Page 68 - Boiler_Operators_Handbook,_Second_Edition

Chapter 2

Boiler Plant Operations

your own procedures if they don’t exist and to check
We cheer the football quarterback that throws the them in the event they do.
winning touchdown, the baseball player that hits the
last inning home run and the jockey that rides the
leader over the finish line. Inside boiler plants around VALVE MANIPULATION
the country are other heroes. He demonstrates skill and
experience as he flawlessly lights off a boiler, brings it If it weren’t for the fact that piping systems are
up to pressure and puts it on line. That’s controlling normally built with generous safety factors I would
thousands of horsepower with explosive energy that ex- consider the operation of valves one of the most critical
ceeds the imagination of most of us. She moves swiftly skills for a boiler operator. It’s still a critical skill, there’s
to respond to a cacophony of alarms, swinging valve just other ways that you can kill yourself and other
handles and pressing buttons in a long practiced dance people more readily because the piping can take the
to restore operations to normal and the noise to the low punishment some of us manage to hand out. At some
roar we’re used to. time in your life as a boiler operator you’re bound to
If it were not for the experience, training, and skill discover this because you’ll be torn between standing
of today’s boiler operators we could be learning of the there and doing your job and running like hell because
thousands of accidents and significant number of inju- all the piping in the plant is shaking around and making
ries and loss of life that was normal a century ago. They banging sounds that make you think it’s going to blow
are operating equipment with a lower designed margin apart at any minute.
of safety and more complex limits on operation than After fifty years I’ve grown accustomed to it and
their predecessors ever dreamed of. start checking out the plant to find where the problem
Operations are covered in this chapter without originated while everyone else is running out the doors.
discussion about the equipment. That’s not true for That doesn’t mean that someday I won’t run, only that
operation of refrigeration systems, gas turbines, and I’ve experienced the normal hammering enough to
HRSGs where their operation is described along with know when the piping will survive… if I stop it in a rea-
the equipment in general and without the detail covered sonable period of time! Most of the time those banging
here. This chapter does, however, contain guiding infor- and shaking incidents are due to improper operation of
mation that can apply to those other systems so it’s wise a valve.
to read it again to see how it may relate to those other Sometimes the problem isn’t involved in operat-
systems after you’re familiar with them. ing the valve, it’s because it didn’t work or was left in
the wrong position. One such incident happened after
starting up a new boiler plant and while I was operat-
OPERATING MODES ing it during construction. Steam wasn’t needed at night
and I was the only one there so I just shut off the boilers,
There are many different modes of boiler plant opened a header drain and left the plant. The following
operation. The one normally dealt with is “normal morning as the boilers came up the whole main steam
operation” when the plant is generating steam (vapor) system started banging and thrashing about. After ev-
or heating water (fluid) and all the operator need do is erything quieted down again, which took a while, and
monitor it in the event something goes wrong. The other I ended up draining what seemed like an awful lot of
modes of operation require an operator act to change the water out of the header I finally realized the drain valve
condition of the plant. I opened the night before was plugged. A vacuum had
No book can provide a specific set of instructions built up in the system and drawn condensate into ev-
to perform those activities because every boiler plant is erything. After I dismantled the drain piping, cleaned
different. The following are guidelines to use for writing it, and the valve, I vowed I would make sure more than
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