ACE Issue 40 2025 | Page 10

ENSURING POWER PLANT STARTUP READINESS

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON WITH VPCI ® PRESERVATION
Power plant chimneys spewing rust. Heat recovery steam generators( HRSGs) coughing out corrosion dust. Rusty replacement valves that cannot be installed. These are all signs of insufficient preservation leading to unexpected power plant downtime. With the price of lost revenue adding up quickly at an estimated several hundred thousand dollars an hour, an effective preservation plan is one of the easiest ways to minimize losses and promote maximum uptime to keep the lights on for customers. With nearly five decades of experience in corrosion control, Cortec ® Corporation shares how and why to ensure that critical power plant assets are kept rustfree for immediate startup.
Causes of Power Plant Downtime
Routine power plant maintenance often requires workers to take boilers and other critical equipment temporarily offline. During these times, rust can quickly form in cool damp boilers and other components, leaving them worse off at the end of maintenance and delaying startup until the problem can be solved. At other times, critical or operational spares and redundant boilers or turbines are stored as backups for the main operating equipment to ensure continued power generation even in the event of failure. However, if these assets are not properly preserved, they may become corroded by the time they are needed, at which point the workers must decide between installing potentially unreliable, unsafe equipment or extending downtime while a part is ordered or restored.
Ensuring Power Plant Readiness with Efficient Preservation
Vapor phase Corrosion Inhibitors( VpCIs) are a simple, yet powerful, way to preserve critical spares and mainline power plant equipment such as turbines,
10 AUTOMATION, CONTROL & ENGINEERING