The following is a small selection of items recently published by EPRI. To view complete lists of your company-funded research reports, updates, software, training announcements, and other program deliverables, log in at www.epri.com and go to Program Cockpits.
One proposed option for reducing fossil power plant CO₂ emissions involves capturing them for use in producing chemicals, fuels, and other commercial products. This study describes the mechanisms, R&D status, and technical hurdles of CO₂ conversion and use.
This collaborative study by EPRI and Tennessee Valley Authority evaluated five analytical approaches that could be used by electric companies and others to calculate avoided CO2 emissions from industrial end-use energy efficiency projects. Researchers used the approaches to compare avoided emissions from two hypothetical efficiency projects in the U.S. Southeast.
During power plant startup and shutdown, condensation occurs in the high-pressure superheaters and reheaters of heat recovery steam generators, and many drain systems inadequately remove the condensate, resulting in severe fatigue and cracking on superheaters, reheaters, headers, and piping. This report is intended to help steam generators owners to evaluate, maintain, and retrofit ineffective drain systems, which in turn can reduce component failures and increase plant reliability.
This report discusses the results of two projects aimed at improving options for mercury and toxics control at coal-fired plants: (1) tests on a screening protocol for mercury capture sorbents at American Electric Power's H.W. Pirkey plant; and (2) tests on two dry sorbent injection technologies to reduce sulfur dioxide (duct sorbent injection and furnace sorbent injection) at Great River Energy’s Stanton Station.
When a fossil power plant’s retirement date is set, the maintenance philosophy changes from one of indefinite operation to one of end-of-life management. Aimed at operators of plants with known shutdown schedules, this report provides guidance to develop end-of-life maintenance strategies for turbines, generators, and auxiliary systems, supporting availability while conserving resources.
New U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules require power plants with cooling water intake withdrawals of more than 125 million gallons per day to conduct studies to help identify the best technology to reduce mortality from entrainment (an effect in which early-stage organisms are pulled into cooling systems and threatened by heat, physical stress, and chemicals). To support these analyses, this research illustrates the ability of DNA barcoding and polymerase chain reaction analysis techniques to effectively identify species and quantify their biomass in individual and mixed-species samples.
As nuclear plants move toward flexible operations, it becomes more important to conduct timely fuel performance analyses on the entire reactor core for safe, reliable operations. However, such analyses are computationally intensive and have long run times. In this research, EPRI designed a tool to perform such analyses with high-performance computing and assessed its potential benefits to nuclear operators.
The growth of data and computing capability has triggered the birth of data science—a field commonly known as “big data” that combines statistics and computer science. By extracting insights from massive data sets, data science is expected to enhance research and business efficiency. This report examines the opportunities that data science and its suite of tools can offer to EPRI research and development—and therefore to EPRI’s membership.
EPRI’s user-friendly "TRI for Power Plants" software calculates chemical emissions from fossil-fired steam electric plants for reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory program.
In conventional fossil plants and combined-cycle plants with heat recovery steam generators, chemical cleaning is required to remove deposits that can result in corrosion. This report evaluates treatment techniques for processing wastes generated during chemical cleaning to help comply with new environmental regulations.
In the next decade, many surface impoundments for coal combustion residuals are expected to close, with two main options: (1) capping and closing the existing impoundment and (2) transporting the residuals to a lined landfill and then closing the impoundment and landfill. EPRI has developed a comprehensive framework to assess the human health and environmental impacts of these options and inform closure decisions. This report describes the framework’s application to a hypothetical impoundment, identifying ways to improve future applications.
This study modeled the benefits and costs of investments in public plug-in electric vehicle charging infrastructure on electric vehicle drivers and customers at three utilities.
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