Results for “monitoring systems” — Page 60

NASA NTRS2016

Life Support and Environmental Monitoring International System Maturation Team Considerations.

Human exploration of the solar system is an ambitious goal. Future human missions to Mars or other planets will require the cooperation of many nations to be feasible. Exploration goals and concepts have been gathered by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) at a very high level, representing the overall goals and strategies of each participating space agency. The Global Exploration Roadmap published by ISECG states that international partnerships are part of what drives the the mission scenarios. It states "Collaborations will be established at all levels (missions, capabilities, technologies), with various levels of interdependency among the partners." To make missions with interdependency successful, technologists and system experts need to share information early, before agencies have made concrete plans and binding agreements. This paper provides an overview of possible ways of integrating NASA, ESA, and JAXA work into a conceptual roadmap of life support and environmental monitoring capabilities for future exploration missions. Agencies may have immediate plans as well as long term goals or new ideas that are not part of official policy. But relationships between plans and capabilities may influence the strategies for the best ways to achieve partner goals. Without commitments and an organized program like the International Space Station, requirements for future missions are unclear. Experience from ISS has shown that standards and an early understanding of requirements are an important part of international partnerships. Attempting to integrate systems that were not designed together can create many problems. Several areas have been identified that could be important to discuss and understand early: units of measure, cabin CO2 levels, and the definition and description of fluids like high purity oxygen, potable water and residual biocide, and crew urine and urine pretreat. Each of the partners is exploring different kinds of technologies. Different specific parameters may important to define or explore possible ranges depending on the system concepts. Early coordination between technology developers can create new possibilities for collaboration, and provide input to determine what combined options may provide the best overall system architecture.

Anderson, Molly↗

NASA NTRS2016

Life Support and Environmental Monitoring International System Maturation Team Considerations

Human exploration of the solar system is an ambitious goal. Future human missions to Mars or other planets will require the cooperation of many nations to be feasible. Exploration goals and concepts have been gathered by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) at a very high level, representing the overall goals and strategies of each participating space agency. The Global Exploration Roadmap published by ISECG states that international partnerships are part of what drives the mission scenarios. It states "Collaborations will be established at all levels (missions, capabilities, technologies), with various levels of interdependency among the partners." To make missions with interdependency successful, technologists and system experts need to share information early, before agencies have made concrete plans and binding agreements. This paper provides an overview of possible ways of integrating NASA, ESA, and JAXA work into a conceptual roadmap of life support and environmental monitoring capabilities for future exploration missions. Agencies may have immediate plans as well as long term goals or new ideas that are not part of official policy. But relationships between plans and capabilities may influence the strategies for the best ways to achieve partner goals. Without commitments and an organized program like the International Space Station, requirements for future missions are unclear. Experience from ISS has shown that standards and an early understanding of requirements are an important part of international partnerships. Attempting to integrate systems that were not designed together can create many problems. Several areas have been identified that could be important to discuss and understand early: units of measure, cabin CO2 levels, and the definition and description of fluids like high purity oxygen, potable water and residual biocide, and crew urine and urine pretreat. Each of the partners is exploring different kinds of technologies. Different specific parameters may important to define or explore possible ranges depending on the system concepts. Early coordination between technology developers can create new possibilities for collaboration, and provide input to determine what combined options may provide the best overall system architecture.

Anderson, Molly↗

DOE OSTI2022

A stilbene–strontium iodide based radioxenon detection system for monitoring nuclear explosions

Atmospheric measurement of noble gases has been extensively used for monitoring clandestine nuclear weapon explosions for many years. The ratios of four xenon isotopes of interest ( 131 mXe, 133 mXe, 133 Xe, and 135 Xe) help in discriminating regular reactor operations from nuclear tests. A new coincidence-based detection system using stilbene and strontium iodide [SrI 2 (Eu)] for electron and photon detection respectively was developed at Oregon State University to address some of the challenges of the radioxenon systems deployed in the field such as memory effect, and poor energy resolution. Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) were used for sensing optical photons from all scintillation media. Real-time coincidence identification was achieved using the eight-channel digital pulse processor. The detection system was evaluated using lab check sources and Oregon State TRIGA reactor irradiated radioxenon samples. A 48-hour background coincidence spectrum was collected yielding a coincidence count rate and background rejection rate of 0.0174 ± 0.0003 counts per second (cps) and 98.9% respectively. The minimum detectable concentration (MDC) of the system was evaluated to be 0.11 ± 0.01, 0.13 ± 0.02, 0.20 ± 0.02, and 0.73 ± 0.08 for 131 mXe, 133 mXe, 133 Xe, and 135 Xe respectively. The memory effect of the detection system was found to be 0.069 ± 0.015%, which is almost a 70-fold reduction compared to traditional plastic scintillators. Here, the detection elements, custom-designed electronics, and the detector response to radioxenon are detailed in this work.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2013

Award ER25750: Coordinated Infrastructure for Fault Tolerance Systems Indiana University Final Report

The main purpose of the Coordinated Infrastructure for Fault Tolerance in Systems initiative has been to conduct research with a goal of providing end-to-end fault tolerance on a systemwide basis for applications and other system software. While fault tolerance has been an integral part of most high-performance computing (HPC) system software developed over the past decade, it has been treated mostly as a collection of isolated stovepipes. Visibility and response to faults has typically been limited to the particular hardware and software subsystems in which they are initially observed. Little fault information is shared across subsystems, allowing little flexibility or control on a system-wide basis, making it practically impossible to provide cohesive end-to-end fault tolerance in support of scientific applications. As an example, consider faults such as communication link failures that can be seen by a network library but are not directly visible to the job scheduler, or consider faults related to node failures that can be detected by system monitoring software but are not inherently visible to the resource manager. If information about such faults could be shared by the network libraries or monitoring software, then other system software, such as a resource manager or job scheduler, could ensure that failed nodes or failed network links were excluded from further job allocations and that further diagnosis could be performed. As a founding member and one of the lead developers of the Open MPI project, our efforts over the course of this project have been focused on making Open MPI more robust to failures by supporting various fault tolerance techniques, and using fault information exchange and coordination between MPI and the HPC system software stack from the application, numeric libraries, and programming language runtime to other common system components such as jobs schedulers, resource managers, and monitoring tools.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS1985

Automation study for space station subsystems and mission ground support

An automation concept for the autonomous operation of space station subsystems, i.e., electric power, thermal control, and communications and tracking are discussed. To assure that functions essential for autonomous operations are not neglected, an operations function (systems monitoring and control) is included in the discussion. It is recommended that automated speech recognition and synthesis be considered a basic mode of man/machine interaction for space station command and control, and that the data management system (DMS) and other systems on the space station be designed to accommodate fully automated fault detection, isolation, and recovery within the system monitoring function of the DMS.

Source record↗

DOE OSTI2017

Real-Time Patient and Staff Radiation Dose Monitoring in IR Practice

PurposeKnowledge of medical radiation exposure permits application of radiation protection principles. In our center, the first dedicated real-time, automated patient and staff dose monitoring system (DoseWise Portal, Philips Healthcare) was installed. Aim of this study was to obtain insight in the procedural and occupational doses.Materials and MethodsAll interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons, and technicians wore personal dose meters (PDMs, DoseAware, Philips Healthcare). The dose monitoring system simultaneously registered for each procedure dose-related data as the dose area product (DAP) and effective staff dose (E) from PDMs. Use and type of shielding were recorded separately. All procedures were analyzed according to procedure type; these included among others cerebral interventions (n = 112), iliac and/or caval venous recanalization procedures (n = 68), endovascular aortic repair procedures (n = 63), biliary duct interventions (n = 58), and percutaneous gastrostomy procedure (n = 28).ResultsMedian (±IQR) DAP doses ranged from 2.0 (0.8–3.1) (percutaneous gastrostomy) to 84 (53–147) Gy cm{sup 2} (aortic repair procedures). Median (±IQR) first operator doses ranged from 1.6 (1.1–5.0) μSv to 33.4 (12.1–125.0) for these procedures, respectively. The relative exposure, determined as first operator dose normalized to procedural DAP, ranged from 1.9 in biliary interventions to 0.1 μSv/Gy cm{sup 2} in cerebral interventions, indicating large variation in staff dose per unit DAP among the procedure types.ConclusionReal-time dose monitoring was able to identify the types of interventions with either an absolute or relatively high staff dose, and may allow for specific optimization of radiation protection.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

DOE OSTI2017

Assessment of Aquifer Baseline Conditions at the Idaho National Laboratory Remote-Handled Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility

This document provides an analysis of radiologic concentrations in the aquifer and vadose zone near Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Remote-Handled Low-Level Waste (RH-LLW) disposal facility. This document identifies pre-existing sources of radiologic contaminants that could be transported to the aquifer near the RH-LLW disposal facility based on releases from nearby facility operations. It contains a summary of radionuclide concentration data in the upstream perched water and in the aquifer upstream and downstream of the RH LLW disposal facility in order to establish known variability from these pre existing radiologic sources. Using this historical data allows meaningful aquifer monitoring targets to be established for the RH-LLW disposal facility monitoring system (i.e., vadose zone wells and aquifer wells) to allow potential releases from the RH-LLW disposal facility to be distinguished from the pre existing sources of contaminants that are likely to be detected in the monitoring system.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

NASA NTRS2001

A Hybrid Numerical Analysis Method for Structural Health Monitoring

A new hybrid surface-integral-finite-element numerical scheme has been developed to model a three-dimensional crack propagating through a thin, multi-layered coating. The finite element method was used to model the physical state of the coating (far field), and the surface integral method was used to model the fatigue crack growth. The two formulations are coupled through the need to satisfy boundary conditions on the crack surface and the external boundary. The coupling is sufficiently weak that the surface integral mesh of the crack surface and the finite element mesh of the uncracked volume can be set up independently. Thus when modeling crack growth, the finite element mesh can remain fixed for the duration of the simulation as the crack mesh is advanced. This method was implemented to evaluate the feasibility of fabricating a structural health monitoring system for real-time detection of surface cracks propagating in engine components. In this work, the authors formulate the hybrid surface-integral-finite-element method and discuss the mechanical issues of implementing a structural health monitoring system in an aircraft engine environment.

Forth, Scott C.↗

DOE OSTI2020

Implementing Online Oscillation Monitoring and Forced Oscillation Source Locating at Peak Reliability

This paper introduces a framework of online oscillation monitoring systems and forced oscillation detection & source location tools that Peak Reliability ('PEAK') has implemented for the Reliability Coordinator (RC) function of the Western Interconnection. The framework consists of four main components: (1) Montana Tech's Modal Analysis Software (MAS) engine; (2) Washington State University's Oscillation Monitor System (OMS) software; (3) Forced Oscillation Detection and Source Location Algorithms (FODSL); and (4) PEAK in-house visualization tool and alarming logic built in PI Processbook. The framework has been validated and applied for real system oscillation studies successfully. Implementation experience and lessons learned will be discussed in the paper.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS2016

Using Unmanned Air Systems to Monitor Methane in the Atmosphere

Methane is likely to be an important contributor to global warming, and our current knowledge of its sources, distributions, and transport is insufficient. It is estimated that there could be from 7.5 to 400 billion tons carbon-equivalent of methane in the arctic region, a broad range that is indicative of the uncertainty within the Earth Science community. Unmanned Air Systems (UASs) are often used for combat or surveillance by the military, but they also have been used for Earth Science field missions. In this study, we will analyze the utility of the NASA Global Hawk and the Aurora Flight Sciences Orion UASs compared to the manned DC-8 aircraft for conducting a methane monitoring mission. The mission will focus on the measurement of methane along the boundaries of Arctic permafrost thaw and melting glaciers. The use of Long Endurance UAS brings a new range of possibilities including the ability to obtain long- term and persistent observations and to significantly augment methane measurements/retrievals collected by satellite. Furthermore, we discuss the future of long endurance UAS and their potential for science applications in the next twenty to twenty-five years.

Clow, Jacqueline↗

DOE OSTI2024

User Stories for PV Operations and Maintenance: Findings from the 2024 PVPMC Workshop

At the 2024 Photovoltaic (PV) Performance Modeling Workshop we collected user stories related to PV system monitoring, analytics, and operations and maintenance (O&M). In this context, user stories describe challenges with current practices and tools or imagining opportunities for improvements. From these user stories, we identified several near-term opportunities to improve photovoltaic system monitoring, analytics and O&M.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS2014

Exploration Technologies for Operations

Although the International Space Station (ISS) assembly has been completed, the Operations support teams continue to seek more efficient and effective ways to prepare for and conduct the ISS operations and future exploration missions beyond low earth orbit. This search for improvement has led to a significant collaboration between the NASA research and advanced software development community at NASA Ames Research Center and the Mission Operations community at NASA Johnson Space Center. Since 2001, NASA Ames Research Center has been developing and applying its advanced intelligent systems and human systems integration research to mission operations tools for several of the unmanned Mars missions operations. Since 2006, NASA Ames Research Center has also been developing and applying its advanced intelligent systems and human systems integration research to mission operations tools for manned operations support with the Mission Operations Directorate at NASA Johnson Space Center. This paper discusses the completion of the development and deployment of a variety of intelligent and human systems technologies adopted for manned mission operations. The technologies associated with the projects include advanced software systems for operations and human-centered computing. Human-centered computing looks to the processes and procedures that people do to perform any given job, then attempts to identify opportunities to improve these processes and procedures. In particular, for mission operations, improvements are quantified by specifically identifying how a tool can increase a persons efficiency, enhance a persons functional capability, andor improve the assurance of a persons decisions. The Ames development team has collaborated with the Mission Operations team to identify areas of efficiencies through technology infusion applications in support of the Plan, Train, and Fly activities of human-spaceflight mission operations. The specific applications discussed in this paper are in the areas of mission planning systems, mission operations design modeling and workflow automation, advanced systems monitoring, mission control technologies, search tools, training management tools, spacecraft solar array management, spacecraft power management, and spacecraft attitude planning. We discuss these specific projects between the Ames Research Center and the Johnson Space Centers Mission Operations Directorate, and how these technologies and projects are enhancing the mission operations support for the International Space Station. We also discuss the challenges, problems, and successes associated with long-distance and multi-year development projects between the research team at Ames and the Mission Operations customers at Johnson Space center. Finally, we discuss how these technology infusion applications and underlying technologies might be used in the future to support on-board operations of the crew and spacecraft systems as human exploration expands beyond low earth orbit to destinations in the solar system where communications delays will require more on-board autonomy and planning by the crew. Longer communications delays will require that the ground mission operations support will be primarily strategic in nature, while the tactical level of planning, systems monitoring and control, and failure analysisisolationrecovery will be the responsibility of both the spacecraft autonomous systems and the crew. Our expectation is that the technologies

mission operations↗

DOE OSTI2013

In Situ Decommissioning Sensor Network, Meso-Scale Test Bed - Phase 3 Fluid Injection Test Summary Report

The DOE Office of Environmental management (DOE EM) faces the challenge of decommissioning thousands of excess nuclear facilities, many of which are highly contaminated. A number of these excess facilities are massive and robust concrete structures that are suitable for isolating the contained contamination for hundreds of years, and a permanent decommissioning end state option for these facilities is in situ decommissioning (ISD). The ISD option is feasible for a limited, but meaningful number of DOE contaminated facilities for which there is substantial incremental environmental, safety, and cost benefits versus alternate actions to demolish and excavate the entire facility and transport the rubble to a radioactive waste landfill. A general description of an ISD project encompasses an entombed facility; in some cases limited to the blow-grade portion of a facility. However, monitoring of the ISD structures is needed to demonstrate that the building retains its structural integrity and the contaminants remain entombed within the grout stabilization matrix. The DOE EM Office of Deactivation and Decommissioning and Facility Engineering (EM-13) Program Goal is to develop a monitoring system to demonstrate long-term performance of closed nuclear facilities using the ISD approach. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has designed and implemented the In Situ Decommissioning Sensor Network, Meso-Scale Test Bed (ISDSN-MSTB) to address the feasibility of deploying a long-term monitoring system into an ISD closed nuclear facility.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

NASA NTRS2024

Former Central Heat Plant SWMU 045 Year 2 Air Sparge System Performance Monitoring Report

This Air Sparge (AS) Performance Monitoring (PM) Report (PMR) presents Year 2 operation, maintenance, and monitoring (OM&M) activities, PM results, and monitoring well installations supporting the AS Interim Measure (IM) at the Former Central Heat Plant (CHP) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. CHP has been designated Solid Waste Management Unit 045 under the KSC Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Corrective Action Program. An AS IM was installed at CHP between 2019 and 2021, which included the installation of an AS system to treat a chlorinated solvent groundwater plume. Contaminants of concern (COCs) identified at CHP for the AS IM include tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethene (TCE), cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cDCE), and vinyl chloride (VC). The completed AS system includes a network of 267 AS wells, which treat approximately 1.3 acres of contaminated groundwater. “Hot” compressor technology is used to treat the source zone, while a “cold” compressor is used to treat two hot spot (HS) areas (HS1 and HS2) and the high concentration plume (HCP). The AS system began operation in June-July 2021 and this document includes Year 2 of operation. The overall runtimes for the AS system for the Year 2 reporting period (October 2022 to September 2023) were approximately 69 percent for the cold trailer and 71 percent for the hot trailer. Air samples and vapor screening results collected during the reporting period showed concentrations less than applicable human health and air emissions permit criteria. Groundwater performance monitoring results show that AS treatment continues to be effective in reducing COC concentrations at CHP. At the shallow interval, COC concentrations were all non-detect, less than, or met their respective State of Florida Groundwater Cleanup Target Levels (GCTLs) at the end of Year 2 in September 2023. In the deep interval, 10 of the 15 PM wells detected COCs greater than their respective GCTLs, with two of these wells also exceeding the Natural Attenuation Default Concentration for VC. Based on Year 2 OM&M and PM results, continued operation of the AS system is required to meet the IM objective. It is therefore recommended to continue with AS IM operations at CHP with the following plan for Year 3.

Kevin Alex Murphy↗

DOE OSTI2021

High-Temperature Multi-Process Sensor Development for a PC-Fired Unit

The main objective of this research program is to design, manufacture, and demonstrate a miniaturized, multi-process, monitoring system (mMPMS) for boiler condition management and easy system deployment to obtain a higher spatial resolution. This system will facilitate a Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) philosophy that actively monitors the health of assets to predict and prevent failures and maximize availability and generating capacity at a reduced cost. CBM systems can provide boiler data that the advanced process control (APC) system can utilize for plant performance optimization, which is increasingly relevant as coal power plants shift from predominantly base-load operation to predominantly transient operation involving large load swings. The mMPMS is based on an electrochemical sensor that provides a real-time indication of the risk of damage to key locations in the radiant or convective section of a coal-fired boiler such as metal loss rates, heat flux, metal surface temperature, and deposit thickness. These indications can be utilized to optimize boiler performance as well as improve boiler availability in conjunction with corresponding operating conditions. This monitoring system was developed and tested in the high-temperature regions of coal-fired utility boilers in this project but can be applied to many other industries and applications as well. This project leveraged the existing electrochemical noise-based monitoring system and the new sensor design is small enough to be installed through the webbing of the waterwalls without the need for long shut-downs to bend tubes and to make it feasible to obtain high spatial resolution in the boiler. Data is transferred to the plant distributed control system (DCS) and any other control system. The sensor body that houses the sensor assembly was designed to ensure good conductive contact with boiler tubes to ensure the sensor is held at an identical temperature to the tube surface temperature. The data acquisition and signal conditioning modules were redesigned into a small footprint with optimized cooling of the module. System software was developed specifically for the new signal conditioning module and is compatible with plant PLCs. After the preliminary testing at a pilot-scale facility, the three mMPMS were installed at a full-scale pulverized coal-fired plant, PacifiCorp’s Hunter 3. The systems were demonstrated over 20,000 hours at the plant during regular operation. Also, the sensor data was fed to the plant’s advanced process control system to evaluate the corrosion control by the operation changes and utilized to understand the impacts of load cycling with different ramping up and down speeds. At the end of the project, the systems were converted to the permanent installation at the power plant to be used with the advanced process control system installed at the plant.

Advanced Sensors, Corrosion, Ash Deposition, Optim↗

DOE OSTI2022

Real-time sensor measurements to evaluate impacts of load cycling on high-temperature fire-side corrosion in a PC boiler

The main objective of this research program is to design, manufacture, and demonstrate a miniaturized, multi-process, monitoring system (mMPMS) for boiler condition management and easy system deployment to obtain a higher spatial resolution. This system will facilitate a Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) philosophy that actively monitors the health of assets to predict and prevent failures and maximize availability and generating capacity at a reduced cost. CBM systems can provide boiler data that the advanced process control (APC) system can utilize for plant performance optimization, which is increasingly relevant as coal power plants shift from predominantly base-load operation to predominantly transient operation involving large load swings. The mMPMS is based on an electrochemical sensor that provides a real-time indication of the risk of damage to key locations in the radiant or convective section of a coal-fired boiler such as metal loss rates, heat flux, metal surface temperature, and deposit thickness. These indications can be utilized to optimize boiler performance as well as improve boiler availability in conjunction with corresponding operating conditions. This monitoring system was developed and tested in the high-temperature regions of coal-fired utility boilers in this project but can be applied to many other industries and applications as well. This project leveraged the existing electrochemical noise-based monitoring system and the new sensor design is small enough to be installed through the webbing of the waterwalls without the need for long shut-downs to bend tubes and to make it feasible to obtain high spatial resolution in the boiler. Data is transferred to the plant distributed control system (DCS) and any other control system. The sensor body that houses the sensor assembly was designed to ensure good conductive contact with boiler tubes to ensure the sensor is held at an identical temperature to the tube surface temperature. The data acquisition and signal conditioning modules were redesigned into a small footprint with optimized cooling of the module. System software was developed specifically for the new signal conditioning module and is compatible with plant PLCs. After the preliminary testing at a pilot-scale facility, the three mMPMS were installed at a full-scale pulverized coal-fired plant, PacifiCorp’s Hunter 3. The systems were demonstrated over 20,000 hours at the plant during regular operation. Also, the sensor data was fed to the plant’s advanced process control system to evaluate the corrosion control by the operation changes and utilized to understand the impacts of load cycling with different ramping up and down speeds. At the end of the project, the systems were converted to the permanent installation at the power plant to be used with the advanced process control system installed at the plant.

Advanced Sensors, Corrosion, Ash Deposition, Optim↗

DOE OSTI2021

High-Temperature Multi-Process Sensor Development and Demonstration at Coalfired Power Plants

The main objective of this research program is to design, manufacture, and demonstrate a miniaturized, multi-process, monitoring system (mMPMS) for boiler condition management and easy system deployment to obtain a higher spatial resolution. This system will facilitate a Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) philosophy that actively monitors the health of assets to predict and prevent failures and maximize availability and generating capacity at a reduced cost. CBM systems can provide boiler data that the advanced process control (APC) system can utilize for plant performance optimization, which is increasingly relevant as coal power plants shift from predominantly base-load operation to predominantly transient operation involving large load swings. The mMPMS is based on an electrochemical sensor that provides a real-time indication of the risk of damage to key locations in the radiant or convective section of a coal-fired boiler such as metal loss rates, heat flux, metal surface temperature, and deposit thickness. These indications can be utilized to optimize boiler performance as well as improve boiler availability in conjunction with corresponding operating conditions. This monitoring system was developed and tested in the high-temperature regions of coal-fired utility boilers in this project but can be applied to many other industries and applications as well. This project leveraged the existing electrochemical noise-based monitoring system and the new sensor design is small enough to be installed through the webbing of the waterwalls without the need for long shut-downs to bend tubes and to make it feasible to obtain high spatial resolution in the boiler. Data is transferred to the plant distributed control system (DCS) and any other control system. The sensor body that houses the sensor assembly was designed to ensure good conductive contact with boiler tubes to ensure the sensor is held at an identical temperature to the tube surface temperature. The data acquisition and signal conditioning modules were redesigned into a small footprint with optimized cooling of the module. System software was developed specifically for the new signal conditioning module and is compatible with plant PLCs. After the preliminary testing at a pilot-scale facility, the three mMPMS were installed at a full-scale pulverized coal-fired plant, PacifiCorp’s Hunter 3. The systems were demonstrated over 20,000 hours at the plant during regular operation. Also, the sensor data was fed to the plant’s advanced process control system to evaluate the corrosion control by the operation changes and utilized to understand the impacts of load cycling with different ramping up and down speeds. At the end of the project, the systems were converted to the permanent installation at the power plant to be used with the advanced process control system installed at the plant.

Advanced Sensors, Corrosion, Ash Deposition, Optim↗

DOE OSTI2022

Full-scale Demonstration of Multi-process Sensor at a Cycling PC-fired Boiler

The main objective of this research program is to design, manufacture, and demonstrate a miniaturized, multi-process, monitoring system (mMPMS) for boiler condition management and easy system deployment to obtain a higher spatial resolution. This system will facilitate a Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) philosophy that actively monitors the health of assets to predict and prevent failures and maximize availability and generating capacity at a reduced cost. CBM systems can provide boiler data that the advanced process control (APC) system can utilize for plant performance optimization, which is increasingly relevant as coal power plants shift from predominantly base-load operation to predominantly transient operation involving large load swings. The mMPMS is based on an electrochemical sensor that provides a real-time indication of the risk of damage to key locations in the radiant or convective section of a coal-fired boiler such as metal loss rates, heat flux, metal surface temperature, and deposit thickness. These indications can be utilized to optimize boiler performance as well as improve boiler availability in conjunction with corresponding operating conditions. This monitoring system was developed and tested in the high-temperature regions of coal-fired utility boilers in this project but can be applied to many other industries and applications as well. This project leveraged the existing electrochemical noise-based monitoring system and the new sensor design is small enough to be installed through the webbing of the waterwalls without the need for long shut-downs to bend tubes and to make it feasible to obtain high spatial resolution in the boiler. Data is transferred to the plant distributed control system (DCS) and any other control system. The sensor body that houses the sensor assembly was designed to ensure good conductive contact with boiler tubes to ensure the sensor is held at an identical temperature to the tube surface temperature. The data acquisition and signal conditioning modules were redesigned into a small footprint with optimized cooling of the module. System software was developed specifically for the new signal conditioning module and is compatible with plant PLCs. After the preliminary testing at a pilot-scale facility, the three mMPMS were installed at a full-scale pulverized coal-fired plant, PacifiCorp’s Hunter 3. The systems were demonstrated over 20,000 hours at the plant during regular operation. Also, the sensor data was fed to the plant’s advanced process control system to evaluate the corrosion control by the operation changes and utilized to understand the impacts of load cycling with different ramping up and down speeds. At the end of the project, the systems were converted to the permanent installation at the power plant to be used with the advanced process control system installed at the plant.

Advanced Sensors, Corrosion, Ash Deposition, Optim↗