AMP Capstone Spotlight

Diesel Power Plant Exhaust Gas Heat Recovery Unit

Ian Flood won the 2021 AMP Capstone Award for his Capstone project on the Fort McPherson Diesel Power Plant Exhaust Gas Heat Recovery Unit in the Northwest Territories.

The AMP Capstone is the final project a participant must complete and allows participants to review the elements of the previous course modules and take the opportunity to bring the concepts together in an applied project that requires the development of an Asset Management Policy and Strategy for an organization as well as the development and implementation of an Asset Management Plan for a particular class of assets. This article is simply a short summary of that work.

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) generates, transmits and distributes power to 33 remote communities in the Northwest Territories. The Thermal Division within NTPC is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of 18 standalone diesel power plants. Due to the remote and scattered geographic location of each power plant, none are grid-connected. This poses considerable logistical challenges in terms of geography, climate change and the long harsh winters experienced above 60°N. Consequently, there are significant operational challenges and risks with maintenance and capital projects in order to maintain the required level of reliability of providing continuous power to each community.

All the plants have a minimum of three generating units (gensets) for redundancy and reliability of supply of power to our customers. Each genset loses approximately 25% of the energy in the fuel to the atmosphere as heat energy in the exhaust gasses. In order to reduce this otherwise wasted energy, it is captured and used to heat buildings close to the power plant, such as the local school and the community water treatment plant. In order to recover this heat energy, it is necessary to pass the exhaust gasses through a specific type of heat exchanger. The Exhaust Gas Heat Exchangers (EGHE) are installed where there will be a long-term economic benefit to the community and the required infrastructure can be economically installed from the power plant to community buildings.

The photo to the above (Figure 1) shows one of the three EGHE units (green colored) units with the genset exhaust manifold leading to the edge. As the Asset Manager for the Thermal Division, it is my responsibility to initiate projects for power plant upgrades and replacements. I am also involved in some day-to-day activities such as resolution of operational issues that may arise and cause outages. Prior to accepting this role five years ago I was a project manager with NTPC overseeing a number of capital projects such as the new solar PV/Battery/Diesel microgrid plant in Colville Lake, a remote winter road access community just inside the Arctic Circle.

Before detailing some of the facets of the capstone project, what follows is an overview of the Asset Management (AM) Framework being developed within NTPC.