Boiler tube failure reduction program

Technical Report · Thu Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1991

OSTI ID:5289829

Lamping, G A ^[1]; Jonas, O ^[2]; Niebo, R J ^[3]

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1. Southwest Research Inst., San Antonio, TX (United States)
2. Jonas, Inc., Wilmington, DE (United States)
3. North American Electric Reliability Council, Princeton, NJ (United States)

Boiler tube failures are generally recognized as the major cause of forced outages of fossil power generating units for US electric utilities. In almost all cases of serious availability losses, the boiler tube failures are repeat in nature and result in multiple forced outages. Primary factors influencing repeat, rather than random, tube failures are usually found to result from not following state-of-the-art operating, maintenance and/or engineering practices, lack of proper tube failure analysis, wrong choice of corrective/preventive action or solution, and lack of a tube failure reporting and monitoring system. A proven way to prevent costly repeat failures is to implement a formalized Boiler Tube Failure Prevention Program that is supported by senior management and focuses attention and resources on operating, maintenance and engineering controllable parameters that influence repeat tube failures. This report describes such a program, implemented at sixteen utilities under EPRI Research Project RP 1890-7, Boiler Tube Failure Reduction Program.'' Results are presented for ten utilities that began the program in the summer of 1986 with over four years of participation, and for six additional utilities from June of 1988 through December 1990. Both sets of utilities have produced remarkable improvements, the most tangible being substantial reductions in equivalent availability factor losses due to BTF of between 1.5 to 4.5%. Failure mechanism data submitted to the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) over the project term has also made it possible to delineate the leading BTF mechanisms causing problems for the participating utilities. Corrosion fatigue, fly ash erosion and high temperature creep accounted for over 28% of the total reported. 3 figs.

• Research Organization: Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States); General Physics Corp., San Diego, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: EPRI; Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 5289829
• Report Number(s): EPRI-GS-7454
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
200104* -- Fossil-Fueled Power Plants-- Components
42 ENGINEERING
420200 -- Engineering-- Facilities
Equipment
& Techniques
AEROSOL WASTES
ASHES
BOILERS
COMBUSTION PRODUCTS
CORROSION FATIGUE
CREEP
DEMONSTRATION PROGRAMS
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
ENGINEERING
FAILURE MODE ANALYSIS
FAILURES
FATIGUE
FLY ASH
FOSSIL-FUEL POWER PLANTS
MAINTENANCE
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
POWER PLANTS
PUBLIC UTILITIES
RELIABILITY
RESIDUES
STEAM
SURVEYS
SYSTEM FAILURE ANALYSIS
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
THERMAL POWER PLANTS
TRAINING
WASTES