Type K damper drives – five years arduous service, no maintenance and no breakdowns

Rotork’s recent acquisition, K-Tork International, Inc., has supplied  Ash Hopper (AH Series) damper drives to the Entergy Corporation’s White Bluff Generating Station in Redfield, Arkansas to replace cylinder actuators that were proving to be unreliable.

The units were installed in 2006 and after five years of operation a recent inspection has confirmed that the Type K products have solved a major maintenance problem at the plant. 

The White Bluff Generating Station historically purchased 40-50 pneumatic cylinder actuators per year to operate their ash hopper rotary gates under routine maintenance budgets to replace failing cylinders.  In 2006, the coal-fired power plant installed 136 Type K ‘AH Series’ damper drives to replace the poorly performing cylinder actuators. The units were fitted with a high-cycle “no-play” linkage kit that eliminates hysteresis to adapt the TK-2 rotary drives to the existing ash hopper equipment. After five years in service, there have been no failures.  Not a single work order has been issued, no spare parts have been required, no seal kits installed and no units have been removed for servicing for any reason.  

By EPA mandate, ash particulate must be contained and cannot simply accumulate in piles on the ground in the way that coal piles are kept.  The pneumatic conveyors that operate under the precipitators collect the ash and push it with compressed air into collection bins, where it is sold as an ingredient for dry wall production or used in concrete mixes for civil construction.  When a conveyor bank is in operation, the Type K damper drives cycle every 90-120 seconds 24/7. 

The Type K Area Sales Manager, Dean Stedman, has surveyed the remaining 26 drives required for Unit 2 and an additional 120 drives required for Unit 1. Together with the Type K Representative, Boiler Valve and Equipment Company, K-Tork hopes to complete the Ash Hopper retrofit in 2012.

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations.  Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and it is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States.  Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas