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Failures of P91 Steel at the West Burton Plant in England Raise Concerns About the Long Term Behavior

of the Advanced Steel


I A Shibli, European Technology Development, UK, ashibli@etd1.co.uk Kent Coleman, EPRI, 704-547-6082, kcoleman@epri.com

Fig.1 P91 superheater outlet headers for Dayton Power and Light, Stuart station.

The U.S. Application of P91 in Fossil Plants We described the application of P91 steel in a case study at AEP in 2003. Kent Coleman of EPRI, was the expert assessor of this case study. The case study described how, in the early 1980s, EPRI led teams of boiler and turbine equipment manufacturers and steel producers from around the world in the search for materials for advanced supercritical fossil plants and that work under EPRIs RP1403 project on super 9- chrome (that became P91) led to its being selected as an ASME standardized material in 1984. Clearly stronger than the commonly accepted alloys P11 and P22, by 1997 piping had been installed in power plants across the world. Applications in the U.S. followed the acceptance of P91. In 1991, Lower Colorado River Authority replaced a P11 secondary superheater outlet header that had shown signs of swelling, with a header made of P91 steel. In 1992 Mannesmann supplied P91 headers as replacements for P22 headers at Dayton Power and Lights Stuart plant in Aberdeen, Ohio. In 1993, San Diego Gas and Electric replaced P11 main steam line fittings with P91 in Encina units 4 and 5, when evidence appeared of circumferential weld cracking . In 1993, Consumers Power replaced at unit 2 of the J.H. Campbell station two P22 secondary superheater outlet headers with a single P91 header, subsequently reported in 1997 to be operating successfully with no evidence of cracking. Initial operating experience was positive with P91.

Costs and Benefits of P91 The benefits of using P91 steel over standard alloys such as P11 or P22 can be put into three categories, though we added in the case study this caution: Caution: The cross-weld rupture strength of P91 steel appears lower than the parent metal due to creep/fatigue interactions. This impact seems greater for P91 than for P22. Type 4 cracking is the issue here and more testing will be needed to fully evaluate this. The benefits listed above are based on parent metal strength. Benefits of P91: Greater strength , that permits increased safety margins in existing units. Significantly longer component life under given creep and fatigue duty. Reduced wall thickness for tubing and piping for the same design conditions, leading to lower thermal storage and less thermal stress. The third of these can be seen graphically in Fig. 2, that shows the relative piping wall thickness of P91, P22, and other ferritic steels for the same design conditions and an indication of the greater strength of P91 over a 100,000 hour lifetime is seen in the rupture strength curves of Fig. 3.

Fig. 2. Comparison of Piping Wall Thickness for Candidate Ferritic Steels

High Temperature Steels: Relative Rupture Strength


P92 P91 2.25 CrMo 1CrMo 480 500 520 540 560 580 600 620 640

Maximum Temperature Deg. C for 100,000 Hours at 100 MPa

Figure 3: Relative Rupture Strength of Ferritic Steels

West Burton Failures

West Burton, owned by EdF, is a 4x500MW coal-fired power station in Retford, Nottinghamshire, England. Now Dr. Shibli in the U.K. has reviewed failures of P91 in the superheater headers of the West Burton units. He noted that the P91 steel has been in use, in a limited number of plants, since the late eighties/early nineties, and that although the steam temperatures in most of these older units were between 540 - 565C (below the maximum design temperature of 600C for this steel), there had been some disturbing reports, about P91 failures. All of these failures were of the Type IV variety in which cracking took place in the fine grain section of the HAZ. These failures are a matter of concern especially because they occurred at lower temperatures than the maximum design temperature of 600C for such steels and the present operating temperature of up to 590C in some of the new higher efficiency European and Japanese plant where 9Cr martensitic steels have been introduced more recently.

Cycling is the Driving Force for Stronger Steels Need Shibly noted that market forces and competition are now dictating the power plants to be cycled on daily basis, to follow load demands and maximise profits. This cycling is driving a redesign of existing and new plants. One redesign solution has been to use higher strength P91 steel for pressure vessel construction which allows pressure-containing components to be made with thinner sections. Thinner components require less time to reach thermal equilibrium and have fewer tendencies towards thermo-mechanical damage mechanisms. In addition, the reduced section thickness increases pipework flexibility. Five recent Failures At least five known incidents of cracking and failures have occurred in the UK. The plant in question has a long service experience with P91, the installation of P91 thick section headers having started in the U.K. in 1989. All of these failures occurred in the West Burton plant and information on these failures has now been published [1-4]. Four of these failures occurred in bottle type joints, and one in a header end cap with another header end cap showing cracking during later investigations/ inspections. The first bottle failure occurred after a service of only 20,000 hours while the end cap failure occurred after a service of mere 36,000 hours. The failure was attributed to the over-tempering of the base material. This was inferred from the low hardness of the failed casts. In the case of the end cap failures, the design involving a sharp change of section near the weld section was also blamed (see Tables 1,2).

Dr. Shibly notes the most common problem experienced as a result of plant cycling is thermal fatigue damage. This can manifest either in the form of cracking of an individual component or by the mechanical failure of structures. Cracking of a component is attributed to severe thermal gradients arising from excessive steam to metal and through wall temperature differences associated with rapid rates of change of steam temperatures as generally observed during start up, shut down and load

changes. The principal components at risk, as the photo below indicates, typically comprise any thick walled sections such as boiler superheater headers, steam pipework, valves, HP and IP steam chests and turbine inlet steam lines Thin walled sections such as boiler tubes, reheater headers etc. are less prone to the problem.

Crack in a P22 Superheater Header between Tube Holes due to Thermal Fatigue The Value of Cycling The Productivity Improvement Handbook, Third Edition notes that the increasingly competitive market for electricity means many units must now follow very short-term market variations in addition to local load variation. Such cycling operation is divided into three typesload following, low load operation down to 15% of Maximum Continuous Rating (MCR), and on/off (two-shift) operation. Long-term cycling problems include excessive wear and tear, equipment repair and replacement and decreased unit reliability/availability. The short-term issues are higher heat rates and higher O&M expenses. The negative impacts of cycling on the plant though must be measured against the potential increases in revenue that can result from cycling operation, as tabulated below. The cost of a single stop/start cycle could range between $15,000 and $500,000 and is a function of unit type, size, fuel, pressure, and design features.
Increased Revenue Achieved From: Reduced start-up time Rapid load change rate More starts and stops Increased Costs May Include: Increased maintenance Reduced plant life Reduced reliability

Cycling can be life-shortening

As discussed in the Third Edition of the Handbook (EPRI 1006315), the impact on turbine and boiler materials of cyclic operation of the unit, particularly on those components that operate in the creep regime, is profound. When fatigue duty is added to the progressive degradation due to creep, component life shortens dramatically. This is dramatically shown in the ASME Creep-Fatigue interaction chart below. To interpret this chart consider a component (say an HP turbine rotor) that has a creep life designed for operation largely under baseload conditions. There will be a few start-stops of course, perhaps 1000 over the projected life, so under such operation we might use achieve only 75% of the creep life projected (perhaps 150,000 hours) before the impact of the start-

Fig. 4. The interaction of creep and fatigue effects dramatically shortens life in components such as turbine forgings and other thick wall components. Future units are likely to see more cycling duty to take advantage of volatile electricity markets, and this makes high-temperature units particularly vulnerable. stops essentially curtails further useful life. However it is much worse if the same creep-regime rotor was subjected to, say, 10,000 cycles under daily two-shift operation for 30 years. In this case the original creep life may be lowered to only 20% before the creep-fatigue interaction effects shut the machine down. A more common situation is where the machine runs for years at baseload before two-shift cycling is introduced. The residual life, as shown in the figure, can then easily be reduced to 40-60% of original design life.
Expert Conclusions on P91 P91 has been considered to be advantageous steel as thinner wall and smaller

component size reduce thermal gradients and hence the adverse effect of fatigue cracking - which in the past has been experienced in thick section components made from the traditional low alloy ferritic steels. Dr. Shibli comments however that preliminary R & D studies have shown that P91 welded components may be equally, or even more, prone to Type IV cracking compared with the conventional low alloy ferritic steels, possibly due to the weakness of weld and low cross-weld creep ductility of the welded material.

Kent Coleman recognized in the original case study that a concern with use of Grade 91 is creep rupture failures of weldments in the Type IV location (failures in the heat affected zone (HAZ) and that these failures occur before damage develops in the base metal. This is generally not a concern for circumferential welds because stress on piping systems is about twice as much in the hoop direction than in the longitudinal direction. When the system is designed to contain the pressure stress, Coleman says, the Type IV location on circumferential welds are operating at sufficiently low stress to provide desired life. So the concern arises when components are manufactured with longitudinal seams. Components with long seams should take into consideration this damage mechanism and have sufficient thickness to operate at lower stress. If at all possible, longitudinal seams should be normalized and tempered to eliminate the HAZ. Kent added that EPRI has projects ongoing on heat treatment, normalization, cold forming, temperbead welding, improved welding consumables, and oxidation/ scale exfoliation of Grade 91.
References 1.Shibli I.A., Performance of P91 Thick Section Welds under Steady and Cyclic Loading Conditions: Power Plant and Research Experience, OMMI (Volume 1, Issue 3) December 2002. 2. Brett S J, Allen D J and Pacey J, Failure of a modified 9Cr header endplate, Proc. Conf. on "Case Histories in Failure Investigation", Milan, Sept. 99, pp. 873-884. 4. Brett S J, Identification of weak thick section modified 9Cr forgings in service, Published in the CD version of the Proceedings of the Swansea Creep Conference; Organized by the University of Swansea and EPRI, and held in Swansea, UK, April 2001. 9. Shibli I A, Creep and fatigue crack growth in P91 weldments, Published in the Proceedings of the Swansea Creep Conference; Organized by the University of Swansea and EPRI, and held in Swansea, UK, April 2001.

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