In today’s utility plants, effective SWAS equipment management is crucial to maximizing uptime and generating revenue.

Steam and water analysis systems (SWAS) equipment owners, including chemists and reliability managers, need to protect the plant equipment to monitor the steam and water cycle chemistry and ensure accurate readings. If they don’t trust their analyzers, it can impact how well they can do their jobs – and leave their system open to expensive damages and failures. Ensuring personnel’s safety is another concern when equipment is outdated and causing mechanical issues.

But just maintaining or ignoring aging equipment can lead to extended downtime and costly repairs. To make matters worse, these plants face the twin challenges of aging SWAS equipment and reduced capital expenditures to perform repairs.

That’s why many utility plants are turning to installation and retrofit services to help minimize risk, increase equipment life expectancy, and control costs. With installation and retrofit services, you can uncover blind spots that might be causing equipment damage and extend the life of your sampling system – without expensive capital expenditures.

case study: Updating SWAS Equipment to Maximize Performance

One large electricity and power generation company in Texas approached Sentry Equipment with an extensive retrofit SWAS project. The customer was re-using three conditioning racks from earlier project sites, but they wanted a SWAS that functioned more efficiently and was user-friendly for operators.

First, Sentry Equipment performed a site visit. A complete system survey and evaluation were conducted during this visit. Unlike instrument providers that focus on one aspect of the system, our technicians looked at the entire system holistically and compared the results to ASTM and EPRI standards.

The customer then received a formal report, known as a SysRep™, with a summary of key findings, thermal images, and quotes on what was required to replace and upgrade underperforming parts of the system. This site visit also uncovered blind spots in chemistry issues that were causing equipment damage without the customer’s knowledge.

Based on this insight, Sentry Equipment provided a Sample Panel Retrofit, which included:

•  A 5ft long Analyzer Rack (AR) with installed DCCP sample reboilers, sample sequencers, manifold switching valves, a new silica analyzer, and space prepared to reinstall site-supplied analyzers.
• Eighteen sampling module plates were installed on three Sample Conditioning Racks (SCRs). Each plate included new valved flow indicators, new flow housings for conductivity, new cation exchange resin columns, and accommodations for site-supplied Dissolved Oxygen flow housings to be installed on-site.
• ProShield Install & Retrofit Services to perform the refurbished SCRs and unify an existing Centralized Monitor Panel with the new AR and newly refurbished SCRs.
• 8-ton water-cooled Temperature Control Unit (TCU).

During the entire process, our experts handled many on-the-fly changes on-site with the customer to ensure success from start to finish. The end result was an updated SWAS that functions more efficiently and is more user-friendly for plant personnel to use.

Explore the benefits of install and retrofits

During the many decades a power plant can operate, critical cycle chemistry controlling analysis and conditioning equipment can undergo multiple process changes and become obsolete. SWAS often doesn’t need a complete redesign but needs to be updated with safe, efficient sampling practices and state-of-the-art technologies.

Sentry’s ProShield Install & Retrofit Services helps plants increase the safety of their systems, prevent breakdowns, and improve asset productivity and reliability.

Get a complete SWAS health report today.

• Uncover blind spots concerning chemistry issues that may be causing equipment damage
• Identify opportunities to optimize your SWAS equipment’s lifecycle