GE Saves Power Plant 1.3M Gallons, $120,000 on Water Costs

GE corrosion inhibitor

by | Jul 23, 2015

This article is included in these additional categories:

GE corrosion inhibitorA gas-fired power plant in Russia saved 1.3 million gallons of water annually and reduced water consumption enough to save $120,000 annually by using General Electric’s AZ8101 corrosion inhibitor technology.

The power plant, TEC VAZ VoTGK, located in the Samara area of the Volga region of Russia, also decreased the rate of copper corrosion by 20 times and reduced the amount of copper being discharged into the Volga River by four times.

“Our operational costs had been rising and we were being charged a penalty for discharging water with a high copper concentration. GE’s AZ8101 corrosion inhibitor allowed us to save $120,000 a year in cooling costs and to experience a 20-fold reduction in admiralty brass corrosion rates. Now our Volga power plant’s cooling systems run more smoothly,” said Vadim Nikolaev, director and chief engineer, TEC VAZ VoTGK.

The TEC VAZ VoTGK plant provides power, heating and hot water to the Volga automotive plant and a nearby city. The power plant consists of 14 boilers and 11 turbines, surface condensers made from admiralty brass and two open evaporative cooling systems provide the cooling to the steam condensers and auxiliary equipment.

The makeup water for both cooling systems is raw water taken directly from the Volga River, and blowdown from the cooling systems is discharged back to the river.

Previously, the cooling systems were untreated, which resulted in high copper corrosion rates and the plant operated the cooling systems at low cycles of concentration to reduce the discharge penalty caused by the high copper concentrations within the effluent.

To reduce the copper corrosion rates, GE added its inhibitor AZ8101 to the cooling systems along and implemented a monitoring program to gauge the effectiveness of the cooling water treatment upgrade. The new monitoring program included copper corrosion monitoring with the use of pre-weighed admiralty brass corrosion coupons, copper analysis within the recirculating water and residual azole monitoring.

Last month GE announced that a natural gas development platform in the Gulf of Thailand has saved $52 million per year and significantly reduced water usage and chemical consumption with help from GE’s advanced cooling and chemical treatment technology.

 

Additional articles you will be interested in.

Stay Informed

Get E+E Leader Articles delivered via Newsletter right to your inbox!

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Share This