Daesan Power Plant Gets the Best of Both Worlds

Many companies throughout the oil and gas industry are familiar with CCI’s ability to solve severe service control valve problems by replacing outdated or problematic valves. Some, however, may not be aware of another CCI option – a customized valve retrofit. Such valve retrofit solutions allow customers to enjoy all the benefits of CCI’s DRAG® technology without shutting down their system or replacing their valve body.

Hyundai Heavy Industries’ Daesan Power Plant, located in South Korea , owned a 10-inch Hopkinson steam vent valve with a conventional silencer that was making quite a racket, generating noise levels in excess of 110 dBA. This excessive noise was disturbing those living in a neighboring village just one kilometer away. In addition, every time the silencer blew steam, it expelled the rust that had accumulated inside the silencer, covering the plant.

After analyzing the fossil power plant’s system, the engineering experts at CCI designed a solution that included both a retrofit of the Hopkinson two-stage valve and a replacement for the conventional silencer. CCI’s field service engineers visited the power plant to install DRAG® trim in the steam vent valve without removing the valve from Daesan’s system. The new valve trim was specially designed to meet the plant’s process requirements and features four stages of velocity control. This retrofit solution offered a cost-effective way for the customer to improve its system control and plant performance while keeping its existing valve body.

The best solution for the power plant’s problematic conventional silencer was a CCI replacement. Since Daesan has purchased DRAG® resistors from CCI in the past and is happy with their performance, the customer was confident that CCI’s technology would solve its current noise problems as well. In this case, CCI swapped the old the silencer with a customized DRAG® resistor featuring 26 right-angle turns to achieve superior control and reduce noise levels to less than 90 dBA. In fact, since installation of the DRAG ® resistor, Daesan has found the actual noise to be just 88 dBA – a huge noise level reduction of more than 20 dBA! In addition, the new resistor requires zero maintenance.

With its retrofitted steam vent valve and its brand-new DRAG® resistor, Daesan now boasts an improved control valve system that will not only ensure the power plant meets its noise requirements but also boost overall control and plant performance.

Published in SOLUTIONS Spring 2004