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Maintenance Optimization: Plant Reliability and Performance

1) Power plants face increasing pressure to reduce costs through more efficient maintenance while ensuring reliability and environmental compliance. 2) Metso Automation has developed solutions to help optimize maintenance from individual equipment to whole processes through condition monitoring and data integration. 3) These solutions such as boiler life monitoring use statistical analysis of sensor data to track component aging and plan replacements, improving reliability while avoiding disruptions.

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216 views

Maintenance Optimization: Plant Reliability and Performance

1) Power plants face increasing pressure to reduce costs through more efficient maintenance while ensuring reliability and environmental compliance. 2) Metso Automation has developed solutions to help optimize maintenance from individual equipment to whole processes through condition monitoring and data integration. 3) These solutions such as boiler life monitoring use statistical analysis of sensor data to track component aging and plan replacements, improving reliability while avoiding disruptions.

Uploaded by

asusthailand
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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G ENERGY

TEXT: JARI LEPPKOSKI, JAAKKO OKSANEN, ERKKI JAATINEN

ougher competition in the energy markets has forced power plants to become more cost-effective: they must produce power, process steam and district heating at ever decreasing costs. As a result, production and maintenance personnel must increasingly be able to identify which

maintenance operations are truly necessary and how to schedule them without significant production disturbances. Ensuring operations at low costs sets many challenges for maintenance operations. Larger maintenance jobs, for example, should be planned according to need rather than at pre-de-

Maintenance optimization

Power plant and process equipment condition monitoring and maintenance operations have the primary goal of ensuring process reliability and high capacity utilization in a cost-efficient and environmentally friendly way. In this regard, Metso Automation has developed new solutions to assist proactive maintenance from individual field units to entire processes.

improves plant reliability and performance


New solutions can be used to monitor both individual devices and main process equipment. Photo: Courtesy of Kvaerner.

Metso Automation 1,2003

termined intervals. And spare parts inventories should be kept low but also sufficiently large to ensure the right parts are available when needed. Proactive maintenance also sets new demands on power plant automation and information solutions. Power plant information databases contain process and equipment data for an entire plant's life-cycle. This information can be easily conveyed to component manufacturers, who can best ascertain the maintenance requirements of their own products.

boiler conditions and to observe leaks and ruptures in advance. The integration of data provided by different methods into a power plant's information system creates the best possible foundation for the optimization of plant-wide maintenance operations. This means that information system suppliers must have a strong understanding of power plant components and processes. In fact, the choice of a

places, and to ensure that operations start-up as planned. During normal operations, the focus of condition monitoring is on operations and maintenance. Typical examples include the monitoring of induced draft fluegas fan cleanliness based on rotational imbalance of the blading and the timing of washing based on this imbalance. Also important is the timely replacement of aging components.

fered by the components throughout their life-cycles. A recent example of the system in action comes from the Turow power plant, in Poland, which acquired four Boiler Life systems for its units. The plant's maintenance personnel use the systems to track the operation and condition of the boilers on the long term. The system's purpose is to schedule the replacement of aging and defective

Optimized maintenance for a plant's entire life-cycle


New and comprehensive maintenance systems play a key role in the maintenance of process equipment, field instrumentation, power supply, automation and information networks as well as automation applications. These maintenance systems, which are best thought of as a total concept, aim at optimized maintenance for the entirety of a plant's life-cycle. When integrated with the Metso's Dynamic Network of Applications, metsoDNA, they offer tools for the continuous monitoring of production, processes and raw materials, and also help to eliminate incremental deterioration in performance and to avoid process disturbances.

Solutions for proactive maintenance


proper automation solution and platform is integral to the success of proactive maintenance.

Fixing defects before serious disturbances


The installation of condition monitoring equipment into processes at various stages of their life-cycles has resulted in good results and short pay-back times. A good example is provided by Finnsement, a cement manufacturer. At the company's manufacturing site in Parainen, in Finland, a Sensodec 6S condition monitoring system installed on a cement kiln gearbox immediately located a defective gear. The component was replaced before any further damage or disruption in production, which would have caused the site to shut down almost in its entirety, with all the additional costs this entails.

The switch to proactive maintenance


New tools will finally shift the focus of operations from mere repair of malfunctions to systematic, proactive maintenance. Today's mechanical condition monitoring methods, such as vibration measurements, cover a plant's entire life-cycle, even though the focus may vary at different stages of the life-cycle. During start-up and fine-tuning operations, the emphasis is on ensuring proper installation, and ensuring that machine components work as specified and that machines run effectively and smoothly at all levels of operation. Successful proactive maintenance makes it possible to react to disturbances immediately and to plan repairs in line with collected measurement data. Recent experience suggests that nearly all plants experience irregularities in either their main or sub process machinery. Measurement data can be used to initiate reparatory actions quickly, in the right

components during planned shutdowns and to safeguard the availability of spare parts. The system has had a positive effect on the reliability of the entire plant.

Solution for fluidized bed boiler combustion optimization


Fluidized bed combustion of nonhomogenous fuel mix is a very demanding process as fuel quality variations make the combustion very difficult to control. Because classical control methods are not always adequate, Metso Automation has developed a new solution for the optimization of this process. The solution makes it possible to burn fuels of more uneven quality and to ramp boiler power faster than before. As a result, customers can react faster to changes in market conditions and the price of electricity. The solution also lowers significantly NOX emissions due to close control of combustion temperature.

Integration of methods is important


The maintenance concept includes various condition and health monitoring systems that monitor both individual field equipment and entire processes. The methods vary with the target to be monitored. Condition monitoring systems for rotating machines can be used as a good early warning system should, for example, a fault in the bearings cause a malfunction in the turbine. Likewise, comprehensive process measurements can be used to monitor

Statistical methods for boiler monitoring


New solutions can be used to monitor both individual devices and main process equipment. For instance, Boiler Life Monitoring represents a solution that monitors remaining boiler service life using statistical methods. The system monitors power plant boiler component aging based on pressure and temperature measurements, and reveals fatigue and creep suf-

Information is not always enough know-how is also required


Metso Future Care offers expert services and know-how for the im-

8 Metso Automation 1,2003

provement of customer process performance throughout a plant's life-cycle. The concept integrates products and solutions as well as related condition monitoring and development objectives into one comprehensive service package. As an example, a service contract can specifically aim at optimizing fluidized bed combustion to improve plant performance, i.e. the customer buys the benefit instead of

the application. Metso Future Care performance improvement contracts for power plants set goals for process performance one year at a time. Metso Automation's power plant experts, both locally close to the power plant and remotely over data-networks, monitor and anticipate process performance in close cooperation with the customer.

In this way Metso Automation can take responsibility for the monitoring and performance of processes, and can make proposals for the improvement of these processes, while customers are free to focus on their own core area of expertise the profitable production of electricity and heat. G

I This article is reprinted from the October 2002 issue of Automaatiovyl magazine, with the permission of the publisher.

from field units to entire processes.

The integration of data provided by different methods into a power plant's information system creates the best possible foundation for the optimization of plant-wide maintenance operations.

Metso Automation 1,2003

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