the outcome of this review. An attorney experienced in trust fund claims knows exactly what documentation the C-E trust requires and how to present exposure evidence in the most persuasive form.
The 15.3% rate, while among the higher rates for major asbestos trusts, still underscores the importance of comprehensive legal representation aimed at identifying and pursuing all responsible parties. A worker who was exposed to asbestos from C-E boilers at a power plant was likely also exposed to asbestos from pipe insulation manufactured by other companies, gaskets from additional manufacturers, and potentially refractory products from other sources. Each of these additional exposure sources may give rise to a separate trust fund claim or direct litigation claim, multiplying the total compensation available.
Frequently Asked Questions
The principal groups exposed to C-E asbestos products include: utility workers and boilermakers at electric power plants equipped with C-E steam generators; U.S. Navy sailors and shipyard workers who worked with C-E naval boilers; industrial workers at refineries, chemical plants, and other facilities where C-E combustion systems were installed; workers who used C-E refractory cements and castables in various industrial applications; and C-E manufacturing workers at the Chattanooga, Tennessee and Windsor, Connecticut facilities who fabricated and insulated C-E products. All of these groups were exposed to asbestos insulation and asbestos-containing materials integral to C-E's products.
The 15.3% payment rate at the Combustion Engineering Settlement Trust is significantly higher than many other major asbestos trusts, some of which pay as little as 1 to 5% of claim values. However, it is important not to evaluate any single trust's payment percentage in isolation. The practical value of a C-E trust claim depends on the disease category, the base compensation value assigned to the claim, and — most importantly — whether additional claims can be pursued against other responsible parties. A comprehensive asbestos legal strategy that identifies and pursues all available defendants will almost always yield substantially higher total compensation than filing with a single trust, regardless of that trust's payment percentage.
When ABB acquired Combustion Engineering in 1990, it inherited C-E's growing asbestos liability exposure. ABB managed these claims for over a decade before concluding that a bankruptcy restructuring was necessary to contain the liability. In 2003, ABB's C-E subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy specifically to establish the Combustion Engineering Settlement Trust under Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code. This legal structure channeled all present and future C-E asbestos claims to the trust, releasing ABB's ongoing businesses from C-E's historical asbestos obligations. The trust was funded through contributions from ABB and from C-E's insurance recoveries.
Refractory cement claims are distinctive because the workers most affected are often those who applied or repaired the material — not just those who worked around it passively. Mixing dry refractory cement containing asbestos from bags or drums into a workable paste, or chipping away cured refractory to make repairs, both generate substantial quantities of airborne asbestos dust. Workers at facilities with no C-E boilers — but where C-E refractory products were used to line furnaces, kilns, or other high-temperature equipment — may have valid C-E trust claims based solely on their use of these separate refractory products. Identifying the specific brand and manufacturer of refractory cements used at a workplace is an important part of asbestos exposure investigation.
Claim submission to the C-E trust requires completing the trust's standard claim forms and attaching documentation of exposure to C-E products, work history records connecting you to C-E's asbestos materials, and medical records confirming an asbestos-related diagnosis. The trust evaluates claims against its established medical and exposure criteria and issues payment at the applicable disease category value multiplied by the current payment percentage. Working with an experienced asbestos attorney is strongly recommended — attorneys who regularly handle trust fund submissions know how to document exposure evidence in the format the C-E trust requires, avoid procedural errors that can delay payment, and simultaneously pursue all other available compensation sources. Contingency fee arrangements are standard, meaning no upfront costs.
Worked for Combustion Engineering?
Power plant workers, Navy veterans, boilermakers, and industrial workers exposed to C-E boilers and refractory products may qualify for trust fund compensation at the 15.3% rate — plus additional recovery from other defendants. Our legal partners specialize in maximizing total asbestos compensation for mesothelioma patients.