Abstract
The power generation industry's need to extend run times between scheduled outages and to control maintenance budgets has increased reliance on advanced wear protection technologies to lengthen equipment life while maintaining clean, quality power production. This paper summarizes field erosion experiments conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Power Plant on one of the plant's induced draft fans, testing several wear protection materials to reduce severe wear and extend intervals between planned outage cycles. Test results showed brazed tungsten carbide cladding's superiority in this extreme environment, successfully increasing the dirty gas fan run time from 5-8 months to over 30 months by cladding fan blades. Independent reviews of severe wear protection methods on low NOx burners and superheater boiler tubes with similar results are also presented.
