An owner/operator presenting on aqueous-ammonia (NH3) storage tank inspections at the CCUG2020 Week Four session said that according to the governing standard, API510, a “fitness for service” assessment should be conducted every 10 years (or half the remaining life calculated during the last inspection) for pressure tanks. The method results in a calculated remaining life, […]

EPRI Technical Executive Sam Korellis opened the CCUG2020 Week Four agenda with a review of EPRI’s cooling-tower (CT) fan-motor-drive and gearbox field evaluation program and its implications for CTs serving more than 800 units at about 300 powerplants. Many CTs are equipped with multiple fans which start and stop depending on load and ambient temperature.

The main messages from the presentation on fire suppression systems during Week Four of the CCUG2020 meeting, by ORR Protection’s Chuck Hatfield, are that NFPA Code requirements include the life (human) safety and reliability of suppression equipment, whether low- or high-pressure type; and that the industry is “moving away from CO2-based suppression to water-mist systems.” One

Steve Shulder, EPRI’s subject matter expert on water and steam chemistry addressed chemistry-related damage from flexible operations during Week Four of the CCUG2020 program. Thorough to a fault, most of Shulder’s slides are laden with bullet points, likely summarizing chapters of EPRI reports on the subject. It’s almost impossible to condense the 45-slide deck into

Hydro Solutions’ first presenter during Week Four at CCUG2020, Ares Panagoulias (“Innovations in vertical-pump vibration monitoring”), reviewed a relatively new, but proven, capability to monitor vibration of submerged vertical pumps using a single-axis piezoelectric accelerometer directly wired to a wireless transmitter with its own power source (Fig 1). Data go to a “cloud-based” app. Included