Cleaning

Cleaning the tubeplate and piping inside the condensers of unit Ec 20.
The unit is stopped and the sea-coolingwatersystem is drained.
This can only be done when there is no pressure left in the boiler anymore.
The main steamturbine consists of one high-pressure (max 180 bar), a medium-pressure (max 40 bar) and two low pressure turbines.
After the low pressure steamturbine the steam is condensed back to water again (we call it condensate) and is then pumped back to the boiler again.
Under each low pressure turbine two condensers are hanging, suspended by big springs.
Because we noticed the efficiency of the condenser decreased we decided to take the opportunity to clean them.
This is done by waterpressure, to blast the seaweed and other debris away.
When we have more time (that is when we are allowed to stop longer) we can clean the thousands of small pipes better with small brushes which are pushed through the pipes with compressed air.
We opened the manholes and the cleaners are crawling in the waterboxes.
A guard is watching it all due to safety precautions.

On this Blip you can see how the waterbox looks at the inside. This one is from unit 6, a bit smaller but similar.