The Monitor

A North American coal-fired electrical power station was implementing a strict maintenance and calibration procedure for their new steam and water sample panels. This procedure included weekly removal, cleaning, calibration and reinstalling of 22 conductivity probes – which are used to find the concentration of total dissolved solids, or TDS, in a sample of water.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Imagine this scenario: A power plant’s primary coolant pump loses power and is no longer providing coolant to the primary coolers. A steam sample in excess of 250°F continues to flow. In the chemistry lab, an operator works at a computer. A pipe hisses as the room begins to fill with dangerous steam. At the end of the sample tubes are costly analyzers about to be destroyed. The operator realizes what's happening and hurries to shut down the sample lines. The analyzers suffer minor damage but the operator is able to repair them. But, what about next time?

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

There are four main ingredients needed to make cement: calcium, alumina, iron and silica. The percentages of each ingredient are 90, 3, 2, and 5, respectively.

Topics: Cement, Solids & Powder

Sludges containing oil and water gradually build up on any relatively large ship as a byproduct of its operation of electrical generation machinery and the main propulsion engine. This oil sludge presents operators with issues of safe disposal in compliance with maritime environmental regulations.

Topics: Upstream & Midstream, Liquid & Slurry

The cost of cleaning up the oil spill that fouled beaches last month on the California coast has reached $62 million so far, the pipeline company, Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline, said this month. Costs are running at $3 million a day, and there is no firm timetable for cleanup completion, according to the company. The company is responsible for paying all cleanup costs after a pipeline break near Santa Barbara forced the closure of two state beaches and prompted a fishing ban in the area.

Topics: Upstream & Midstream, Gas

A combined cycle power plant uses both a gas and a steam turbine together to produce up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant. The waste heat from the gas turbine is routed to the nearby steam turbine, which generates extra power.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

A sample cooler for steam & water sampling within a power plant is used to cool a sample from a process stream and is simply a small shell and coil heat exchanger. The sample to be cooled flows through the tube side of the cooler, and the cooling fluid, usually water, flows through the shell side. The cooled sample then is taken to a laboratory for analysis or, in some cases, piped to in-line process instrumentation for continuous monitoring of certain properties such as conductivity, pH or chemical constituents.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Sampling can help determine product purity and makeup, whether a product meets customer requirements or specified regulations, whether moisture content is appropriate, or whether chemicals are below their recommended level of volatility. This requires using a sampler that will enter the material stream, capture a quantity of that material, and extract a representative sample for analysis.

Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder, Pharmaceutical

There certainly are many challenges associated with maintaining an aging power plant’s water chemistry program and ensuring the safety and reliability of plant assets and operators through timely, accurate analysis of water and steam. The program will need to manage and conquer corrosion and scaling issues, standardize methods of sampling water and steam for analysis, and ensure compliance with EPA regulations for waste water disposal.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Manufacturing and quality control engineers across a variety of industries are faced with the daily challenge of maintaining regulatory compliance using questionable sample analysis results. This is especially true for pharmaceutical and other production environments where industrial waste volumes must be accurately characterized. Standard sampling practices, such as taking a repeatable sample from a good location, are just not enough for complete confidence in these environments.

Topics: Pharmaceutical, Liquid & Slurry