BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL GENERATION INDUSTRY

Vol. 155 No. 6 June 2011

www.powermag.com

Air Preheater Uses New

Adaptive Brush-Sealing
Design
Radial, axial, and circumferential metallic seals installed on rotary, regenerative
air preheaters have evolved little from
the original metal strip designs that
date back to the original Ljungstrm
preheaters developed nearly a century
ago. Unfortunately, metallic strip seals
degrade soon after installation, allowing excessive air-to-gas leakage, which
translates into increased fuel consumption and fan power.
A Brush Alternative
Brush products are universally applied
in virtually all industries where sealing,
shielding, cleaning, and/or gap closing are
required. Brush filament materials range
from synthetic fibers to high-alloy steels.
Alloy brush seals, now regularly installed
as an upgrade to conventional labyrinth
seals on production steam turbines, reportedly can yield up to a 2% increase in
unit efficiency and a 4% improvement in
unit output. Some units with these seals
have been in operation for eight years between inspections.
Brush seals are ideally suited for replacing strip steels on rotary, regenerative air
preheaters. As radial, axial, and circumferential seals, the brush products provide
a high degree of abrasion resistance, flex
life, and bend recovery not possible with
rigid strip seals. Rigid strip seals rapidly
wear, as they are unable to conform to surface irregularities and varying gap sizes.

The seals wear to the smallest gap size, allowing leakage at the wider gaps. The strip
seals are also vulnerable to damage at high
differential pressures and to expansion due
to temperature increases where induced
drag can shut down the rotor (Figure 1).
A brush seal produces an extremely
dense barrier, as thousands of filaments
nestle tightly together to create a highintegrity seal. Each bristle is independent and flexible, allowing deflection
1.Two sealing options. The degree of wear

on a strip seal is evident when comparing a

worn strip seal (left) and a new brush seal (right).
Flexibility of the brush seal allows it to deflect
at the smaller gaps and then rebound to ensure
sealing at wider gaps. Courtesy: Sealeze

2. Clean sweep. XtraSea HT brush seals,

with a malleable alloy foil membrane nestled

within brush filaments, are said to provide
an added 70% to 80% reduction in leakage
without sacrificing overall seal flexibility.
Courtesy: Sealeze

to conform to any irregularities and gap

variations and recovery to its original
position (Figure 2).
Quantifiable Benefits
Addressing air preheater leakage has historically been a low-priority maintenance
outage issue for many fossil plant engineers. Plants often experience leakage
rates in excess of 15% to 20%, and extreme leakage rates up to 40% have been
measured. These leakage levels are often
tolerated because they are typically underestimated. As a result, plants can experience capacity losses, increased heat rates,
higher parasitic losses associated with fan
horsepower, and higher pressure losses for
downstream air quality control systems. A
plant that has experienced running out of
fan can often trace the problem to excessive air preheater leakage and its costly
side effects.
As an example, a 500-MW plant firing
coal and operating at an 85% annual capacity factor consumes 6,000 tons of coal
per day, assuming an average heat rate of
10,000 Btu/kWh and an average coal heating value of 10,000 Btu/lb. If increases in
boiler efficiency due to improved air preheater sealing reduce fuel consumption
by 2%, the annual savings in fuel cost is
nearly $3 million, assuming a delivered
coal cost of $80/ton.
Air preheater leakage can also account
for significant increases in parasitic power use by the boiler fans, and these lost
power sales opportunities translate into
lost revenue. If our example 500-MW plant
has 15,000 hp installed fan power and

25% is lost through air preheater leakage, the plant has lost 2.8 MW of capacity
that could have been sold. If the plant is
operating at an 85% capacity factor running 6 hours/day peak and 18 hours/day
off-peak with power sales prices of $30/
MWh off-peak and $150/MWh on-peak, the
plant will lose $1.25 million per year. In
essence, the plant is not only paying more
for the coal it burns but is also experiencing a reduction in plant revenuea double
whammy to the plants bottom line.
A substantial benefit of reducing air
leakage on a sustained basis is lower flue
gas velocities and resultant pressure losses
in downstream pollution control systems
and a corresponding reduction in fan load.
For plants with electrostatic precipitators,
increased velocities attributable to air preheater leakage may result in higher dust
emissions at the stack. For plants with
3. Something old, something new.
Construction of the Hardin Generating Station
began in December 2003, and commercial operation was achieved in March 2006. Colorado
Energy Managements EPC Division provided
construction management for a group of local and national contractors. Hardin Station is
unique in that it comprises mostly used equipment, including a 1968-vintage boiler and structural steel from the original boiler building that
were relocated from South Africa and completely refurbished. The used steam turbine/
generator was relocated from Korea and refurbished. Operation and maintenance services
are provided by Colorado Energy Management.
The Hardin Station has the distinction of being
the cleanest-burning coal plant in Montana and
was the first pulverized coal plant to be built
in that state in more than 20 years. Courtesy:
Colorado Energy Management

fabric filters, the higher air-to-cloth ratios

due to air preheater leakage can affect the
frequency of bag cleaning and possibly
shorten bag life.
Four Years and Running
The 119-MW Hardin Generating Station
(HGS), owned by Bicent Power, is located in Hardin, Mont. and is operated and
maintained by Colorado Energy Management Inc. (Figure 3). In June 2007, the
HGS engineering team and Sealeze (a
Richmond, Va.based unit of Jason Inc.)
collaborated to design, manufacture, and
install radial and axial stainless steel
brush seals on both the hot and cold ends
of the plants Unit A Ljungstrm air preheater (Figure 4).
Inspection of the brush seals in 2008
showed them to be in very good condition.
Some splaying of the brush was evident on
the cold end due to sootblower blasts of
400F steam. To prevent direct sootblower
impingement, the brush seals mounted in
the path of sootblower blasts have been
redesigned to incorporate an angled orientation and an integral protective shield, as
shown in Figure 5.
Now, with close to four years in service,
the brush seals continue to outperform the
original strip seals, and expectations are
that the brush seals will remain in service
through 2011 or 2012. Colorado Energy
Management Plant Engineer Kevin Calloway
states, The brush seals have reduced air
leakage considerably, and as a result, we
have reduced operational costs through
fuel savings. The brush seals are expected
to continue performing through a predicted
design life of at least four outage cycles.
In 2011, the plant is planning to install axial and radial brush seals on all rotor modules in its Unit B preheater. The
plants target leakage goal is 6% to 8%
and, to achieve this, the plant is now also
considering a complete set of circumferential brush seals.
Contributed by Patrick T. Fitzgerald
(pfitzgerald@sealeze.com) business development manager, Power Generation at Sealeze.

4. Sealing locations. Ljungstrm rotor

showing radial brush seals installed. Courtesy: Sealeze

5. Complementary angles. A new an-

gle-mount design improves bend recovery

and seal contact while deflecting the direct
impact of sootblower blasts. Additional shielding is provided by elongated holder flanges.
Courtesy: Sealeze

Posted with permission from POWER. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.
#1-28874379 Managed by The YGS Group, 717.505.9701. For more information visit www.theYGSgroup.com/reprints.