Assessment of current NDI techniques for determining the type, location, and extent of fossil-fired boiler tube damage. Final report

Technical Report · Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6773506· OSTI ID:6773506

Reinhart, E. R.; Johnson, D.; Sarian, S.

Assessment of state-of-the-art nondestructive evaluation techniques for detecting the type, location, and extent of fossil-fired boiler tube damage was made through on-site visits and canvassing by questionnaire. The results of this survey indicate that state-of-the-art for fossil fired boiler tube NDE practice is limited almost exclusively, in order of use frequency, to: (1) magnetic particle/dye penetrant, (2) ultrasonic testing (UT), (3) visual, including fiber-optic/borescope and TV, and (4) radiography. None of these techniques are adequate for reliably detecting and sizing boiler tube damage, and they suffer from low inspection volume coverage, i.e., they are limited to small localized checking of suspect troublespots. Our survey shows that boiler inspection using even these four methods is not practiced routinely but only after a forced outage has occurred. While there is a wide spectrum of boiler tube damage which results in failures forcing complete or partial outages, our survey indicates that: (1) wall thinning and wastage by erosion/corrosion, (2) overheating, and (3) hydrogen damage are the most prevalent failure modes for fossil fired boilers. Our survey also shows that at least one-quarter to one-third of the failures forcing a full outage occur in the furnace wall tube bank and reducing the number of these failures alone would result in considerable savings to the utilities. We recommend that EPRI undertake a research and development program for the purpose of providing the utilities with a practical NDE capability for inspecting boiler tubes.

• Research Organization: Reluxtrol, South San Francisco, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6773506
• Report Number(s): EPRI-CS-1585
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
BOILERS
FAILURES
INSPECTION
NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTING
FOSSIL-FUEL POWER PLANTS
CORROSION
EROSION
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
HYDROGEN
INDUSTRIAL RADIOGRAPHY
METALLURGICAL EFFECTS
OUTAGES
RECOMMENDATIONS
ULTRASONIC TESTING
ACOUSTIC TESTING
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
DATA
ELEMENTS
INFORMATION
MATERIALS TESTING
NONMETALS
NUMERICAL DATA
POWER PLANTS
TESTING
THERMAL POWER PLANTS
200104* - Fossil-Fueled Power Plants- Components