Faced with deregulation, increasing retail competition, and pressures to keep boilers on-line, many coal fired power generating stations have adopted business strategies centered on increasing unit availability, reliability and increasing the operational life of critical equipment. However, boiler tubes failures continue to be the number one cause of forced outages in fossil plants today. These costly forced outages are responsible for an estimated 6% overall loss of unit availability. One of the major causes for premature tube failure is excessive fireside boiler tube erosion caused by the impact, cutting action, and abrasive wear of fly ash entrained flue gases undercutting the area they strike. This report will discuss the results of several comprehensive laboratory analyses comparing a wide variety of wear resistant materials for the protection of high erosion prone fireside boiler tubes as well as verification of laboratory analyses in actual field trials. The report also includes: the primary instigators of boiler tube failure by erosion, a discussion of erosion and its variables, and high temperature erosion testing procedures and results.
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