Identification of root causes of plant outages attributed to boiler controls. Final report

Technical Report · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1981

OSTI ID:6239834

Carlson, J R

The availabilty of fossil-fueled power plants is directly related to the reliable operation of all system components. The boiler control system was identified by EPRI as having a moderately high impact on plant availability. This two-phase investigation provides insight into the nature of boiler control problems, identifies common failure modes, established associated root causes, and suggests means of eliminating or alleviating the problems. The initial phase of the investigation reviewed the existing data base concerning boiler control problems and expanded it such that common symptoms and abnormal events differing from the expected behavior could be identified and ranked according to frequency. The second phase identified distinguishing symptoms, ranked common root causes, and suggested corrective action. Results from Phase I identified the boiler startup sequence as the operating mode experiencing most problems. This was true for all types of boilers, but particularly for once-through units. Startup problems were most frequently attributed to the turbine bypass valves (once-through units) and to flame ignition (all units). Phase II results revealed that the probable causes of the failures were extreme service requirements, hostile environment, and personnel-induced damage. Therefore, the control components must be protected from both internal and external contamination (moisture, fly-ash, and weather) as well as physical damage (vibration, heat, and personnel). This goal can be achieved through improved system design, hardware specifications and maintenance procedures.

• Research Organization: JAYCOR, San Diego, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6239834
• Report Number(s): EPRI-CS-2028; ON: DE82900358
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
200104* -- Fossil-Fueled Power Plants-- Components
AUXILIARY SYSTEMS
AVAILABILITY
BOILERS
CONTROL EQUIPMENT
CONTROL SYSTEMS
DATA
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLOW REGULATORS
FOSSIL-FUEL POWER PLANTS
IGNITION
INFORMATION
NUMERICAL DATA
OUTAGES
POWER PLANTS
POWER SUPPLIES
RECOMMENDATIONS
RELIABILITY
START-UP
THERMAL POWER PLANTS
VALVES