April 2023 - Testing Efficiency Improvement with SOAR System 

With emission limits growing ever tighter, efficient combustion is a necessity for most boilers to meet these lower limits. Well-tuned units are achievable when all equipment is kept in good operational condition. Many plants face a variety of tuning challenges, and it is important to keep the boilers operating efficiently and reliably. This becomes even more of a challenge when once base-loaded plants are required to chase load demand due to the increase of renewable power on the grid. When it comes to combustion tuning, STORM’s automated flue gas sampling system is a great tool. It allows for more firing combinations and tuning adjustments to be made and tested in shorter timespans over the traditional manual traverses of the flue gas after the furnace exit. What does this mean for you and your plant? With the improvement in testing efficiency, your dollars spent on testing go further. Our SOAR system allows for more testing to be done with fewer testing personnel, thus allowing for more tuning adjustments and combustion improvement opportunities for less money.

March 2023 - “Shock Wave” Impulse Cleaning Device Case Study 

Storm Technologies, Inc. has teamed up with PowerPlus Cleaning Systems to provide IMPULSE® cleaning technology to our customers in the utility and industrial industries. The impulse cleaner is an inexpensive, low-maintenance system that generates a “shock wave” by completing the combustion of ethylene gas.  The system was originally made to improve the cleaning effectiveness of standard sonic or acoustic horns and has been utilized for cleaning since 2006.  From PowerPlus’ experience and what we have seen firsthand, the system works best in the convection pass versus a radiant section where a molten, sticky, or “runny” slag may be present in many industrial/utility boiler arrangements.

Feb. 2023 - Storm's Fabrication Capabilities And Outage Support 

Storm Technologies, Inc. is more than just testing crews pushing a probe in a boiler or pulling coal samples out of fuel lines.  We have the experience and the abilities to offer resourceful solutions from engineering, design, and fabrication to technical direction, testing, and tuning services for all general boiler and combustion system components. What begins as a conceptual design, often becomes cost-effective RESULTS for our customers.  We are fully committed to our mantra "QUALITY, SERVICE, RESULTS" and we are driven to all of our customers' needs, from concept to completion.

Jan. 2023 - Periodic Monitoring can Prevent Forced Outages During Peak Demand

Storm Technologies, Inc. has long been an advocate for performance-driven maintenance programs. By conducting routine performance testing on the coal pulverizers and boilers, small problems can be identified and often addressed before they potentially cause the unit to be derated or even worse, forced into an unplanned outage. These unplanned forced outages often come during peak power demand periods when the price per MW is high and desired for the boiler to be operated at maximum capacity with a “hands-off” operating policy.

• Air In-Leakage
• Corrected Gas Outlet Temperature
• X-Ratio
• Gas Side Efficiency
• Pressure Drop

Most boilers are equipped with tube metal thermocouples installed on the terminal superheater and reheater tubes and provide an indication of the final metal temperatures of the selected tubes. This is important because metals, just like most other materials when heated, have properties that begin to change and, therefore, knowing your metal’s limitations is important.  This newsletter will address the common questions of:

1. How hot is too hot for your tubes?
2. What kind of reduction in tube life can be expected if the tubes are operated above design temperatures?
3. How can we prevent elevated tube metal temperatures?

This is a follow-up to our June Newsletter which focused on combustion airflow measurement and balance. Fuel Balance and fineness are also important for optimum combustion, best heat rate, fuel flexibility, minimal slagging, best NOx performance and more. If one were to take a look at Storm’s 13 Essentials for achieving optimum combustion in pulverized coal boilers, 9 of the 13  essentials are fuel related. We hope that you appreciate it and find it useful.

Storm Technologies has been solving difficult combustion problems for many years. We thought that sharing some of our experiences and case studies would be helpful to those of you working in the utility industry. Some of these same issues that we have identified and made corrections to are certain to still be challenges today. This is the first newsletter of a series that uses data and experiences from the last three decades. Most of the figures used are slides from our “Large Utility Boiler Combustion and Performance Improvements” seminar. We hope that you appreciate it and find it useful.

In our last newsletter, pt. 1 explored the limitations in emissions and obstacles in furnace performance in extremely low load operations. This time, we look at low load impacts on the pulverizers and the solid fuel injection system. This covers primary air flow and velocities and potential damage to out of service burners and their components...