Explosion Power GmbH Switzerland (www.explosionpower.ch) has developed a remote controlled online boiler cleaning equipment automatically generating Shock Pulses by pressure waves. The pressure waves are created by a shock combustion of a mixture of burnable gas (Natural Gas or Methane) and pure oxygen. Contrary to manual processes, this shock-combustion is carried out automatically and outside of the boiler, in a pressure resistant device. The resulting supersonic pressure wave is introduced into the boiler by means of a valve and a discharge tube. The combustion gas, the internal boiler tubes and walls are put into a short oscillation, similar to a rapping system, so that deposits are cleaned off. The Shock-Pulse-Generators (SPG) are available in different types as EG- and Twin- series and are implemented depending on the boiler size and the kind of boiler fouling. The SPGs are manufactured in Switzerland from special high pressure and high temperature resistant stainless-steel qualities and other high quality components. Its innovative technology has proven an outstanding performance at worldwide more than 500 different installations in 20+ countries since 2009.

Explosion Power GmbH has been awarded to mitigate the unfavorable conditions upstream of SCR in the tail section of a 24m-wide supercritical pulverized sub-bituminous coal fired boiler of 660 MWel. capacity at a Thai power producer. Since April 2018 four SPGs of the TwinL series are installed to clean the Reheater/Economizer section from accumulation of ash particles. The duty is to keep the flue gas temperature at the boiler outlet constant at 400°C for protection of the downstream arranged SCR catalyst. The originally installed sootblowers couldn’t meet the target and after 7 days of operation a manual cleaning of the boiler became due. Initially the shock pulse intervals were set to 60 minutes, such were however prolonged due to good cleaning effect and presently the standard shock pulse intervals are set to 8 hours per TwinL. Some of the original sootblowers are still operated, however due to the insufficient cleaning effect and the consumption of valuable steam to be utilized for electricity production, the operator intents to replace in the next phase many of the 92 sootblowers with additional four SPGs of the same type. The target is to save steam and reduce the number of the originally installed sootblowers by application of the Shock Pulse Generators having even an improved cleaning efficiency compared to the sootbowers. At least two long retractable soot blowers will be kept in operation per SPG. The whole boiler cleaning system will be finally activated from the central DCS.