• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.541-543
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• 2004

An optimal soot blowing system has been developed for an optimal operation of power utility boilers by both minimization of the use of steam and the number of soot blowers worked during soot blowing. Traditionally, the soot blowing system has been operated manually by operators. However, it causes the reduction of power and thermal performance degradation because all soot blowers installed in the plant should be worked simultaneously even there are lots of tubes those are not contaminated by slagging or fouling. Heat transfer area is divided into four groups, furnace, convection area including superheater, reheater and economizer, and air preheater in the present study. The condition of cleanness of the tubes is calculated by several parameters obtained by sensors. Then, a part of soot blowers works automatically where boiler tubes are contaminated. This system has been applied in a practical power plant. Therefore, comparison has been done between this system and manual operation and the results are discussed.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.95-102
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• 2009

A steam generator (boiler) in thermal power plants, consisting of more than 30,000 parts and components, can lead to the plant shutdown with damage to even the small part of the components; esp., like weld failures on boiler tubes. Consequently it is greatly demanded to improve the quality of the weld on the boiler tube for the stable operation of the power plants. Because of the feature of the welding, which is done past by melting the work pieces and adding a filler material that cools to become a strong coalescence, there is a great possibility that weld failures take place. As a result, it is regulated to make a non-destructive testing, like radiography test, to detect defects and flaws in the weld. The current film radiography test provides a lower image quality exceeding 2.0% of a basic quality level for a penetrameter, it is very likely to fail to detect micro defect. As a result, the prevention for the boiler tube failure has not been made effectively. In this study, computed radiography technology has been applied as a digital radiography test to the boiler tube weld, and Se-75 radiation source was used to improve the image quality, instead of Ir-192 source. As a result of this study, it is proven to save the time and cost for test and to enhance the quality level of penetrameter penetrating image, which enables to upgrade the quality of radiography test to the boiler tube weld.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.240-249
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• 2018

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to find which technique, between the PAUT (Phased array ultrasonic test) that has been used widely in practice and RT (Radiographic test) that was used widely in the past, has the higher reliability as a non-destructive testing of welding points in water wall tubes. Methods: To evaluated the reliability of non-destructive testing, eleven test pieces that were fabricated intentionally, which have the most frequently occurred defect types in water wall tubes and then both the PAUT and RT were performed on those eleven test pieces to compare their reliability. Results: The differences of type of defect, length are occurred due to the characteristics of nondestructive testing. The RT could not detect the lack of fusion defect type in specimen #4 and #8 while PAUT could not detect the lateral crack and 1 mm size small porosity in specimen #11. Conclusion: It is concluded that applying both the RT and PAUT result the best reliability rather than applying only one test method, if it is possible, in nondestructive testing of weld water wall tube in thermal power plant boiler case.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.37-42
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• 2000

The boiler tubes and steam Pipes operating both at high temperature and pressure for a long period of time in a power plant are degraded by creep because of internal pressure. So, the remaining life of a component is evaluated by the creep rupture strength. Although the conventional method to evaluate the creep damage is widely used, it has some disadvantages such as requires large size specimen and long employed to evaluate the correlation between fracture toughness and evaluation time. Recently, new method so called "small lunch test' is used to evaluate degradation of creep. In this study, a conventional creep test and a small punch test are conducted using 2.25Cr-1Mo steel which is mainly used for the boiler tubes and steam pipes in power plant. The creep life, approximately 1,500 hrs, is determined by conventional method under a severe condition then specimens for a small Punch test are obtained after certain time intervals such as 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of final rupture time, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.281-287
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• 2012

The internal oxide scale of twelve superheater and reheater tubes were tested which were serviced for 30,000~120,000 hours in thermal power plants. The oxide scale was formed in three layers. The Cr-rich area was observed beneath the original metal surface. The hematite ($Fe_2O_3$) phase was formed on the outer surface. The intermediate layer was magnetite ($Fe_3O_4$). The thickness of Cr-rich layer was about half of the total scale. All layers grew during the operation hour of the plant. The thickness of thickest scale was 0.2mm in superheater tubes. This can increase the tube metal temperature about $7^{\circ}C$ more than initial state. $7^{\circ}C$ tube metal temperature can reduce tube life about 30%, but the boiler tube's design margin is big enough therefore it has been analyzed that it would not effect on the life span.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.478-485
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• 2008

The extreme steam temperature deviation experienced in the superheater of a tangentially fired boiler can seriously affect its economic and safe operation. This temperature deviation is one of the main causes of boiler tube failures. The steam temperature deviation is mainly due to the thermal load deviation in the lateral direction of the superheater. The thermal load deviation consists of several causes. One of the causes is the non-uniform heat flow distribution of burnt gas on the superheater tube system. This distribution is very difficult to measure in situ using direct experimental techniques. So, we need thermal load model to estimate the tube temperature. In this paper, we propose a thermal load distribution model by using CFD analysis and plant data. We successfully predict the tube temperature and the steam flow rate in a final superheater system from the thermal load model and one dimensional heat-flow system analysis. The proposed model and analysis method would be valuable in preventing the frequent tube failure of the final superheater tubes.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.848-859
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• 2016

System failures in thermal power plants (TPPs) can lead to serious losses because the equipment is operated under very high pressure and temperature. Therefore, it is indispensable for alarm systems to inform field workers in advance of any abnormal operating conditions in the equipment. In this paper, we propose a clustering-based fault detection method for steam boiler tubes in TPPs. For data clustering, k-means algorithm is employed and the number of clusters are systematically determined by slope statistic. In the clustering-based method, it is assumed that normal data samples are close to the centers of clusters and those of abnormal are far from the centers. After partitioning training samples collected from normal target systems, fault scores (FSs) are assigned to unseen samples according to the distances between the samples and their closest cluster centroids. Alarm signals are generated if the FSs exceed predefined threshold values. The validity of exponentially weighted moving average to reduce false alarms is also investigated. To verify the performance, the proposed method is applied to failure cases due to boiler tube leakage. The experiment results show that the proposed method can detect the abnormal conditions of the target system successfully.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.1603-1604
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• 2007

The load of power plants changes every from time to time according to which steam flow of boiler changes. the feed water control is very important for the power plant to be operated in its stability conditions. In case of circulation type boiler, the instability of feed water control leads to instability of drum level control. The higher level of drum water can induce bad quality steam to go into turbine which means the possibility of damage. The lower level of drum water can induce the tubes of boiler water wall to be overheated. In case of once through type boiler, the instability of feed water control leads to bad cooling of superheaters. The less the feed water flow is, the more heated the superheater is. It is necessary for the turbine driving feed water pump to be controlled for the optimal feed water flow in the large capacity power plant. The speed of turbine is controled for the feed water flow. By the way, the optimal control of steam valve is necessary for the speed control of turbine. Therefore, the various kinds of the steam valve structures are introduced in this paper

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.30-36
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• 2015

Austenite stainless steel(SA213-TP347H) has widely been used for the superheater & reheater tube in USC(ultra-supercritica) coal boiler because of its high creep rupture strength and anti-oxidation. But recently, the short-term failures have happened frequently in heat affected zone for only 4,000~15,000hours of service. Many investigations have been conducted to understand the failure mechanism. The root cause of failure was comfirmed to "strain induce participation hardening crack" or "reheat cracking". This mechanism often occurred due to weld residual stress and precipitation of the Cr, Nb carbides in the stabilized stainless steel such as TP347H. This paper presents an analysis of failure tube and effect of the sample tubes that conducting stabilizing heat treatment in site after 11,380hours & 16,961hours of service. Visual inspection was performed. In addition, microscopic characteristics was identified by O.M, SEM, and hardness test was carried out to find out the heat treatment effects. Failures seem to happen because of being not conducted stabilizing heat treatment in site. And another cause is inadequate weld parameter such as pass, ampere, voltage, inter-pass temperature. Thus, this paper has the purpose to describe that how to prevent similar failures in those weld-joints.

• Plant Journal
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.38-49
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• 2021

In order to increase power plant efficiency, the steam temperature was increased to 610 ℃ which deteriorates the durability of the boiler tube and as the use of low-calorie coal increases the post combustion and delayed combustion phenomenon, the overheating of the final reheater and the tube rupture are becoming frequent. In order to prevent overheating of the final reheater, desuperheater water injection was increased, leading to a decrease in boiler efficiency. In this study install a baffle plate at the back of some overheated tube groups, thereby reduce the temperature of the tube by reducing the amount of combustion gas, and the reduced combustion gas moves to an adjacent place to increase the temperature of other tubes. As a result of the study, the temperature deviation between tubes decreased 1.5. And the heat-reducing injection amount was reduced to 6,929 kg/h and the maximum tube temperature was reduced to 623.4℃ which is 6.6℃ more below than the control standard of 630℃.