Outage addendum 2

 "What the superior man seeks is in himself.  What the small man seeks is in others." - Confucius

 I suppose you are wondering why I am able to find time for a post on a Monday morning...  And the answer to that is that I have fallen ill, and took the day off in order to avoid infecting my colleagues.

One of my co-workers went to Boise to see his niece graduate from Boise State University, and came home with the sniffles - which turned out to be Covid-19.  I also have the sniffles, fever, chills, cough, runny nose, sneezing, and digestive issues due to post-nasal drip.  

I've tested twice with a sinus swab, but the test has returned negative results both times.  It's probably Covid though.  Fortunately the symptoms developed late on Friday, so while it ruined the weekend and mother's day to a certain extent, I won't miss a lot of work over it.  Perhaps today and tomorrow.  The fever has already broken, so that's awesome.  I only feel 25% worse than normal now :)

The outage has been rolling along and we are in a quiet period awaiting the arrival of parts - either new or from repair shops.  That's part of the problem with opening up machinery that's been in service for the better part of a decade.  There are things you expect to find wrong, and things that you don't expect to find.  And when you find the unexpected, you better start jumping through hoops like a trained dog, so that the outage doesn't get extended beyond the planned length.

Enough about the maintenance manager though.  I have more pictures!

 Below:  Installing insulation on the steam turbine generator end turn windings that were previously brazed.

Below is an image of the steam turbine generator stator end-turn windings, just prior to insulation baking.  Inside the generator core is a thermal shield, which traps heat at the end of the machine.  The bake is a 48 hour process, where they ramp to 200 degrees C over 12 hours, hold it there for 24 hours, then ramp down for 12 hours.

The thermal shield has the nickname of "Madonna Bra"

Following the bake, the windings are sprayed with a semi-conductive red paint.  The reason that semi-conductive paint is used is to minimize partial discharge.  When high voltage conductors are insulated, the outside of the insulation can become slightly charged, which can lead to arcing and insulation failure.  If you spray slightly conductive paint, this partial discharge has a path to go to ground without arcing and burning the insulation

Below:  The final product!  We are still awaiting the return of the rotating part from the factory, and meanwhile this is covered with sheets of FME (foreign material exclusion) barrier.

Below:  At the turbine end, the High Pressure turbine is back together, with the upper shell in place and the bolts have been stretched to the correct value by subcontractors.

The IP section of the turbine still needs some work (thus the cute doggy video), so it will remain apart until the repairs have been made.

Below:  The generator team is demobilizing.  One of the two bake ovens is being lowered down to be wheeled into the transport container.  There was a bake oven on each end of the generator.

Meanwhile in operations, our guys have also been busy doing the not so glamorous jobs

Insurance wanted us to perform a "Carbon Dioxide Diffusion Test".  Which in real life means activate the fire suppression system and monitor Carbon Dioxide levels for 30 minutes.  Nobody was thrilled with the idea, since people could get asphyxiated if things went wrong, but we had to do it.

Or cleaning the gas turbine inlet vanes.

Or doing the cathodic protection PMs on the cooling tower riser valve bolts.

Removing the old steam drum door gaskets in order to install new ones and close the doors.  In previous years, that was me in there.

Washing down the circulating water pump suction screens, and other fun clean up chores.

Everything is going well enough.  The outage has been extended by a week due to some unforeseen issues with the replacement generator rotor parts - the first two batches of which that arrived at the factory were defective.  Hopefully things get lined out well and we have an uneventful start up.