23-22: Advanced Performance Monitoring Steam Surface Condensers

Steam surface condensers are a critical component for power generation efficiency. Their performance directly impacts generating capacity, heat rate, and ultimately influences the producer’s bottom line. Inefficient operation of steam surface condensers can lead to lost power production, increased fuel costs, a negative impact on the environment with increased carbon dioxide emissions, and reduced profitability. Online data collection and transmission to a data management platform while incorporating advanced cloud-based analytics empowers plant operators to accurately evaluate the performance of their steam surface condenser(s) and be more proactive. Additionally, it allows the operator to validate the efficacy of cooling performance and chemical treatment programs, make critical decisions to improve fuel and water consumption, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Condensers are complex heat exchanger systems with many correlated process variables.  As a result, it is generally difficult to discern minor reductions in efficiency with conventional monitoring techniques. Operators have traditionally relied on univariate approaches to monitor efficiencies such as condenser backpressure. These suboptimal methods involve manual compilation of data sets and estimates that can take days to process. Even so, these inefficiencies can be masked by market driven cyclic operation.  Losses can be significant and cumulative when the plant needs to sustain extended periods of dispatch.  Not all losses in performance are water related. However, all efficiency losses can increase energy consumption, generate excess greenhouse gas, and have a negative environmental impact. The use of online advanced analytics with normalization functionality and a modified statistical process control strategy allows operations to track cooling performance and clearly distinguish between common cause and special cause variation. Visual outputs from these tools in the form of a dashboard and reporting cadence through a cloud-based data management platform provides for 24-7 secure access to critical information. The improved speed of data collection, instantaneous analysis and remote access, enables plant operators to respond faster to issues and make informed data-driven decisions.