Performance of the Pennguard® lining during large power plant fires

Albert de Kreij, Hadek Protective Systems

Abstract
Over the past 20 years, a number of power plant chimneys have suffered from severe fire damage. The risk of catastrophic fires is even more relevant today as large amounts of combustible construction materials are used in Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) systems. Power plant stacks are often close to the FGD plant, and in case of an FGD fire the stack can be exposed to very high temperatures.

This paper is divided into five parts. In part one a typical FGD wet stack project is described. Then, two fire incidents which affected power station chimneys are investigated and described. Part three presents the results of two fire exposure tests executed by Exponent to determine the performance of the Pennguard® Block Lining System under fire conditions. Part four describes the results of a fire modeling study which was used to compare the Pennguard® lining performance with two other types of chimney flue designs. Part five presents overall conclusions.

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