Smoke Stacks....with near ZERO emissions!

When people look at this image they think of air polluting "Smoke Stacks"... True, while stacks are used to divert pollutants and harmful emissions high above the atmosphere, stacks today are fairly clean with near zero emissions. With low nox combustion turbines, emissions are reduced to below 9ppm of Nox and Co. Certain power plants also have catalysts installed which will further reduce emissions to near Zero. The stacks seen here have near zero missions aided by Dry Low Nox combustion turbines and CO and Nox catalysts. During days when white smoke can be seen billowing out of the stacks, it is actually water vapors created once the residual turbine exhaust of 250+ deg F is introduced to cold ambient temperatures. It might look as though the white smoke is polluting the enviorment but I can assure you it is really extremely low in emissions.

Outage consumables set up

Getting all of your consumables organized is key.... I've developed spreadsheets with hardware requirements for each outage CI, HGPI, and MI and purchased three fully stocked kits. As the parts are exhausted after each outage, the kits are replenished on a spot buy and stored for later use. The compartments and drawers are labeled with part numer identification and reflected on the spreadsheet to ease tracking.
Check it out!

End of the first outage....Start of the second ! HALF WAY THERE

I apologize for not updating my blog after the 23rd day of the outage but things were getting hectic with startup. We lit off on gas successfully and also on liquid fuel.. FIRE the FIRST TRY.
We've started tearing into the second unit this week and I'll update my blog with key events rather than daily reports. Week 6... Three more to go..hopefully!
Here is a photo of a fully assembled turbine with all of the piping intact. You can definately get a feel of how labor intensive working on a dual fuel machine is.
Lessons learned, spend time to match mark and label everything before tearing into the unit. It will save time in the long run and installation process!

Day 23...Combustion Hardware Restoration!

its day 23... we are facing with the challenge of identifying where all of the small flex hoses go. nuts and bolts are EVERYWHERE! looks like a turbine blew up from under the compartment. We did our best to sort out just enough material to rebuild each combustion can but still to no avail since the mechanics has a habit of digging into another bag of hardware from another can. Majority of the aft end piping is completed. Turbine roof had been mounted and the electricians are in the process of terminating all of the connections. We will start loop checking with I&C the devices around the unit.. this will be very grueling! Permits DUE tomorrow Evening... date for Startup will be this Sunday. *fingers crossed*

Day 20....Manifolds and restoration

Day 20.. in the process of restoration beginning with large manifolds and extraction piping around the unit. thousands and thousands of little bolts and nuts....we will spend the weekend installing the forward fuel nozzles and pigtails.

Day 19... 6 days left!

The TP's are all in.. we are still fighting some of the setback clearances. Looks like the upper half nozzle might be a bit skewed.
the turbine shell is ready to be picked! once we perform a final FME of the turbine and CDC section, it will be ready to go. 6 days left!

Day 18....THE SHELLS ARE ON!

Okay its finally starting to look like a turbine again. We spend yesterday trying to fish out some foreign matter that entered the compressor section. check out the images from the borescope inspection. They look HUGE right? In reality they are merely a few centimeters! We used compressed air to blow out some of the metal shavings and wood cribbing fragments but lost some time on the reassembly. Lessons learned: stage the wooden platform below the horizontal joint and dont FPI (zyglo) the compressor blades until the metal shavings are blown out.
the CDC casing and turbine shells are back on and the crew is working on bolting the bad boy up along with installing some of the lower half TP's.
less than a week left! Fuel piping will be a nightmare!

Women as explained by engineers