A Novel Boiler Ash Deposit Removal System

Pratt & Whitney has developed a novel boiler cleaning product based on pulse detonation combustion to efficiently remove ash deposits from coal-fired power plants as well as other industrial boiler applications. This new product, the SHOCKSystem™, offers significant advantages relative to conventional boiler cleaning methodology, including a likely reduction of erosion wear, as well as non-line-of-sight cleaning while online, which not only enhances overall plant performance but also enables a reduction and/or elimination of plant outages caused by fouling. As a result, the online detonation cleaning method has been shown to save millions of dollars in annual power generation costs for the typical coal-fired utility boiler. This paper briefly describes the pulse detonation cycle, presents the new online detonation cleaning method, and discusses demonstrated plant performance improvements and power generation cost savings using this method.