Problem
One of America’s largest power generation and retail electricity businesses, located in Western Pennsylvania, faced the challenge of cleaning the company’s air heaters, while not dispersing water as it had historically done in previous air heater cleanings.
EPA regulations mandated that the plant reduce its settling ponds from three to one. The power plant’s goal was to perform an air heater wash during its 24-hour outage while minimizing generated waste. This challenge was compounded by the cleaning process of filtering fly ash water, which by nature is difficult to reclaim.
Solution
The power plant turned to MPW to provide its proprietary cleaning solution technologies for its April outage. Utilizing this proprietary process, MPW completed a thorough cleaning of the air heater units.
MPW employed its versatile air heater tooling solution, which utilizes multiple cleaning heads with scalable cleaning nozzles to adjust for pressure and flow to meet exacting project requirements.
Additionally, MPW utilized its mobile filtration system unit to both provide filtered water to the job site and to reclaim fly ash water. This integrated solution provided the power plant a one-stop total cleaning solution.
Results
MPW was successful at reducing the amount of waste generated during the air heater wash.
Utilizing MPW automated technologies, the air heaters were cleaned more efficiently and safely than using traditional methods. The fly ash fed water ranged from 60-800 NTU, and MPW’s mobile filtration unit achieved a less than 1.0 effluent NTU quality during the entire project.
The efficiency of the MPW mobile filtration system allowed MPW water blasting equipment to operate nearly uninterrupted during the entire air heater wash project.
The project was completed on time and within the 24-hour window that the power plant specified.