Amerens Labadie station consists of 4 coal fired 600 megawatt size generating units. Unit 1 installed water cannon furnace cleaning devices during a spring outage this year. Water cannons were selected to clean the deposits that result from combustion of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal at the Labadie power plant. This paper describes the evaluation of methods of cleaning furnace walls and the selection, installation, and startup experience with water cannons. Cleaning the furnace results in an increase in boiler efficiency that is translated into improved heat rate and improved cost of plant operation. Benefits from water cannon installation are described along with the problems encountered. PRB fuel combustion results in tenacious deposits that inhibit heat transfer on furnace walls. PRB coal typically has a lower ash fusion temperature than bituminous coals which leads to ash slag formation in furnaces that have been changed to PRB from the fuel the boiler was originally designed for. Often the deposit from PRB fuel is of a minimal thickness, however the reflectivity of the deposit creates a high barrier to radiant heat transfer. High Furnace Exit Gas Temperature (FEGT) indicates poor heat transfer in the furnace area and this increases the formation of slag in convection passes. Cleaning of furnace surface is critical to maximizing the heat absorption of the furnace and reducing the FEGT. The increased clean capability of the water cannons compared to existing wall blowers will be compared in this paper.

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) utilizing solid and unconventional liquid fuels has now reached commercial stage as evidenced by their world wide construction and successful operation. The proposed ASME Performance Test Code 47 (PTC47) provides the users and owners of these new power plants, the guidance and procedures on conducting a performance test and evaluate the deviation from the performance guarantees. This paper reports the use of PTC47 codes in evaluating the test correction factors for the Wabash River IGCC Power Plant.

This paper presents methods and practices of improving heat rate through testing and, most importantly, through heat rate monitoring. This work was preformed at Portland General Electric’s 585 MWe Boardman Coal Plant, which used two very different Powder River Basin and Utah coals ranging from 8,100 to over 12,500 Btu/lbm. Such fuel variability, common now among coal-fired units was successfully addressed by Boardman’s on-line monitoring techniques. Monitoring has evolved over the past ten years from a Controllable Parameters approach (offering disconnected guidance), to a systems approach in which fuel chemistry and heating value are determined on-line, their results serving as a bases for Second Law analysis. At Boardman on-line monitoring was implemented through Exergetic System’s Input/Loss Method. Boardman was one of the first half-dozen plants to fully implement Input/Loss. This paper teaches through discussion of eight in-plant examples. These examples discuss heat rate improvements involving both operational configurations and plant components: from determining changes in coal chemistry and composite heating value on-line; to recognizing the impact of individual rows of burners and pulverizer configurations; to air leakage identifications; to examples of hour-by-hour heat rate improvements; comparison to effluent flows; etc. All of these cases have applicability to any coal-fired unit.