ENERGY CASE STUDY
ULTRA TECH PIPES IMPROVE PULVERIZED COAL BOILER SYSTEM
Dominion Energy is an American power and energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, supplying electricity and natural gas to 7 million customers in multiple states. Dominion Energy uses a pulverized coal-fired boiler system for its operations. CUSTOMER – DOMINION ENERGY
PROBLEM
SOLUTION
The boiler system needed a retrofit due to the extremely abrasive nature of the pulverized coal pneumatically conveyed through the system. As part of his due diligence, Greg Fynan of Stone & Webster, the service engineering-construction company hired to handle the retrofit, considered abrasion- resistant pipe and basalt-lined pipe.
Ultimately, Fynan decided the best solution was the Ultra Tech 600 pipe. “When you take everything into consideration, this induction- hardened, abrasion-resistant pipe was the way to go for this application,” adds Fynan.
Mild steel is inexpensive, but it’s not going to hold up over time,” says Fynan. “It isn’t less expensive in the long run because the labor costs to change a piping system are astronomical.
RESULTS
Dominion Energy was able to save money in the long run by using Ultra Tech 600 abrasion-resistant pipe. For a highly abrasive application such as pulverized coal, mild steel pipe is simply not tough enough to stand up to the abuse for more than a year or two, and would require significant maintenance cost and downtime. Basalt-lined pipe may last 15 years vs. 10 years for UT 600 under the same conditions, but the cost is almost 3 times higher than UT 600. “With a basalt-lined pipe you might get 15 years, maybe more, but the premium price wasn’t worth it — particularly when we would have had to redesign the entire system,” says Fynan. “It would have been a nightmare.”
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