Alstom applies AmStar 888® coating at Wuppertal-Elberfeld power plant to reduce maintenance costs

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Image: AmStar Elberfeld

Alstom has been commissioned by WSW Energie & Wasser AG to apply AmStar 888® coating in the boiler of the Wuppertal-Elberfeld co-generation power plant. The coating is designed to protect materials under high thermal strain from erosion, particularly evaporator tubes and membrane walls. The planned plant downtime in July 2014 lasted four weeks, and the AmStar 888® application took only seven days.

Wear and tear occurs in fluidized bed vessels due to erosion caused by the flue gas in the burning of coal (85%) and a substitute fuel (15%). AmStar 888® coating can be applied in a scalable manner because it needs almost no inner mechanical tension, and can thus be adapted to customer requirements as well as degree of erosion on different pressure parts. According to laboratory values [1] the patented erosion-resistant material is approximately five times more resistant than the conventional steel used in the manufacture of pressure parts. This reduces downtimes and maintenance costs in the overall life time of a power plant.  At the end of the outage time, the coating can be re-applied seamlessly to required points with a variable thickness.

AmStar 888® impresses due to its individual scalability and a short application time, and the material can be repeatedly re-applied. This allows us to support our customers in reducing the downtimes of their power plants and minimising maintenance costs, says Armin Fieber, Head of Boiler Service at ALSTOM Power GmbH in Stuttgart.

At present, half of all power plants in Germany are over 30 years old. As a result, services for existing power plants are becoming ever more important in order to increase service life, reduce costs and increase efficiency.

[1] Special Metals Welding Products, 1401 Burris Road, 28658 Newton, NC, USA