Introduction on KPS's maintenance experience of the swirl vane assemblies of primary separators for SG model F in Korea

Recently, we had experienced to replace the Swirl Vane Assemblies of primary moisture separator for SG model F in Korea because of serious degradation (Thinning) in carbon steel swirl vane blades and carbon steel separator barrel wall adjacent to swirl vane blades. When the symptom was observed by us at the first time on the swirl vane assemblies, there were small or a bit clear erosion / or corrosion marks on the edge regions of the blades but within 3 cycles of operation, we found that those marks became holes which penetrated the most of swirl vane assemblies and even more seriously, some parts of the assemblies were worn-out. Therefore, we concluded that the speed of degradation would be very rapid and serious from the beginning stage. It had been assumed that these kinds of thinning problems would be due to FAC(Flow Accelerated Corrosion) because the plants having these problems are using a highly concentrated hydrazine for the water treatment of secondary side which lead to reduce the oxygen and pH in the water. What are more serious reasons will be that the swirl vane assemblies are very weak to FAC because they were made by a low concentrated chromium carbon steel and the assemblies would have to be under the operation conditions of the highly turbulent steam-water mixed fluid with the operating temperature of higher than 280 .deg. C. Potentially, the damaged swirl vane assemblies of the primary moisture separator may create bad influences for the plant operation because it may cause the rupture of SG Tubes and over-exceed fluid influx onto the turbine and etc. KPS had successfully performed the replacement of the degraded swirl vane assemblies through our own planning and preparation. This was the unique case in all over the world and I would like to introduce you about our unique repair experience to prepare an expected future situation as we see the similar problems in other model F SGs operating in Korea