Thermowells for corrosive environments

Installing thermowells for corrosive environments can help you to eliminate failures between planned outages.

Recently, one of our orders for bespoke thermowells was complete and Brian, Vanessa and Neale had an opportunity to further increase our understanding of how these items are vital within the Waste to Energy market.

As well as being passionate about customer service we also like to improve our industry knowledge whenever possible.

These 2m long thermowells were made for a W2E plant to solve a problem with the existing thermowells regularly failing between planned outages. The environment that these units operate in is particularly corrosive. The material that the OEM units were made from wasn’t up to the task.

The customer provided us with a specification of the operating conditions; temperature and waste materials, in their boiler and a thermowell was designed to meet their demanding requirements. The material selected was a stocked exotic alloy. The cost of the alloy is more than other materials but not high when compared to the cost of unplanned outages due to failures.

The adjustable, multipiece design makes it simple for the customer to swap out the old thermowells for the new ones with minimum fuss.

Installing thermowells for corrosive environments can help you to eliminate failures between planned outages. At each planned outage, the thermowells can be inspected and assessed as to whether they need replacing at this time or whether they can be confidently left in place. The diameter of the thermowell can be measured to assess any deterioration due to corrosion or erosion. From the wear rate it’s possible to estimate the length in service and predict the optimum replacement cycle.

Cost of ownership is only partly down to the cost of the equipment installed in the W2E plant. More significant costs are incurred from unplanned outages reducing plant availability and capability to incinerate waste and generate power.

Posted: August 2022

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