Analysis of Platen Superheater Tube Degradation in Thermal Power Plants via Destructive/Non-Destructive Characteristic Evaluation

Coal-fired power plants operating under Korea’s standard supercritical pressure operate in a high-temperature environment, with steam temperatures reaching 540 °C. A standard coal-fired power plant has a 30-year design life, and lifespan diagnosis is performed on facilities that have operated for more than 100,000 h or 20 years. Visual inspection, thickness measurements, and hardness measurements in the field are used to assess the degree of material degradation at the time of diagnosis. In this study, aging degradation was assessed using an electromagnetic acoustic transducer to measure the change in transverse ultrasonic propagation speed, and the results were compared to microstructural analysis and tensile test results. Based on the experimental results, it was found that the boiler tube exposed to a high-temperature environment during long-term boiler operation was degraded and damaged, the ultrasonic wave velocity was reduced, and the microstructural grains were coarsened. It was also confirmed through tensile testing that the tensile and yield strengths increased with degradation. Our findings prove that the degree of change in mechanical properties as a function of the material’s degradation state is proportional to the change in ultrasonic wave velocity.

Efficiency of ultrasonic treatment of polysaccharide from brown algae

Ultrasonic exposure can be used for depolymerization of brown algae polysaccharides. However, its effectiveness depends on several factors, including cavitation activity in the treatment medium. Therefore, the purpose of the work was to determine the cavitation activity and the effectiveness of the ultrasonic exposure to fucoidan in order to optimize the processing processes of polysaccharide from brown algae. A change in cavitation activity was revealed depending on the composition of the processing environment, as well as on the intensity of ultrasonic exposure with a constant frequency of the ultrasonic wave. Similar dynamics of change of cavitation activity were established at the intensity of ultrasonic treatment of 100 and 133 W/cm2 with amplification of electric signal at the increase of ultrasound intensity. The use of SDS in the processing medium led to an increase in cavitation activity to 14.9±0.47 mV. Treatment of the fucoidan solution for 40 minutes under various conditions allowed to obtain fractions with a change in the average hydrodynamic particle diameter from 113 nm (100 W/cm2) to 85 nm (200 W/cm2) and 124 nm (SDS).