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Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Implementation in Thermal and Combined Cycle Power Plants

Sabouhi, Hamed | 2013

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 44704 (05)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Electrical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Abbaspour Tehrani Fard, Ali; Fotuhi-Firuzabad, Mahmoud
  7. Abstract:
  8. Power generation stations, which are commonly called power plants, are treated as the core module of power systems and are in charge of producing power to be transmitted and distributed to the end consumers. As the beating heart of power industry, power plants need to be available and reliable all the time and so do their constituent components since the need for reliable electricity, nowadays, is ever increasingly highlighted. The reason lies in the rapid jump of population growth in one hand and the incredible amount of damages as a consequence to the power interruptions due to the power plant component outages, if happened, on the other one. So, power plants have to be kept within a desired level of reliability and availability levels.
    Any improvement in system reliability is always accompanied by an imposed amount of cost; the reliability enhancement is justified to the extent that the system unavailability cost is more than that of the normal service provided. As in the other hierarchical levels of power industry, i.e., transmission and distribution, system reliability can be improved via the following two major approaches: purchase and installation of new equipments in the system, and maintenance of the existing equipment. The former falls in the planning realm of power system studies and the later is majorly concerned with the system operation and management scenarios. A properly managed and well-organized maintenance plan will have a major influence on the system technical behavior. It consequently results in increasing components’ useful lifetimes and assuring maximum achievable availabilities.
    Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is referred to as a well-organized method wherein the maintenance process of system components is linked to improvements in the system reliability..
    This thesis offers a comprehensive framework and a step-by-step implementation process for RCM in the thermal and combined cycle power plants. The proposed approach, which is classified into the three main stages of data gathering and reliability modeling, optimal maintenance planning, and data consolidation and documentation process, introduces a risk-based identification procedure of the system critical components in the power plants. Maintenance scheduling is then pursued via a numerically-attacked optimization approach with the main sake of the total maintenance cost minimization. The presented approach is eventually applied to the Montazer-e-Ghaem Power Plant, located in north of Iran. It is interesting to note that the proposed approach is being able to be employed in other types of power plants as well as the other similar industries with minor modifications, if any
  9. Keywords:
  10. Combined Cycle Power Generation ; Reliability ; Steam Power Plant ; Reliability Centered Maintenance ; Critical Component ; Preventive Maintenance

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