Abstract
The “Coal Ash Corrosion Resistant Materials Testing Program” by The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the Ohio Coal Development Office (OCDO) at Reliant Energy's Niles plant provides full-scale in-situ testing of advanced boiler superheater materials to address fireside corrosion, a key issue for improving efficiency in new coal-fired plants and service life in existing ones. In 1998, B&W developed a system with three identical sections containing multiple segments of twelve different materials from contributors like Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), cooled by reheat steam and installed in 1999 above the furnace entrance in the Niles Plant 110 MWe Unit #1 firing high-sulfur Ohio coal to test materials at advanced supercritical steam temperatures (1100°F+) in corrosive conditions. The first section was evaluated after 29 months in 2001, the second in 2003, and the final section is expected for removal in 2005. This paper outlines the program, test system, and materials, and it presents the evaluation results for the first two sections.
