125 years of pioneering research & installation of thousands
of industrial, utility and supercritical boilers has given
Babcock & Wilcox an invaluable insight into varied boiler
problems and experience in solving them. Over the years
B&W has developed specialized proprietary technologies to
predict Remaining Life and accurately pinpoint problem areas
in a boiler leading to specific repair, redesign or replacement.
Most boiler components have a limited life, beyond which
aging process starts taking its toll. Use of such aged boilers
rapidly drifts into the inefficient, unreliable and expensively
maintenance-prone spectrum of operation. Economics of plant
operation often goes through turmoil due to unscheduled
breakdowns, with increased maintenance and inventory bills.
Most boiler users get a shock when they suddenly know that
their so-far-so-good steam generators are suddenly problem
prone.
Preventive health check of boilers through periodic Remaining
Life and Condition Assessment help avoid this situation
to a large extent. For those that have already reached the
stage of expensive maintenance and spiraling fuel costs
due to low capacity and inefficient operation, full fledged
Renovation and Modernization programmes help bring back
the equipment to rated levels or better at an economical
cost.
In yet other cases, boiler users are faced
with realities of quite different kinds. An age-old linkage
that fed their plant with an uninterrupted supply of fuel
would stop functioning for some reason beyond their control.
Or the new Government policies ban the use of the original
fuel because they want it to be diverted as feed stock for
production. Or the global pricing of the so-far-cheap oil
suddenly skyrockets and with that tumble the plants' profit
charts. The solutions, in most cases lie in quick identification
of an alternative fuel, and switch over to it in the shortest
time and the minimum costs possible.
In some cases, the plant undergoes an expansion
and the reserve capacity built in to the steam generating
units is not adequate for the enhanced steam demand. In
some other cases, similar situations face the Plant Managers
due to unforeseen circumstances, including excessive steam
consumption by the user plants on various accounts. Buying
a new boiler to meet such shortfalls is often not feasible
due to constraints on cost, time and space requirements
that go with such decisions. The answer lies in engineering
an innovative solution, and by implementing it, generate
more steam from the same boilers.
Increasing awareness about emissions from
combustion systems has put many old boilers in the red.
Many boilers are facing the inevitable fate of getting de-commissioned,
unless drastic improvements in emissions are brought in.
This is possible only with an ingenious merging of the new
technology with the old. And that requires very special
skills.
In all cases above, the single and the
most important approach is being able to look at your old
boilers with a detective's eye. Findings of such checks
and tests will then need a thorough analysis in the Engineering
Office. The Engineering Solutions - in most cases they are
more that one - so generated require a techno-commercial
feasibility study before the best one if offered to the
user for implementation. Under Plant improvement Projects
(PIP), it was decided to give the old boilers a facelift
with new technology.
Thermax Babcock & Wilcox Ltd. realized
this need for the boiler users more than a decade ago. The
joint venture, therefore, formed a cell within the company
in 1989-90 with the best of skills to serve this business
sector and has been very active ever since, under the name
of Operating Equipment Services, renamed in September 2000
as Renovation & Modernization (R&M) Division.
