/jasper
Posted on 12/19/2007 11:11:12 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet
..developing.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What type pulverizers do you use?
What does the answer that you gave me tell us about our argument? What would give you an indication that one of your Mills was failing aside from load and secondary air temperature, The first indication?
I am retired and haven't done coal in years, we used Foster Wheeler, Penn, and CE.
If you don't have tilts not a bad way to do it, if you can get the damned stuff below fusion, the secondary Superheater still takes a beating, but it most give you a good handle on NOX control if the tuning is correct.
If you read the story at the link I provided, you would see that there was a fire at a power plant in MINNESOTA on Tuesday night.
Merely for coincidence value....that’s all...
Across the street from power plant. Not related.
It is obvious to me that we are talking about different types of pulverizer and boiler systems. Mine is a B&W Drum type negative pressure natural circulation water wall boiler.
We do not have tilting burners so upper and reheat temps are controlled by loading the top burner mills with less loading, thus less amps.
To tell if one of our pulverizers is malfuncitoning we have people checking them hourly for anything wrong. In the control room I have amp gages, differential air gages Primary air flow and temp gages and secondary air gages along with feeder controls.
To see if something is amiss I look at the amps vs feeder loading (High amps vs low feeder load) for each mill. Then Primary air (low air flow vs feeder load) and mill air temp.
I then check the HEAT RELEASE vs fuel flow. A dropping heat release means am not getting enough fuel into the boiler. It may be a partial feeder pluggage, a slipping feeder belt or low Btu coal. If it is a big rock it will jam the feeder and trip it, then the mill.
An very rapid increase in HEAT RELEASE means I have bogged a mill and it is now blowing out excessive coal into the boiler. Very dangerous, possibility of a boiler explosion exists.
Finally each pulverizer has it’s own characteristics. One may run with a higher amp load than others at the same feeder load. Certain others may bogg or puff while starting up. I know my mills, which ones will bite you in the butt and which might (notice I said “might”)not.
And if any of these run out of coal, the hot PRIMARY air leakage will back up through the feeder and into the silo possibly causing a hopper explosion. We have to send a man to the feeder floor to close the gate between the hopper and the feeder.
bump
To confess, my link was kind of acting funny earlier, and I was having trouble pulling up links to news sources. For some reason FR was working fine.
I spent 40 years as an, Operator, Supervisor, Start up Engineer, Shift Supervisor, and Shift Manager for Comm Electric, NSTAR, Sythe, Exelon, General Electric, Wheelabrator, and several private developers. I have done Coal, Oil, Natural Gas, Biomass, and Trash.
I have also hired and trained about 10 crews and reviewed the hiring of five more, I am not doubting your ability, every plant is different.
***I am not doubting your ability, every plant is different.***
Agreed! Every plant is different.
***..where is your floor guy on 11-7?***
I gusee I am missing the meaning of what you mean.
Minn. Explosion in post #33 and other up dated posts to this thread follow it.
I also recognize the problems that can exist in an organization, even the best run, and from all of the EPRI reports that I have read over the years there can be a few, even among the Sainted Nukes.
One of the biggest problems that A Control Room Operator has is getting timely information. The DCS provides much but the floor guy, with experience, can anticipate, based on experience, what might happen. The CRO, if the floor guy is correct or if he isn't and is acting on a hunch, can monitor that parameter and pass it on up the line
I have looked at a lot of places where the floor guy does a horizontal eight on the 11-7 and the CRO takes it in the butt because he didn't notice a obscure alarm.
***I have looked at a lot of places where the floor guy does a horizontal eight on the 11-7 and the CRO takes it in the butt because he didn’t notice a obscure alarm.***
I get your meaning now. We have different terms for the “floor guy”. We have found it is the coal yard that does the Horizontal eight (twelve now since they don’t get enough sleep at home) most of the time. the rest are usually in the control room when they are not taking care of the bottom ash or demineralizer, and general walk downs.
We recently switched to a twelve hour rotating shift. It is killing us. Days off are great though.
My biggest problem is the company has promoted people with aabsolutly no CRO experience to supervision and we have taken it in the butt as a result.
One person promoted to Shift Supervisor twenty five years ago retired with the honor of loosing the unit more than anyone because of his general stupidity. When he was promoted years ago it caused half of the “unit attendants”(floor guys) to walk out.
Equal dubious promotions have been made in the last few years which have caused people at other plants in the company to wonder “What is going on there?”
In a lot of places I have been around it works like this. Coal Yard Supervisor (Or Lead Hand), Floor Supervisor (Or Lead Hand), Control Room Supervisior (Or Lead Hand), Shift Manager, coal plants have a lot of troops and lots to look at.
I worked the 12's for a lot of years, which is not bad it you are base loaded, it can suck really bad if you do a lot of start ups.
This is going to sound odd, but there was a method to the insanity and I never liked Floor guys messing up my Control Room.
I am known as a Natural Night Guy, I Liked Working Nights. I also never carried Keys, a Radio, a Cell Phone, or any other method of communication out side of the plant page system. I also got bored easily and liked to wander around at odd hours, if I needed a question answered I called the CRO or the Supervisor and asked him to get the floor guy, to open a door, to answer why the conductivity was high, ETC, ETC.
The CRO and Supervisior knew I was covering their asses and alerting them to possible problems, another problem that was solved was the direction came from Guy operating the Unit or the Supervisor, not me, I was just curious.
What can you do to improve the situation, you cared enough about what I said to jump in my sh*t, allowed. Any Idiot can be an Engineer and manage equipment, to manage people is another skill that has to be learned and it is hard, you have no friends, but they are people and deserve the respect THAT THEY DESERVE. I have taken thousands of hours of leadership courses, most are Bull Shit, the essential is: treat people as they would like to be treated, common manners, take no excuses.
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