Abstract
The unusual effects of plasma sprayed coating on the fire-side of evaporator tubes located in an oil-fired steam generating boiler are discussed. The main heat transfer surfaces are constructed by heat exchanger tubes, evaporator tubes and superheaters. Maintenance to prevent of the boiler failure or the preserve heat exchanger effectiveness is a very important factor in the operation of boiler facilities. In a boiler which employs heavy gravity oil as a fuel, plasma sprayed Ni-Cr alloy has often been applied to boiler tubes for the relief of hot corrosion by combustion gas. However, the circulation of boiler water causes an internal deposit to form on the inner wall of evaporator tubes. The internal deposit generates excess heat load against the tubes. As the overheating of the tubes often causes the evaporator tubes to fail, they are chemically cleaned periodically. In this paper, the influence of Ni-Cr plasma sprayed coating for the heat flux, which dominates the formation of the internal deposit, is investigated. Ni-Cr plasma sprayed coating is substitutionally hot corrosion resistant and is a composite coating into which the fuel ash containing a vanadium or sulfur compound are interstitially penetrated and solidified. It is derived that the existence of the coating on the fire-side of the evaporator tubes normalizes the heat load in their inner walls. Moreover, the suppression of internal deposit formation decreases the frequency of chemical cleaning for tubes. The dual effects of plasma sprayed coating for hot corrosion resistance in the fire side and the suppression of internal deposit on the water side of the tubes are reported.
