In 1500, Leonardo Da Vinci drew sketches of a device that rotated when hot air going up a chimney passed through a set of fan-like blades. Leonardo called his invention a "chimney jack," and although it only turned a roasting skewer, it gave birth to the idea of mounting blades on a shaft to convert […]

There’s a relatively easy way to make a steam plant more efficient and reliable: keep the tubes of its condenser(s) clean. According to George Saxon, Jr., VP of international sales and marketing for Conco Systems Inc. (Verona, Pa.)—a company whose specialty is cleaning and maintaining condenser tubes—"There are two major problems that result from dirty […]

Remember the slogan, "Never trust anyone over thirty?" Chances are you’ve joined the ranks of the over-thirty generation and are dealing with your own personal "maintenance" issues—not unlike the fleet of generators at larger U.S. power plants, whose average age is about 30. Given the continuing growth in U.S. electricity demand and the cost and […]

Age is wreaking havoc on the U.S. generation industry, especially the coal-fired sector. Industry conferences are replete with hand-wringing over the "brain drain," the lack of skilled personnel, the meager number of students pursuing engineering degrees, and the accelerated retirement of the older workers who make up the industry’s experience base. On top of this, […]

U.S. power producers and owners of industrial steam systems each spend about $15.4 billion annually to combat corrosion in their plants. Scale and deposits are thought to be responsible for another $20 billion a year in reduced plant efficiency and lost generation capacity. Corrosion is the primary cause of every other forced outage, and the […]

  —Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief The hot hand in coal-fired power plant development is undoubtedly held by Nevada. In a departure from Sin City’s latest marketing slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," most of the 5,500 MW to be generated by plants proposed for the state is destined for use elsewhere, principally […]

Rotary regenerative air heaters capture and recycle about 60% of the heat energy exiting the boiler—energy that would otherwise go up the stack. For a 500-MW coal-fired plant, the recycled energy amounts to about 1.5 billion Btu per hour, and reusing it reduces fuel consumption by about 1,500 tons per day. Although most performance engineers […]

During the 17 years I’ve lived in Texas, I don’t know that I’ve actually heard anyone say, "Howdy!" but it seemed like the most appropriate word to associate POWER with its new headquarters in Houston. As you may have heard, POWER magazine and related properties were purchased by The TradeFair Group from McGraw-Hill on March […]

T/P92 is being heralded as a superior and lower-cost alternative to T/P91 for new power plants with pressures above 3,600 psi and temperatures above 1,100F—such as the supercritical and ultra-supercritical units proposed to be built in the U.S. over the next few years. The switch from T/P91 to T/P92 would represent the next step in […]

In late February, the largest gas turbine ever manufactured by GE Energy at its Belfort plant in France began a 30-day journey by land and sea that will take it to a new power plant in Spain. The Frame 9FB gas turbine—which is also the first built completely in Belfort—was loaded onto a special, wide-load […]