POWER

The infrequent or improper introduction of biocides into a plant cooling system may make fouling within it worse, by creating thick biofilms that can foster corrosion, reduce heat transfer, and increase water pumps’ operating costs. At the other end of the spectrum, overuse of biocides can waste expensive chemicals. Optimizing the quantity, frequency, and type of dosage can improve both the health of a cooling system and its plant’s bottom line.

Ongoing research into experience with plant- and fleet-level software reveals that these applications work side by side but do not necessarily function as an integrated “knowledge management” system. On the supplier side, the industry continues to be fragmented, with individual programs governing a narrow part of the overall plant.

September 1886 Four years after this magazine was launched, the editors reviewed the latest improvements to industrial boilers, beginning with the Backus furnace (Figure 1). 1. The Backus furnace. “This furnace is provided with a brick arch placed just back of the fire-doors, that is intended to deflect the currents of air that are admitted […]

Not long ago, most utility investors considered California’s electricity policies too iconoclastic to support. Driven by far-left environmentalists and overzealous regulators, those policies have made it nearly impossible to build new power plants in the state, despite the urgent need for them. Now, however, with growing proof that global warming is real and with Americans […]

This July, an underground steam pipe near Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal ruptured and spewed a scalding brown geyser of steam and debris higher than the nearby 77-story Chrysler Building. The blast, which injured 30 people, created a 40-foot crater at street level that swallowed a tow truck. A similar explosion in 1989 killed three people. […]

This August, Peabody Energy’s 1,600-MW Prairie State Energy Campus project in Illinois won a major federal appeals court decision, removing the last obstacle to groundbreaking. The six-year regulatory review process ended with an unsuccessful Sierra Club challenge to the $2.9 billion project’s air permit. The decision is sure to reverberate across the nation, and I […]

Every step forward in underground U.S. mine safety in the 20th and 21st centuries has been on the backs of mangled and dead coal miners. That grisly observation is unassailable. Following the August tragedy at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah that killed six miners and three would-be rescuers, the federal Mine Safety and Health […]

Burning Powder River Basin (PRB) coal can be a curse or a blessing, depending on your attention to the details of plant design and operations. One disadvantage of PRB coal combustion is the abundance of bottom ash and flyash generated as a by-product. Handling and properly disposing of the ash can be challenging and costly. […]

Lansing Board of Water & Light (LBW&L), which has generated electricity since 1892 and steam since 1919 in mid-Michigan, primarily serves the city of Lansing’s business district and all state government buildings in the downtown area. But one of the municipal utility’s plants, Moores Park, has an additional and very important steam customer: General Motors’ […]

Every day, while driving to his job at PacifiCorp Energy’s Dave Johnston plant near Glenrock, Wyoming, Cole Harris used to wonder as he neared the station how opaque Unit 3’s stack emissions would look. Until a few years ago, Unit 3 (Figure 3) had trouble staying at or below opacity limits set by the state. […]

Since ratification of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in 1970, U.S. utilities have made steady efforts to install pollution control equipment to curb power plant stack emissions. The CAA Amendments of 1990 raised concerns at the time about the industry’s ability to install a large number of flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems, or scrubbers, in […]

In Part I of this two-part report ( COAL POWER, July/August 2007, p. 22), we introduced the integrated R&D effort by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE/NETL) to improve understanding of the mechanisms of mercury (Hg) capture and retention in flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems and the fate of Hg in […]

Europeans didn’t know that corn existed before Columbus "discovered" America. It had been cultivated by indigenous North Americans for thousands of years before the Italian brought home what was to become a favorite food for many. The more adventuresome even figured out how to distill corn into something more to their liking. Fast-forward five hundred […]

PG&E mounts tidal power project / GE F-class turbine breaks record / Iowa welcomes ethanol-fed hog / NYPA upgrades pumped-storage plant / Bush blesses Browns Ferry 1 restart / Shearon Harris looks to live on / Nevada bets on solar thermal / Climate models questioned / POWER digest

Reaction to reactor comment On page 34 of your April article on nuclear power, the author mischaracterized the maturity of one of the new reactors that have been submitted for NRC approval. The statement, "None of the advanced reactors that the NRC has certified (by reviewing engineering documents) has a performance record," is incorrect. GE’s […]

Stop valves from leaking money / Integrating plant and equipment models / Pricing priceless knowledge

Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) is requesting regulatory approval to recover over $50 million from ratepayers to analyze the feasibility and cost of a "commercial-scale" clean hydrogen power generation (CHPG) facility that would gasify coal to fuel a combined-cycle power plant and sequester the associated carbon emissions underground. If the study demonstrates the CHPG technology […]

MidAmerican Energy Co. and its project partners are convinced that supercritical coal-firing technology’s inherently higher efficiency and lower CO₂ emissions no longer come with a price: reduced reliability. Their Walter Scott, Jr. Energy Center Unit 4, the first major new supercritical plant in the U.S. in more than 15 years, is POWER’s 2007 Plant of the Year.

The Northern Wood Power Project permanently replaced a 50-MW coal-burning boiler at Public Service of New Hampshire’s Schiller Station with a state-of-the-art fluidized-bed wood-burning boiler of the same capacity. The project, completed in December 2006, reduced emissions and expanded the local market for low-grade wood. For planning and executing the multiyear, $75 million project at no cost to its ratepayers, PSNH wins POWER’s 2007 Marmaduke Award for excellence in O&M. The award is named for Marmaduke Surfaceblow, the fictional marine engineer/plant troubleshooter par excellence.

By design, combined HP-IP turbines have a small amount of internal leakage from the high-pressure turbine to the intermediate-pressure turbine. As turbines age, the leakage increases considerably and becomes excessive, creating a heat rate penalty and possibly a reliability problem. Last month we explored the symptoms and causes of steam leakage within GE steam turbines and how to correct the problem. In Part II, we examine the same issues for Westinghouse and Allis-Chalmers turbines from both theoretical and practical angles.

With U.S. mercury regulations pending and control technologies in the full-scale demonstration stage, accurate and reliable measurement of mercury in flue gas is becoming more important than ever. This article compares the results of field measurements of commercially available mercury monitors to approved reference methods. A key but not-so-surprising finding: Not all mercury monitors are created equal.

Several states have mandated faster and/or deeper reductions in plant mercury emissions than those called for by the Clean Air Mercury Rule. Unfortunately, differences between plants make accurate evaluation of control options difficult. In most cases, even statistically based Hg emission models don’t pass muster because they don’t account for the dynamic chemical behavior of Hg species in gas cleaning systems. This article describes one system evaluation tool that has been validated using Hg field test data from 50 full-scale flue gas cleaning systems. It is already being used by TVA and other utilities.

The intended use is the primary consideration (even fuel is secondary) when choosing an on-site energy system. Whether the need is for power alone or for heat as well, distributed generation plants have delivered lower energy costs and improved reliability to industrial and commercial customers worldwide. Following are six case studies of reciprocating engine systems that highlight their versatility.

Have you bought electrostatic or agglomeration equipment to rid your turbine oil of varnish deposits, but its varnish potential rating failed to improve? Or, after an initial drop, has the varnish potential returned to its previous level? Even worse, have you had recurring valve sticking problems after making a sizeable investment to "solve" this problem? Welcome to the world of soluble varnish caused by autodegradation. Read the unvarnished truth about varnish and how to get rid of it for good.

Steve Elonka began chronicling the exploits of Marmaduke Surfaceblow—a six-foot-four marine engineer with a steel brush mustache and a foghorn voice—in POWER in 1948, when he raised the wooden mast of the SS Asia Sun with the help of two cobras and a case of Sandpaper Gin. Marmy’s simple solutions to seemingly intractable plant problems remain timeless. This Classic Marmaduke story, originally published in 1958, illustrates that big problems often have simple, but ingenious, solutions.

August 1886 POWER reported on one of the first twin-cylinder "Otto" natural gas–fired engines that had recently appeared in the U.S. power market. The report notes that "engines of 100 horsepower are being now economically used where gas is low in price, as in England and other European countries" (Figure 1). 1. A twin-cylinder "Otto" […]

We are witnessing an international awakening of scientists who are speaking out in opposition to former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media-driven "consensus" on man-made global warming. In May, I released a report detailing scientists who were former believers in catastrophic man-made climate change but who have recently reversed themselves and […]

The latest benchmarking study by the EUCG examines the technology and costs of 49 flue gas desulfurization systems currently under design or construction by 12 of the nation’s largest utilities. Although the study’s detailed results are proprietary to EUCG members that participated in it, POWER was given access to the top-level findings. To get details at the plant/unit level, you’ll have to join the EUCG and participate in the study, which is ongoing.

July 1886 POWER reported on the latest steam engine technology offered to the power generation market, this time by France. The Boulet engine (Figure 1) was described as a "French horizontal compound condensing receiver engine, having cranks at right angles, cylinders side by side, and live steam jacket. The valves are double slides, giving small […]

  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently issued major rules that address for the third time "discrimination" issues remaining after FERC’s 1996 landmark Order 888, which ushered in mandatory open access to transmission. The order was intended to give all power sellers equal access to power lines and thus increase wholesale price competition. Earlier […]