The “Hurry up” Pace for Flow Control and Treatment

Jeffrey Immelt of GE has called upon industry to adopt the same “hurry up” pace endemic to Silicon Valley.  This statement was made in conjunction with the initiative to maximize the value of information communicated by machines.  This information can be used to improve operations and maintenance.  GE outlines impressive advantages of massive machine to machine communication.  This leads to speculation that the information generated by pumps, valves, fans, etc. could be worth more than the equipment itself.

McIlvaine is currently conducting a series of webinars for a large U.S. utility which is considering optimization systems offered by GE, Siemens, Emerson, Doosan and others. Better machine communication can contribute a NOx reduction of more than 10 percent. However, since the utility needs to achieve at least 70 percent reduction at four plants, optimization will only be part of the strategy.   It now appears that the most cost effective solution is a combination of five or more technologies.

For this specific project the solution could involve the GE NeuCo optimization system in Massachusetts, the GE combustion (CE) in Connecticut, the GE (formerly Betz) treatment chemicals in Pennsylvania and the GE (formerly Alstom/CE) scrubbing technologies (Tennessee and Sweden) along with changes in wastewater treatment and maybe even ZLD as furnished by the GE water groups in Minnesota, Washington and other areas. The utility has to determine the best interaction of all these technologies.  GE also has to maximize the communication among its own technology providers who, as previously independent companies, are not part of a seamless operation.

The series of webinars using the McIlvaine Global Decisions Orchard http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/Decision_Tree/subscriber/Tree/Default.htm  is demonstrating the value of organization and decisive classification but also a “hurry up” pace through the power of the wise crowd.  The utility will likely choose a unique combination of technologies which had not been envisioned at the beginning of the two-month webinar series.  Unexpected input from many different sources has made a major contribution to the likely choice.

The Wikipedia entry for the wise crowd provides the following criteria:

Wise Crowd Criteria

Criteria

Description

Diversity of opinion

Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.

Independence

People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.

Decentralization

People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.

Aggregation

Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

All these criteria have been met with the webinar and Decision Guide approach used on this project.  McIlvaine intends to take full advantage of the wise crowd in the future.

For more information on the specific Decision Guides being used by power plants for flow and treatment decisions, click on:

44I Power Plant Air Quality Decisions

59D Gas Turbine and Combined Cycle Decisions

For more input on how wise crowd initiatives will be used to help various suppliers, click on:

N028 Industrial Valves: World Market

N019 Pumps World Market

N027 FGD Market and Strategies 

N035 NOx Control World Market

N026 Water and Wastewater Treatment Chemicals: World Market

N020 RO, UF, MF World Market  

Utility E-Alert Tracks Billions of Dollars of New Coal-fired Power Plants on a Weekly Basis

Here are some headlines from the Utility E-Alert.

UTILITY E-ALERT

#1288 – September 2, 2016

Table of Contents

COAL – US

·       NRG’s Limestone Electric Generating Station to switch to Cleaner Coal

·       Southwest Research Institute will lead $3.3 Million Oxy-Combustion Pilot Plant Study

·       Environmentalists win lawsuit against E. D. Edwards Coal-fired Power Plant in IllinoisSponsored by

·       NRG Penalized for Faulty Wastewater Treatment at Maryland Coal-fired Power Plants

·       Major Coal Waste cleanup Project at Clinch River in Southwest Virginia

·       Revision of State Permits will trigger ELG Expenditures

COAL – WORLD

 

·       PLN calls for Tender to build Two Power Plants

·       Indonesia Cirebon 2 Coal-fired Power Project appoints Black & Veatch as Consultants

·       Hollysys wins Contract to provide Proprietary Distributed Control System for Ultra-Supercritical Coal-fired Power Generating Units to Fujian Luoyuanwan

·       Dutch must close Older Coal-fired Power Plants to meet Energy Targets

The 41F Utility E-Alert is issued weekly and covers the coal-fired projects, regulations and other information important to the suppliers. It is $950/yr. but is included in the $3020 42EI Utility Tracking System which has data on every plant and project plus networking directories and many other features.

Upcoming Hot Topic Hours

      DATE

HOT TOPIC HOUR AND DECISION GUIDE SCHEDULE

The opportunity to interact on important issues

 September 8, 2016
11:30am CDT

PacifiCorp Webinar 5 on front end NOx reduction - Review of options for NOx reduction including combustion modifications, reburn, SNCR, and optimization with review of previous presentations of Emerson, Doosan, Siemens and GE.  A number of case histories, now being posted to PPAQD, will also be reviewed. Summaries of phone calls to end users may also be included.

TBA

Markets

FoodAnalysis of 12 separate applications within food and beverage with analysis of valve, pump, compressor, filter, analyzer and chemical options; impact of new technologies such as forward osmosis.

TBA

Markets

Municipal Wastewater - Quality of pumps, valves, filters, and analyzers in Chinese and Asian plants; new pollutant challenges; water purification for reuse.

TBA

Markets

Mobile Emissions -Reduction in CO, VOCs, and particulate in fuels, oils, and air used in on and off road vehicles; impact of  RDE and failure of NOx traps and the crisis in Europe created by the focus on clean diesel.

Click here to Register for the Webinars

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Bob McIlvaine
President
847-784-0012 ext 112
rmcilvaine@mcilvainecompany.com
www.mcilvainecompany.com