Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group, Inc.

The Babcock & Wilcox Company

Ronald Dureiko

David J Peterson

Ronald B Johnson

J Jeffrey Kidwell

Gary W Diefendorff

Bruce P Guilliams

David Peterson

Jeffrey J Kidwell

An improved wet scrubber tray provides increased resistance to vibration-induced cracking. The self-supporting tray eliminates wastage of raw material, and additional internal stiffeners added to the tray make multiple intermediate stiffeners. The connection of the intermediate stiffeners to the perforated bottom plate is changed to eliminate the shop weld in the bottom plate. The holes in the perforated bottom plate are moved away from the boundaries of the tray to reduce their influence on boundary conditions. Trays are held down by plate material that is attached to the support grid, but not to the trays. Three field welds are applied to the sides of each tray to hold the trays in place relative to each other and are strategically placed to allow adjacent side stiffeners to act together as a composite section. Elastomeric material is used at the tray-to-grid attachments increases the damping of the system.

Wet scrubber tray

An improved wet scrubber tray provides increased resistance to vibration-induced cracking. The tray is self supporting to eliminate wastage of raw material, and additional internal stiffeners added to the tray make multiple intermediate stiffeners. The connection of the intermediate stiffeners to the perforated bottom plate is changed to eliminate the shop weld in the bottom plate. The holes in the perforated bottom plate are repositioned so that they are moved away from the boundaries of the tray to reduce their influence on boundary conditions. The thickness of the tray material may be increased to lower the vibratory stresses. The mechanism for holding the trays themselves within the spray absorber tower is changed so that the trays are now held down by plate material that is attached to the support grid, but not to the trays. Three field welds are applied to the sides of each tray to hold the trays in place relative to each other and are strategically placed to allow adjacent side stiffeners to act together as a composite section, thus increasing their strength. Elastomeric material such as neoprene is used at the tray-to-grid attachments to increase the damping of the system. Formed features in the trays such as single or multiple ribs, bosses, domes or dimples may also be provided to increase tray stiffness or influence wet scrubber performance.

An assembly and method for facilitating the attachment of a metal alloy hood to the concrete shell of a spray absorber tower, and compensating for relative radial thermal expansion of the hood and the shell during start up, shut down, and operation of the spray absorber tower, while also providing accurate and effective distribution of shear forces circumferentially along a horizontal plane from the metal alloy hood to anchor rods partially embedded in the concrete shell of the spray absorber tower.

Absorber tower metal hood to concrete shell attachment

Growing community of inventors

Stow, OH, United States of America

Ronald Dureiko