Understanding boiler tube failures and the life cycle management in the South Africa coal fired power generation industry

South Africa depends significantly on thermal power generation from coal fired power stations. The high demand for electricity has strained the power utility’s ability to perform maintenance on the power plants. The postponement of planned outages and the fact that most of the power plants have reached mid-life span, increases the risk of performance failures of the power plants. Boiler Tube Failures is one of the major reasons for forced outages in coal fired power plants. The paper focuses on background information regarding boiler tube failures and the corresponding failure mechanisms. The cost associated with maintenance activities, due to downtime is power plants is preposterous. The paper further explores factors that can reduce Boiler Tube Failures in power plants, hence a reduction in downtime. It is of utmost importance to the engineering manager to reduce the downtime. The research methodology adopted in this study is the review of industry data that is available within the South African power generation industry. The data is collected directly from the power utility’s database for analysis. The findings of the study illustrate that various continuous improvement process methodologies can be initiated in order to reduce the number of boiler tube failures. There were 169 boiler tube failures across 14 coal fired power stations in 2017. Boiler tube failures were the second highest contributor to plant breakdowns in 2015, contributing 33.53% (1847MW) of the total megawatts lost due to breakdowns. The power utility has a poor performing fleet of power stations.