Latest
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O&M
"Blueprint" Your Pulverizer for Improved Performance
Pulverizer throughput is determined by the coal fineness desired for a given coal. However, compromising on coal fineness when your pulverizer isn’t up to snuff can increase NO x and cause many furnace problems. Your least costly option for increasing pulverizer capacity is to pay careful attention to key dimensions and critical tolerances during your next overhaul.
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Environmental
Update: What’s That Scrubber Going to Cost?
POWER published a summary of the flue gas desulfurization system scrubber cost survey conducted by the EUCG’s Fossil Productivity Committee in our July 2007 issue. Although the detailed results of the latest survey are proprietary to EUCG members that participated in it, we are privileged to present the newest summary data. The bottom line: Costs continue to rise but appear to be more predictable.
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O&M
Helping Power Plant Control Systems Achieve NERC CIP Compliance
This guide offers suggestions from a control system engineering perspective for protecting power-generating units that are determined to be critical cyber assets
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News
Below-the-Belt Protection
Skirtboard sealing systems are installed on the sides of belt conveyor loading zones to contain material, eliminate spillage, and reduce cleanup expenses. The new Double APRON SEAL Skirting system from Martin Engineering provides two wear surfaces on a single elastomer-sealing strip that’s installed along the bottom of the skirt board. When the bottom side of […]
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Commentary
Energy Efficiency Takes Center Stage in Texas
For decades, it’s been well-known in the country and western (C&W) music industry that “if you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.” The guitars, drums, harmonicas, and piano — they’re all expected on stage. But as the legendary C&W group Alabama recognized, a fiddle is a must when performing […]
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Hydro
What’s Damming Hydrokinetic Power in the U.S.?
Barely a month after the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licensed the nation’s first commercial hydrokinetic power station, Houston-based Hydro Green Energy in January completed installation of the first of two turbines at an existing run-of-river hydropower plant on the Mississippi River for the Minnesota city of Hastings. When the second turbine is installed later this spring, the two hydrokinetic turbines will constitute a floating array that will sit on top of a barge at the Army Corps of Engineers’ Lock & Dam No. 2.
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Waste to Energy
Power Generators Turn to Diverse Fuels
Like the airline industry, power generators all over the world have been seeking alternative fuels with which to produce electricity, and the blends are bound to get stranger. One company is looking to make liquid fuels from chicken fat, beef tallow, and pork lard, for example. Here’s a list of innovative fuels that generators could use in the near future.
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Solar
PV Sales in the U.S. Soar as Solar Panel Prices Plummet
Solar panel prices have taken a 10% tumble since October last year, and they are expected to drop another 15% to 20% this year, owning to an oversupply from the mass of new factories and draining demand in Germany and Spain, where solar incentives were recently cut. In the U.S., the low prices — pushed even lower by the renewed solar tax credits that took effect on Jan. 1 and other incentives — have heightened demand, both on the distributed generation level and at utility scale.
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News
Superconductor Motor for Navy Passes Full-Power Test
American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) and Northrop Grumman Corp. in January said they successfully completed a full-power test of the world’s first 36.5-MW high-temperature superconductor (HTS) ship propulsion motor.
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Hydro
Saving the Dead Sea
If measures aren’t taken immediately to replenish the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea, the very salty body of water in the Middle East will shrivel up within 50 years — and that could pose an environmental calamity, experts have warned.