Waste-to-energy plants experienced boiler tube failures when the design changed from waste-heat boilers to radiant furnace waterwalls with superheat, adopted from coal-firing technology. The fireside attack by chlorine and sulfur compounds in the refuse combustion products caused many forced outages in early European plants with high steam temperatures and pressures. In spite of conservative steam conditions in the first U.S. plants, some failures occurred. As steam temperatures increased in later U.S. plants, corrosion problems multiplied. Over the years these problems have been alleviated by covering the waterwalls with either refractories or weld overlays of nickel-base alloys and using high nickel-chromium alloys for superheater tubes. Various changes in furnace design to provide uniform combustion and avoid reducing conditions in the waterwall zone and to lower the gas temperature in the superheater also have helped to minimize corrosion.

Subject
Corrosion failures, Stainless alloys, Impingement, Tubes, Walls, Silicon carbide, Flue gas, Furnaces, Flame, Waterwalls, Boilers, Steam, Alloys
Keywords:
boilers, combustion gases, ferrous alloys, hot corrosion, mass-burning, nickel-base alloys, refuse-derived fuels, rotary combustor, superheater, waste-to-energy
© 1995 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
1995
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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