Cleaning out pipes at Dry Fork Station

Ever since News Years, the turbine deck here at Dry Fork Station has been rumbling. It happens about once an hour, and each time, workers get three minutes warning.

That's the sound that's come 97 times up to this point. The signal that another air blow at Dry Fork Station is three minutes away.

It lasts only about 20 seconds. But this is the step needed to clean out the pipes before Dry Fork Station can start generating electricity.

(Doug Rothe): "It's to get all that debris out. There might even be stuff that's left in there, like a bolt or something like that, that will get cleaned out of the system."

Doug Rothe is the mechanical performance consulting engineer on site. The last time he oversaw air blows was on unit two of Antelope Valley Station in 1986.

(Doug Rothe): "We used to just blow it out the side of the wall and up in the air. But now they diffuse it into these exhausters to kind of dissipate the energy. And it's safer and there's less debris flying around."

Operations Superintendent Joel Dingman says the pipes will get air blown through them 24 hours a day, once an hour, for about two weeks.

(Joel Dingman): "You don't get to where there's no debris, but you get to where, it's a percentage, I'd say like 90 percent, you know that you're 90 percent clean."

If they didn't blow out the pipes on a power plant, debris like welding slag would damage the turbine. That would be a major disaster.

(Doug Rothe): "You'd get a lot of erosion. You might even get, if it's a big piece of debris, you might get significant blade damage or breakage."

Every so often during air blows, a brass target is inserted into the pipes.

The target will show damage from debris flying through the pipes. On this day, blow number 100 gets target tested.

The air blows will continue for another 12 hours before a target is tested again.

Warning sound, major rush of air, checking the results. An important job in Dry Fork Station commissioning.

Air blows finished up successfully on January 9. Because this method was used instead of steam blows, the plant saved several million dollars.

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