With the help of a field evaluation, plant managers avoided unnecessary pump repairs.
Written by: Gary Dyson & Thomas Arakal
Publisher: Pumps & Systems / December 2016
A decade-old, 1,000-megawatt (MW) combined cycle power plant in the Middle East called an equipment repair and engineering company to conduct a pump health audit. Given the age of the plant and the fact that none of the pumps had undergone a major overhaul, plant personnel asked the engineering firm to determine which pumps should be pulled for repair at the next scheduled outage. The equipment consisted of six condensate extraction pumps and six boiler feed pumps.
Leaving the production process undisturbed, the field pump health evaluation team conducted a non-invasive pump study. Flow, pressure, vibration, power consumption, temperature and other data were collected for all the pumps in various regimes of operation. A team of engineers analyzed and compared the results of the measurements to the original design parameters. The study’s conclusions and engineering recommendations were published.