EPRI awarded $2 million for advanced research in managing power plant boiler damage

• 6 years ago (2018-10-17)
• David Flin

Coal 296 North America 1021

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The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has been selected for a $2 million award from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop and demonstrate an integrated management system to reduce boiler damage. The system will use advanced sensors and supporting technologies to reduce boiler damage in fossil-fuelled electricity generating plants.

The project is funded by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) as part of its “Advanced Combustion Systems: Existing Plant Improvements and Transformational Technologies” research. These projects are designed to develop advanced combustion systems that can make substantial progress towards enabling cost-competitive, coal-based power generation systems to help achieve near-zero pollutant emissions.

The project, “Integrated Boiler Management through Advanced Condition Monitoring and Component Assessment”, will incorporate high-temperature, distributed fibre optic sensors, existing plant instrumentation, and an integrated creep-fatigue management system to provide a near-real-time determination of damage accumulation during flexible operations. This system may enhance the capability of creep-fatigue analysis methods by integrating distributed fibre optic sensing technology that will be adapted to boiler applications. The project will be managed by the DOE National Energy technology Laboratory and EPRI.

Kent Coleman, Programme Manager at EPRI, said: “This project should advance our ability to operate fossil boilers flexibly while maintaining asset integrity. Being able to track damage accumulation from flexible operations in near real time will provide critical information that can help improve the reliability, availability, and safety of these assets.”

Industry participants in this research project include American Electric Power, Structural Integrity Associates, and Sentek Instrument.