Successful safety valves retrofit at power station

Rotork Australia has successfully completed a retrofit project on two sets of critically important power station safety valves within a short and challenging timescale.

Rotork Australia has successfully completed a retrofit project on two sets of critically important power station safety valves within a short and challenging timescale.

The project involved two 9" high pressure boiler stop valves, with associated bypass valves, at the Anglesea Power Station on the coast of Victoria.

The valves cut off the steam supply to the turbine generators if there is a problem with the boilers.

The exposed location of the valves, situated high up on the power station structure and overlooking the ocean, was proving to be too demanding for the valvemaker's proprietary electric actuators and their separate motor control cabinets.

Corrosion problems caused by salt water in the atmosphere were threatening the reliable electrical operation of the valves, which would result in potentially serious damage and interruption to the station's power generation activity.

Rotork Australia offered IQ intelligent valve actuators as a neater and better engineered valve control solution to replace the old actuators and their separate motor control cabinets.

With their double-sealed IP68 watertight enclosures, integral controls and 'non-intrusive' commissioning and maintenance technology, IQ actuators are inherently designed to withstand demanding and exposed operating environments.

In addition, their modern, compact construction simplifies and speeds up retrofitting operations.

This was a very important consideration at Anglesea, where the work could only be carried out during a ten day routine maintenance shutdown period.

The station's operators were relying on Rotork to complete all the work, including sizing, designing and fabricating new valve adaptation, removing old and fitting new actuators, wiring up and commissioning within this strict timescale.

Rotork's ability to successfully achieve the target has won praise from the operators, who have been able to restart generating activities on time with the assurance that their plant is now reliably protected against unforeseen boiler and steam problems.

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