We began the necessary maintenance tasks on the tubes of the boiler in the month of September and two of them were changed. The works were faced by Mr. Lucas Bianchi and we arrived without (great) problems at the Week of the Technical Education.
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Here we see the changed tube (darker colour) occupying its place on the collecting plate.
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On November 10th, we carried out maybe the most non typical of all the tests of the
installation, but the results were the best from all those obtained up to now.
We had the idea of making a short test at 3:00 PM for diverse dates
that the work group had. And we began badly. There was very low atmospheric
pressure and low clouds and after three attempts of burners' ignition without
obtaining the necessary exhaust current across the chimney, we waited until the
3:45 PM. as deadline to attempt it again or to leave it for another day.
At 3:40 PM the sky cleared up and a slight breeze appeared. Hour of the last intent of the day!
It resulted OK, and once reached the regime of work of the feeding bombs of water of the
boiler we proceeded to trying them, and since the pressure came ascending quick
and the bombs worked well; good, why not taking the pressure up to 8
atmospheres and end of the test?
When we arrived to the work pressure; why not opening the steam valve and try the machine?
As the machine was responding well, why not trying it for a short time to see how it would respond to 12 atmospheres of working pressure?
The "short test" became 3 continuous working hours at 12 atmospheres of pressure; and what was better, it was performed with the generator at almost full load for one hour! Things had never responded so well. It was past 10 PM and we kiss good-bye to our dates, but well; it was worthwhile...
Day 17th arrived and things worked well from the beginning. We obtained the work
pressure much quicker than was foreseen and we had to put the burners to minimum
to be able to fullfill the beginning hour of the test.
Everybody was ready and starting from the 1:00 PM until the end everything was a
"Steinmüller Symphony". We had never demanded so much to the boiler
and it has responded so well. Even in a certain moment, we had an excess of
reservation water, this happened to us for the first time and it confused
us for a while until we returned to the normality. Also happened to us the
opposite and that is something we had to expect, but despite of these two
minimal incidents; we could also work to almost full load until 6:30 PM.
We hope everything will work equally right in 2001!
