Assessment of Water Wall Tubes of a Fossil Fuel Fired Thermal Power Plant

Boilers being the heart of any steam generating system, failure of its components,will lead to forced outages of the plant, resulting in heavy economic losses in terms of non–availability of plant.Periodic inspection and assessment of boiler tubes has a great impact on the generation of power and economic status. The assessment of boiler tubes minimizes the risk of forced outage of the power plant. This paper presents the assessment of water wall tubes of thermal power plant to avoid any forced outage due to failure of water wall tubes. The assessment includes non-destructive, destructive and failure analysis of failed tubes. The periodic non-destructive evaluation is performed for the boiler tubes for generation of data for assessing and deciding the integrity of the boiler tubes. Destructive and failure analysis of failed tubes gives the information and helps in identifying the ischolar_main cause of failure and to take preventive action for avoiding forced outage.