POWER

This article discusses planning, operation, and documentation procedures designed to effectively use the thermal imaging camera as a critical element in an effective reliability program.

German researchers in February said they had developed the first-ever biogas plant to run purely on waste instead of edible raw materials. The team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS (Institut Keramische Technologien und Systeme) in Dresden said that the plant, which uses a fuel cell to convert the gas into electricity, exclusively uses agricultural waste such as corn stalks — and it generates 30% more biogas than conventional plants.

News items of interest to power industry professionals.

Radioactive materials are clinging to the inside walls of reactor system components because of a noble metals injection process error some years ago at Cooper Nuclear Station (CNS). CNS has launched an aggressive, long-term program to remove the materials, but until the work is successfully completed, the station is also taking extensive measures to protect employees and reduce higher source term dose.

The expanded line of CoolPoint vortex shedding flowmeters introduced recently by Universal Flow Monitors Inc. is designed to ensure flow consistency in hydroelectric generators, heat exchangers, boiler feed pumps, steam turbines, natural gas humidification, and process cooling applications where water quality may be less than optimal. Additions to the product line include four larger sizes […]

Red Valve Company Inc. launched Series DX Slurry Knife Gate Valve, a durable and user-friendly gate valve that has been designed especially for heavy slurry applications in the power and mining industries. When the valve opens, the reinforced elastomer sleeves seal against each other and provide a 100% full port opening, minimizing turbulence, which in […]

Dickson’s new stainless steel case data loggers are designed to monitor up to 275F in wet conditions. The watertight instruments are made of stainless steel and are available in three models: HT 200 (the "Takes-the-Heat-Watertight" model) and piercing probe models HT 220 and HT 225. All models are available with user-replaceable one-year batteries and USB-enabled […]

Al Gore, in his recent New York Times op-ed titled "The Climate for Change," calls for a "$400 billion investment over ten years to construct a national smart grid to distribute renewable energy." Echelon supports these proposed investments. We also believe the answer is not just in constructing something new but in transforming the existing […]

The GRAPHLON GM 860 developed by Graphite Metallizing is an abrasion-resistant bushing material that protects pumps and helps prolong pump life. Designed for use in the manufacture of pump bushings and other critical-wear parts, the tough, polymer/graphite-based material was developed to replace traditional pump materials, which are prone to damage from highly abrasive suspensions. It […]

The conversion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to pipeline-quality gas requires large quantities of low-grade thermal energy that may be available from industrial waste streams, steam power plants, or ocean water at the point of discharging LNG from the tanker. Alternatively, heat may be provided by the combustion of LNG or another fuel. In either case, the large temperature differences between these heat sources and the temperature of the LNG can be used to operate an engine that will offset or eliminate the pumping or fuel costs incurred.

House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a 648-page discussion draft of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” a bill touted as a “comprehensive approach to America’s energy policy” because it seeks to establish, among other things, a carbon emissions reduction goal, a cap-and-trade program, and a federal renewable energy standard.

This year’s ELECTRIC POWER Exhibition will feature the latest technologies and services from approximately 500 companies. Get a preview of some of the exhibitor offerings here. For the entire offerings, you’ll have to visit the show floor in Chicago this May. (You’ll find all the event information here.)

Hydrokinetic energy — which generates power by using underwater turbines that harness moving water — is on the rise in the U.S. In January, the first U.S.-licensed, commercial, grid-connected hydrokinetic project installed the first of two 100-kW nameplate-rated turbines downriver from an existing run-of-river hydroelectric plant on the Mississippi River.

Two months after Exelon Nuclear dropped GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) design as its preferred technology for a proposed two-unit nuclear facility in Victoria County, Texas, the company has reached agreement with GE-Hitachi for two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) for that site.

For the past 26 years, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has hosted an annual conference in Houston that is world-renowned for its high-profile speakers and attendees’ willingness to exchange ideas and share industry forecasts. The consensus this year was that the power industry remains strong but market and political forces, often working at cross-purposes, make bringing any new power generation to market more problematic than ever.

According to the newest Annual Energy Outlook report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. will add between 184 GW and 350 GW of new capacity by 2030, depending on economic growth. Coal will continue to provide the largest share of energy for the U.S. in 2030, but natural gas–fired plants will account for more than half of all capacity additions, followed by renewables at 22%, 18% for coal, and 5% for nuclear.

ELECTRIC POWER, the world’s most comprehensive conference covering power generation, will be presented at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Chicago May 12 through May 14.

The Canadian government last week said it would inject up to C$140 million (US$111 million) into eight private sector projects that have proposed to research, develop, and demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a review of some 300 U.S. utility coal combustion waste sites and said it will develop new regulations to ensure that incidents like December’s colossal coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn., are not repeated.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has said that the EPA will reconsider a controversial policy memorandum issued by the agency late last year stating that the agency would not establish a carbon dioxide emission standard for new power plants and other large industrial sources of the heat-trapping gas.

In the face of growing criticism from congressional Democrats of his plan to require electric utilities and other industries to pay for greenhouse gas emission allowances, President Obama told business leaders he is willing to negotiate on the issue, but warned that broad, free allowance allocations would mask the carbon price signal economists say is crucial to speed the deployment of clean technologies needed to fight global warming.

Circulating fluidized bed technology has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions when burning coal and adds the additional flexibility of burning other renewable fuels. Foster Wheeler’s Flexi-Burn technology allows the CFB to produce a CO2-rich flue gas and be part of a practical carbon capture and storage solution.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the key to good boiler combustion requires carefully balancing the fuel-air ratios across all the coal pipes. Recent tests show that the uniformity of the burner-to-burner stoichiometries—not balanced pipe-to-pipe fuel flow distributions—dictates combustion uniformity.

Many coal-fired power stations built before 1980 were designed for handling relatively easy-handling lump coal. If your plant’s bins, bunkers, and silos aren’t up to dealing with today’s range of more variable coal properties, this case study shows one way to minimize coal flow problems.

President Obama’s recent comments to the Business Roundtable included two blunders that showed his misunderstanding of the fundamentals of the cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions that is the centerpiece of his 2010 budget request.

Can clean energy investments carry their important share of the U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act load? Here’s a contrarian answer: It’s up to the utility industry and its regulators.

By Kennedy Maize Coming in this Sunday’s (March 29) New York Times magazine is a splendid profile of one of the more important global warming skeptics: Freeman Dyson of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. The article by Nicholas Dawidoff – “The Civil Heretic” – is required reading for those who believe climate change is the […]

A proposal submitted to the White House by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will likely claim that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger public health and welfare, a widely circulated internal EPA document shows. That finding could have broad implications, including prompting a decision by the Obama administration to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.

A month after Energy Secretary Steven Chu pledged to accelerate approval of long-awaited federal loan guarantees under Title XVII of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) has conditionally approved a $535 million loan for Solyndra Inc., a manufacturer of cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels.

Despite economic concerns, the U.S. solar industry saw a third straight year of record growth in 2008. The installation of 1,265 MW of all types of solar power last year brought total U.S. solar power capacity to 8,775 MW, an annual report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) shows.