IMI Critical Engineering has helped a 540MW Combined Cycle Power Plant (CCPP) in Austin, Texas, to improve its operational processes, increase plant safety, and greatly reduce plant failures with its new digital service. IMI Insyt is a digitally based prescriptive engineering service that prevents structural integrity issues such as cracks and leaks in pipes and equipment. It works to protect industrial processes by optimizing plant operations and minimizes costly and unexpected plant downtime.
The CCPP in Texas was experiencing equipment failures throughout the plant. Issues included cracked piping and repeated equipment issues within the Hot Reheat Bypass to Condenser application, leading to significant plant failures, expensive equipment replacements, and unplanned downtime.
As the Hot Reheat Bypass to Condenser protects the plant in the event of a steam turbine trip or failure and is used at the start-up of the plant, any failure or identified fault would lead to the plant being unable to start. In turn, this leads to a significant loss of profit.
To understand why the problems were occurring and to prevent failures in the future, the plant operators, already IMI Critical Engineering customers, implemented IMI Insyt following consultation with IMI valve experts.
The data-driven analytics used by IMI Insyt identifies operational problems, design faults, and inadequate maintenance. By rectifying these issues, plants can improve plant safety and performance before any catastrophic failures occur. The system is cloud-based and can be initiated remotely as well as on-site.
