Abstract

Research & Development in Material Science

Power Plant Remaining Life Assessment Case Study

  • Open or Close Nirmalendu Bandyopadhyay*

    Department of Industrial Engineering, Sarsuna Satellite Township, India

    *Corresponding author: Nirmalendu Bandyopadhyay, Department of Industrial Engineering, Independent Consulting Engineer, H2/100 Sarsuna Satellite Township, Kolkata-700061, India

Submission: September 21, 2017; Published: November 03, 2017

DOI: 10.31031/RDMS.2017.01.000523

ISSN: 2576-8840
Volume1 Issue5

Abstract

A coal fired thermal power plant can be packaged under three main units namely Boiler, Turbine and Generators (BTG) with ancillaries , Balance of plants (BOP) like fuel, water, waste handling systems, Environmental control and ancillaries. Lastly the other support facilities like building and civil works, plant roads, drainage, land preparation, Environmental control and other infrastructures. In determining the Residual Life (RL), the BTG package plays the most important role. Plants and equipment under this package are subjected to mainly two types of loading, CREEP and FATIGUE. Creep results from thermal stress and fatigue due to repetitive or reverse loading induced due to vibration, rotation, reciprocating movement of high speed machinery. Both loadings because failure of the plants and equipment during their service life, requiring unscheduled shut downs for repair and capital replacements. Such outage reduces availability and reliability of the plants which in turn reduces the useful life (UL) of the plant as guaranteed by the OEM vendors. Therefore, to assess the RL, it becomes necessary to keep records of all shutdowns and repair/overhaul times (Figure 1). These days use of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) has made this task simple through real time monitoring. In the subsequent paragraphs, application of these principles will be exhibited with reference to a 10MW coal based captive power plant, in an one million ton per annum (1.0MMTPA) integrated iron and steel plant in India. The power plant of total 60MW installed capacity has two 10MW and two 20MW sets. The total connected load to the plant is 43MW which is met by running 40MW sets to meet the base load. The peak load is met by drawing nominal power from the State Power Grid. Details of the captive power plant are given below Table 1 & Figure 2.

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