Source: eco-globe
Project Title: Reliability Modeling and Analysis of Biomass Boilers under the Extreme Operating Conditions in Northern Communities
Project Partners
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Concordia
University – SEISE Lab The Sustainable Energy & Infrastructure Systems Engineering Lab (SEISE), led by Dr. Nasiri, is at the forefront of systems engineering solutions for sustainable energy applications: https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~fuzhan/ |
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BMA Ltd. A Canadian consulting firm specialized in the fields of energy, combustion, heat transfer, and energy efficiency. BMA has a particular interest in energy generation utilizing biomass, biogas, biofuels, wood chips, pellets, and ethanol: http://www.bma.ca/ |
Funding
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NSERC Natural Sciences Engineering Research Council of Canada |
Project Description
The project aims at developing a benchmark reliability analysis that identifies failure modes of biomass boilers, estimates the distribution of them over service life of the boilers, and optimizes the maintenance plans to ensure the availability of these boilers during the extreme and long winter seasons in the north:
1. FAILURE and ReLIABILITY ANALYSIS for BIOMASS BOILERS
In this project, we aim at establishing reliability functions for a range of biomass boilers and their components:
§ Identifying the failure modes
§ Estimating the reliability functions for boiler components and the system
§ Estimating the availability indicators for boiler components and the system
2. OPTIMAL
MAINTENANCE PLAN FOR BIOMASS BOILERS
We establish an optimal maintenance schedule by incorporating the effect of the maintenance activities on the reliability (and service continuity) of boilers:
§ Estimating the maintenance effect of the components on the system availability
§ Identifying an optimal maintenance plan (schedule-activities) for boiler’s expected service life
In doing so, the components with different maintenance timings are sorted according to the effect of their maintenance on availability of the boilers. Increasing the amount of maintenance in components with high maintenance effect (on availability) improves reliability of the boilers, while decreasing the amount of maintenance in components with low maintenance effect, reduces the over-maintenance.
BMA and Concordia hope that this partnership leads to development of a benchmark availability-based maintenance planning method for biomass boilers, subject to their design characteristics and operating conditions, in order to minimize maintenance expenditures by reducing over maintenance. This methodology will improve the operational efficiency of biomass boilers and extend their service continuity in the context of northern community applications.
The research partnership team involves graduate students at Concordia (Mohammad Hosseini and Mostafa Fadaee), and key experts at BMA led by Mr. Louis-Michel Malouin and Mr. Sylvain Montreuil. The project is made possible through funding of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).