POWER

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 […]

Steve Elonka began chronicling the exploits of Marmaduke Surfaceblow—a six-foot-four, steel brush-mustached marine engineer with a foghorn voice—in the pages of POWER in 1948. That was the year that Marmy raised the wooden mast of the SS Asia Sun with the aid of two cobras and a case of Sandpaper Gin. This classic episode, written in the late 1960s, shows that even minor consequences of a steam turbine overhaul can cause problems. And as Marmaduke shows, solving any problem requires equal parts judgment, logic, and experience. Enjoy.

Earlier this February, Siemens Power Generation’s (SPG’s) factory in Berlin delivered its 500th gas turbine. The SGT5-4000F (Figure 2), formerly called the V94.3A, is nominally rated at 270 MW and weighs in at about 300 metric tons. With this shipment, the Berlin facility can boast of having built gas turbines with a cumulative capacity of […]

Both the states and the federal government are looking at who should decide which power plants are used at any given moment to meet demand. In question is which approach will reliably serve customers with the lowest-cost electricity. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) raised the issue when it directed the Federal Energy Regulatory […]

Thermal Engineering International (TEI) (USA) Inc. (Santa Fe Springs, Calif.)—a subsidiary of Babcock Power Inc. (Danvers, Mass.)—recently shipped two of the largest pressure vessels in the company’s 90-year history. The pair of huge (13-ft-diameter, 110-ft-long) moisture separator reheaters (MSRs) were designed at corporate headquarters and built in TEI’s factory in Sapulpa, Okla. The 300-ton MSRs […]

The California Energy Commission (CEC) recently awarded about $14 million for carbon sequestration projects to be overseen by the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership. Westcarb, as the partnership is known, is part of the U.S. DOE’s effort to deploy technologies through its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) program. New members Alberta and British Columbia […]

Calpine Corp.’s South Point Energy Center in Mohave County, Ariz. (Figure 1) is a 520-MW natural gas-fired, combined-cycle facility with two Siemens Westinghouse 501FD gas turbines and one steam turbine-generator with a BB33 high-pressure (HP) section, a BB65 intermediate-pressure section (IP), and a 65CC intermediate/low-pressure (LP) section. The plant entered commercial service in June 2001. […]

The 1,768-MW Baldwin Energy Complex in Illinois was the site of a joint-venture pilot project to demonstrate a wireless vibration-monitoring system for a coal pulverizer. The partners in the project were EPRI and the plant’s owner, Houston-based Dynegy Midwest Generation. A key objective of the project was to identify a reliable wireless system capable of […]

Stretching meager maintenance dollars is a way of life for most maintenance staff. In past years, the cost of an infrared (IR) camera usually came down to a choice between a low-resolution 160 x 120-pixel camera or no camera at all. If the camera was chosen, it usually became clear before long that low resolution […]

The U.S. needs new generating capacity in coming decades to meet growing electricity demand. The increasing scarcity of land within utility load centers, combined with environmental opposition to the siting of plants, often limits siting options to remote locations. Restricting power plants to distant sites necessitates additional transmission facilities, increases delivery costs and electric bills, […]

An essential ingredient in the success of any business endeavor is thorough planning. We’ve all heard the axiom "proper prior planning prevents poor performance" or a variation on that theme. Why the need for peak performance? Competition within the industry has never been as intense, with utilities combining in search of economies of scale. The […]

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 […]

Designers of heat-recovery steam generators are using computational fluid dynamics software as one tool to reveal the invisible forces affecting the flow over, under, around, and through structures such as inlet ducts, distribution grids, and guide vanes.

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Fluor Corp. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) has finished building and commissioning the 620-MW Jack County power plant (Figure 2) near Jacksboro, Texas, for Waco-based Brazos Electric Cooperative Inc. The natural gas–fired, combined-cycle plant officially came on-line on February 1. 2. Texas 2 x 1 step. The gas-fired, 620-MW, combined-cycle Jack County Generation Plant was built and […]

A multitude of variables must be accounted for during the design and development of a wet-stack flue gas desulfurization system. The five-phase process detailed below has proven effective on more than 60 wet-stack system design studies. A basic understanding of these concepts will help inform early design decisions and produce a system amenable to wet operation.

Increased cycling of combined-cycle plants has made precise control of attemperator spray water within heat-recovery steam generators more important if damage to their hardware and piping is to be avoided. Complicating the issue is the industry’s still-limited experience with cycling and the fact that demands on the attemperator and turbine bypass of cycled plants are more stringent than those on baseloaded units.

The Russian Federation plans to start building a floating nuclear power plant this year. According to the country’s atomic energy agency (Rosatom), the first plant will be small (3 MW) but could lead to the development of offshore plants with capacities of several hundred megawatts. The pioneering plant will be sited off the coast of […]

Focus on O&M

I couldn’t help but marvel at the synchronicity of two unrelated events over the past few weeks. The first, on January 12, was the rare cancellation of a major military acquisition program with problems called "too expensive to fix." It takes an Act of Congress to kill most military contracts due to the pork flowing […]

A new, mile-long submarine transmission cable in Pearl Harbor (Figure 3, p. 10) will facilitate the U.S. Navy’s plan to renovate and expand historic Ford Island. Honolulu-based Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. (HECO) recently laid two new 46-kV lines beneath the bridge connecting the island to Oahu. The trickiest part of the installation was avoiding the […]

Focus on O&M

Nearly five years ago, a major IPP began standardizing steam cycle chemistry feed, control, and monitoring across its combined-cycle fleet. This article discusses the steps taken, the costs incurred, and the technical and financial benefits achieved. Although the project focused on non-cogeneration plants, the findings detailed below are broadly applicable to other kinds of plants. However, the specific implementations (especially of the chemistry standards) described may have to be modified slightly for application to cogen plants.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of deregulated power markets is variable demand. The ability to operate efficiently at partial loads can determine whether a plant is profitable or not. This need creates special challenges for hydroelectric turbines, because at partial loads they often exhibit strong swirl in the draft tube at the outlet of the […]

Focus on O&M