2010 Alliance Workshop

The primary cause of unavailability in

our coal-fired plants is the reliability of
the boiler/steam generator.

Severe duty on both the fire side and the

water/steam side of the various heat
transfer surfaces in the boiler/steam
generator cause frequent unplanned
outages and lengthening of planned
outages to repair failures to these critical
components of the power plant.

Utilities have opportunities to increase

electrical output at existing units Figure 1 Chasm ‘Miao Keng’ in Chongqing Province of China
without increasing fuel burn or carbon
footprint by focusing on the boiler
system in three areas.

1. Improving Combustion and Thermal Efficiency (Storm)

2. Reducing Forced Outages and Extending Time Between Outages. (UDC / DNF)
3. Improving the Effectiveness of the Tail End Clean Up Equipment (environment)(Neundorfer)

These three areas are well known and routinely controlled by plant management. Unfortunately the
historical standard has been that the management team is acting as the final distiller of information
for use in management decisions. They combine the input they receive from the burner group, the
maintenance group, and the environmental folks. With this information plans are formulated and
executed. This places the full responsibility for overlaps directly on management. This is
inequitable, as the management team is not expected to be expert in every field and operation in
the plant. Experience has shown us that with this model at play the overlap areas are usually
overlooked.

As providers of services to you, we (speaking as a community) have been complicit in that we have
concentrated on our individual areas of expertise, concerned but
not caught up in bridging the chasms that would maximize our
total service to you.

Historically our focus has been safety and budget driven. Cost
control can only be effective if we focus the monies available in
just the right locations. The shot gun approach or the process of
spending money for the sake of using up the budget will not
provide relief from tube leaks. Less money does not necessarily
translate into lower availability.
 Setting Criteria for Repairs
It seems we all pray at the altar of budget and time. We utilize a
comprehensive plan supported by inspections, lab results or other
scientific results. This plan must have a financial component indicating
the return on investment in the repairs. Data driven decision making is
the only consistently effective method to support budgets. In many
cases the data is best supported by well planned and documented photography of the problem
areas as well as a statistical analysis of failures or near failures that will likely be avoided. Varying
lost generation scenarios at different times of the year usually works well at underpinning your
budget requests. Simple, concise, data supported and to the point is always more effective than the
Chicken Little “The sky is falling” technique. We make recommendations as to the repairs required
by strict applications of the following criteria.

<65% of MWT for replacements

<75% >65% of MWT for pad welds (if permissible)

<85% >75% of MWT for shielding

 Ranking of Priorities
In outages, a boiler planner often lacks
advance knowledge of what new tasks will
arise and what specific actions will be
needed to make progress at known tasks.
With “when” and “what” uncertain, boiler
planners must instead reactively prioritize
between currently eligible tasks based on
whatever information is available. The
approach is designed to make best use of
whatever priority-relevant information is
available at decision-time. Boiler planners
must decide priority among competing
tasks. An ideal priority determination
process should use whatever information is
available, even it presents itself just before
a decision is required or after a task has
been awarded priority and begun
Figure 2 Priority Model
executing.

Which should be deferred, interrupted, or aborted? One approach to making such decisions is to
identify all tasks to be carried out and all the constraints on those tasks, then search for the best
possible order.

Priority #1 problem must;

Safety or loss of life issue

Certain forced outage before the next planned outage

Priority #2 problem must;

Probable but not guaranteed forced outage before the next planned outage

Performance issue

Priority #3 problem must;

Low grade performance issue

Long range mechanical optimization

Information or documentation issue

Let’s review a single example relating to the system inspection and discovery process and how the
chasms have been treated in the past. As you will see, I site only one example due to the
complexities of this process.

During our discovery inspection process we look for the ingress of outside air that enters the boiler
from non-productive sources. We refer to this leakage of air as “Tramp Air” since it contributes
nothing to the combustion process. It comes in around burned soot blower housings, holes in the
casing, and other locations. We mark and record these items report them to you with a very low
priority. This tramp air is not a direct risk to a forced outage therefore it is not considered essential
for repair during that specific outage. It is flagged for “If time and money allow”. This category
rarely gets any attention due to the budget pressures that exist in most plants.

The example report to

the right indicates a
leaking soot blower
sleeve. The report
clearly mentions that
“tramp air” in leakage is
the concern. You will
also note that the sample
report assigns a low
priority #3 to the
problem. In all likelihood
this action item was
canceled permitting the
problem to continue and
increase during the
planned run.

Due to reducing budgets

and time frames, many
of our customers are
only interested in
repairing priority #1
problems. In this case
the inspection team
devotes very little if any
time on “P2” and
certainly nothing on “P3”
items.

Now let’s look through

the overlap or chasm. If Figure 3 Sample inspection report of a soot blower opening. (Courtesy of UDC)
air enters the boiler and is no use for combustion then the following sequence of events will occur
occurs.

1. Additional volume of flue gas increases the overall gas velocity. This increase in velocity
has two dramatic effects.
a. The erosion of tubing by fly ash
increases at the square of
velocity. So fly ash erosion is
increased dramatically.

b. The increased gas velocity

through the pressure parts i.e.
superheater, reheater, and
economizer cause a reduction
of heat absorption and a
decrease in thermal efficiency Figure 4 Erosion on bent tube caused by fly ash erosion
of all of these components. (Courtesy UDC)

2. Additional volume of flue gas increases the loading on all of the flue gas equipment.
a. The ID fan is drawing
additional amps to handle the
extra flue gas capacity. In
many cases the boilers are load
limited due to lack of ID fan
capacity.

b. The air heater is operating at a

greater pressure loss reducing
its efficiency and increasing
erosion in the air heater itself.

Figure 5 Air heater has reduced performance due to high

gas velocity
 c. The electrostatic precipitator
operates on the principle of
balanced gas flow of a
specific velocity. When these
parameters are violated by
excess volume the efficiency
of the ESP is compromised.
This increases the opacity
and particulate output from
the system.

3. When oxygen enters the boiler not Figure 6 When gas speeds up through the ESP the
contributing to the combustion collection efficiency decreases.
process, it increases the measureable
O₂ concentration. The combustion
process utilizes oxygen sensors at the
economizer outlet to calculate the
proper fuel air mixture.
a. If these readings are incorrectly
measured high then the result
is that the air flow is reduced at
the burners. This
miscalculation results in very
low oxygen concentrations.
This has been referred as
reducing conditions. This Figure 7 Poor combustion can lead to excessive slag,
reducing condition process ash and soot accumulation as well as erosion to boiler
tubing. (Courtesy UDC)
usually results in soot and high
corrosion rates on water wall
tubes.

b. This low oxygen flue gas

contributes to several failure
mechanisms such as;
1. Soot blower erosion due
to increase carbon
(soot) removal

2. Localized high heat flux,

resulting in the potential
for overheat and Figure 8 Inside of boiler tube with heavy deposits
exacerbation of (Courtesy David N. French Metallurgists)
waterside deposit
corrosion.
 3. Waterwall
fire-aide
corrosion
is caused
by
corrosive
conditions
in the
combustion Figure 9 Severe corrosion (Courtesy David N. French Metallurgists)
zone, which
are due to inadequate oxygen supply, high concentration of sulfur and or
increased chlorides in the fuel, improper alignment of the fuel burners, and
formation of molten ash on the waterwall tube surface.

Summary
You can clearly see that a small insignificant priority #3 item as originally considered in fact has a
deep and complex effect on many areas not remotely considered. This is truly a chasm that we
repeat outage after outage. Our Team Alliance synergy fills this gap with cooperation, knowledge,
expertise, and interaction. We assist in consideration of all the parameters and how they interact
throughout the system to provide the most reliable, efficient and environmentally friendly power
generating facility possible.