QuickTrak’s ™ Precision Pays off at Cedar Bay Cogen

In addition to selling electricity to Florida Power and Light (FP&L), the Cedar Bay Cogeneration plant located near Jacksonville Florida supplies steam to its next-door neighbor, Smurfit Stone Container Corporation’s cardboard mill. With a significant portion of Cedar Bay’s revenue based upon its dependable delivery of high-quality steam to the paper mill (up to 215,000 pounds / 97,000 kg of export steam every hour), the plant’s turbine-extraction steam system is a key component that must perform perfectly.

However, the cogeneration plant’s previous (competitor) bypass valve and actuator were not performing well, with the valve position fluctuating continuously in response to the digital control system. This irregularity resulted in erratic steam flow, and it became difficult to quantify the amount of steam delivered to the end user.

With CCI equipment performing extremely well in other applications at Cedar Bay (see “Cedar Bay and CCI are on a Roll,” click here), the customer decided to install a CCI DRAG® steam valve with state-of-the-art QuickTrak™ actuation on this critical extraction steam to process application.

CCI’s QuickTrak™ is a technologically unique valve actuation system featuring a pneumatic digital valve controller. This all-in-one design combines a microprocessor-based control system and a valve positioning device ensuring dependable pneumatic actuator control for fast stroking and exacting valve positioning applications. In addition to a compact design, easy system t uning and diagnostics, high capacity, and unmatched stroke speed and resolution, the QuickTrak™ system offers absolute precision.

With its new DRAG® valve and QuickTrak™ actuator, Cedar Bay now provides a stable and consistent steam flow to, Smurfit Stone. In the customer’s own words, “The new valve and actuator assembly has performed flawlessly!” In fact, Cedar Bay is so confident in the new CCI equipment, that they have linked the actuator position signal to a “real-time” data acquisition system, using the actuator position as a basis to generate an invoice to Smurfit Stone for actual steam delivered.

With a reliable valve and actuator allowing Cedar Bay to sell more steam and keep track of the export steam delivered to Smurfit Stone, these efficient and accurate CCI components allowed Cedar Bay to immediately and directly boost its bottom line. According to the customer, “The DRAG® valve with QuickTrak™ actuation helped Cedar Bay to generate revenue on the very day it was commissioned!”

Published in SOLUTIONS Fall 20004