The power plant industry produces electricity for people, businesses, and industries. To produce electricity efficiently, the stream flow, condensate, and heat exchange levels must be monitored and controlled. Many of the instruments that monitor these features incorporate quality compressed air to transfer information. Flow and level control are accomplished by air-operated valves (AOV’s), which require clean and dry compressed air. High-quality air prevents clogging of the small ports on instruments, controls, and AOV’s from debris, moisture, or oil.
Compressed air helps run the proper equipment that supports efficient productivity within the power plant. Smooth operation requires a system designed for easy on-site maintenance, with volume flows and pressure ranges tailored to the requirements of the power plant.
Compressors provide reliable operations for a wide variety of applications within a power plant. Each application brings an opportunity to reduce downtime and increase overall power efficiency.
- Purging Air: An air purge system is used to flush electrical control equipment with clean air before it is turned on. This ensures that the functionality of the equipment is not affected or damaged by surrounding contaminants.
- Cooling Turbines: Compressed air is used in the dry-cooling system to cool the steam exiting a turbine. Cooling the steam cools it back into water before it is reused to produce electricity.
- Fuel Gas Boosting: For natural gas-fired power plants, fuel gas boosters raise the natural gas pipeline pressure to the inlet pressure required by the gas turbine. Fuel gas boosters maintain a consistent discharge pressure to ensure a consistent supply of fuel gas. Compressed air provides efficient and reliable fuel gas boosting.
- Desulphurization: In power plants, a continuous flow of low-pressure air is used to remove sulfur dioxide from the exhaust flue gases. Pneumatic equipment ensures uninterrupted pollution control.
- Soot Blowing: A soot blower is a system that removes soot that is deposited on the furnace tube of a boiler. Compressed air is used as a medium for blowing away the soot.
- Silo fluidization: Fluidizing silo is suitable for the mixing of fluidizable bulk materials, used in batch operation. To achieve this, bulk material has compressed air flowing through it.
- Instrument and plant air: Power plants rely on air compressors to ease conveying and material handling along with governing air-operated control valves and cylinders.
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