Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Success of electric arc spray in Power generation plants



Higher power production with reduced downtime is a major challenge in most power plants. Thermal spray technologies for example arc wire spray are commonly used in the power production repair units. The electric arc spray wire process offers economical and possible coating options that encourage affordability and reliability of power production units that run with maximum capacity for several months.

Thermal spray coatings increase service time and life of a boiler steam based power units. Production water wall tubes and super heater banks that experience attacks of sulfuric and vanadium gases in coal-fired boilers, get extensive increase in their service when sprayed with coatings. When application requirements allow the use of electric arc spray process, the coating significantly increase the service life. Arc sprayed materials are widely in use in global boiler applications including high chromium based nickel alloy for longer life of coal based boiler tubes and Iron-Chromium alloy that has very high hardness is fit for the coal fired boiler condition and a matrix nanocomposite material is used in flu gas component of the boiler.

Introduction and application of thermal spray techniques is fully accepted for service in main tube components of boilers. A venture to extend these benefits to critical systems is now under analysis. By increasing the scope of thermal spray applications, the overall lifecycle of the whole boiler can be enhanced. Boiler systems are made from fly ash handling unit, induced draft fan and fuel handling unit.

Various solid fuels are used in power units such as coal. Considering the alternatives to fossil fuels, wood and trash fuel sources are receiving increased popularity. The main trouble with solid fuels such as coal, wood or trash is the large magnitude of particulates that carry flue gas path from the fire box to the exiting stack, causing wide erosion of several components. This factor of the process causes more complications.

A crucial ask in power production facility is to keep up environmental discharges at ideal limits. An example of this emission factor is opacity limit- magnitude of particulate matter that travels through the whole flu path and is released into the atmosphere through smoke stacks. To maintain the opacity level in a specific essential level and reuse as potential energy from the fuel source as feasible , fly ash is re-sent back in the boil before to the induced draft fans through a classifier that separates the exiting char. The re-supplied char moves back to the warmest area of the furnace and moves through the remaining flue gas before it is fully burned to a size beyond the limit of classifier and into the exiting particulate scrubber unit before leading to plant’s exit point.


In wood fire units the resupplied char is very abrasive. It can adversely affect classifier components and cut deep grooves in the re-injection pipes, creating poor flow that causes beyond the acceptable limits of opacity discharge. Users of thermal spray technology in boiler repair field encourages the applications in addition of coating the boiler tubes to increase the life of power production systems. 

No comments:

Post a Comment