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This plant’s staff proves that a can-do attitude and high productivity can be compatible with a safer workplace. The proactive approaches they used at the 162-MW Hutsonville plant ranged from improving boiler efficiency to better managing risks to workers.

Omaha Public Power District commissioned Unit 2 at its Nebraska City Station in May of this year. The new 682-MW unit joins Unit 1, which went commercial 30 years ago in the same month. The project is outfitted with all the requisite air quality control systems and sports a very good thermal efficiency. More importantly, the plant will provide reasonably priced power for customers of eight municipal utilities that share ownership of the plant’s electrical output. Those utilities paid for their portion of the construction cost and now receive a like portion of the electrical output from Unit 2 under a unique participation power agreement.

Hard work was required at the 2,600-MW Rockport Plant to make improvements to equipment, materials, and processes. But that hard work has paid off: The plant’s units operate much better, employee safety has improved, the facility is setting generation records with both of its 1,300-MW units, and it earned the PRB Coal Users’ Group Large Plant of the Year honors.

Complying with a corporate environmental policy requires much more than just writing a check for equipment upgrades. It takes a dedicated and knowledgeable staff that’s willing to invest years of work to permanently reduce a plant’s environmental footprint. The staff of Seminole Generating Station have completed multiple, incremental plant improvements over the past decade that have significantly reduced air emissions and minimized solid waste disposal.

Limestone composition and reactivity are critical factors that determine the performance of limestone-based wet flue gas desulfurization systems. Limestone quality affects sulfur dioxide (SO₂) removal, reaction tank sizing, limestone consumption rate, and composition of the gypsum product and waste streams. Reactivity is a direct measure of how readily a limestone will provide alkalinity to neutralize the acid resulting from SO₂ dissolution in water. In this article we review your limestone analytic measurement options and discuss their relative accuracy and limitations.

Boiler tube failures continue to be the leading cause of downtime for steam power plants. Is your boiler tube failure reduction program showing improvement when compared to programs at peer plants? The EUCG’s recent update of its boiler tube failure study can help you answer that question. The full study is available only to members, but this POWER exclusive presents many of the key results, which could help you improve the operation of your plant.

The expected renaissance for U.S. coal-fired generation has been more evolutionary than revolutionary: Less than half of the announced plants will likely progress to construction. However, the percentages for coal-fired plants aren’t significantly different from those for combined-cycle plants a decade ago, when dozens were ultimately canceled, leaving developers with warehouses full of unused gas turbines. The difference this time: The threat of carbon control legislation has moved many projects to the “wait and see” category.

Once pulverized coal flows have been measured, they can be balanced and optimized. Until then, tuning is simply guesswork. The right way to balance furnace fuel flows is to establish solid baseline performance by proper measurement of fuel flow, fineness, and velocity. Only then can all the coal pipes be accurately balanced and followed by a tune-up of the boiler controls.

Martin Engineering’s Performance Duty QC#1 Belt Cleaner (PDQC#1) is the latest addition to the company’s line of "Quick Change" belt cleaners. The PDQC #1 Cleaner features a more rugged steel mainframe, a low-maintenance spring tensioner, and a high-volume urethane blade that extends life while maintaining cleaning performance. It also uses a one-piece urethane blade featuring […]