The Monitor

Sample coolers and heat exchangers cool samples from process streams. A sample flows through the tube side of the heat exchanger, and the cooling fluid, usually water, flows through the shell side to cool the process gas or fluid so it can be monitored or analyzed.

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Topics: Power, Downstream, Any Application

Because many of the nation’s power plants were built some time ago, it often is a challenge for project managers to update the steam and water analysis (SWAS) system by retrofitting the plant with needed new technology within the existing facility footprint.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Metal corrosion within a power plant has the potential to cause catastrophic assets failure, injuring operators and damaging the environment and communities – plus causing costly downtime. For those reasons, identifying sources of, controlling and preventing corrosion are primary concerns of water chemists in a power plant.

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Topics: Power

Many regions of the world are experiencing ever-growing demand for electricity, and at the same time, permitted emissions from power plants have been reduced to meet air quality standards. Fossil fuel power plants are a source of CO2, which is one of the greenhouse gases that is regulated and of global concern due to its impact on climate change. The burning of coal, an abundant fuel resource in many of the worlds’ developing regions, produces CO2 – but coal is likely to remain a dominant fuel source for electricity generation in many countries for years to come.

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Topics: Power

The answer currently is 154. The leading brand of sample coolers – Sentry – supplies more than 6,000 per year to customers around the globe.

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Topics: Power, Cement, Food & Beverage, Downstream, Mining, Upstream & Midstream, Pharmaceutical, Liquid & Slurry, Any Application, Steam & Water, Gas

More and more, power plants must cycle to fill in gaps caused by disruptive power generation and in response to the need to bid on and dispatch electricity at certain times in the competitive marketplace. This means plants cycle based on demand and market prices for their energy production.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

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.

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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?

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

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.

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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.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water