When a certain piece of equipment starts getting a little too much attention from the maintenance team, it’s time to ask yourself the question, “Repair or replace?” While repairing equipment to avoid making a huge investment sounds good for a little while, there comes a point where you’re investing more… Read More
Regular maintenance is the foundation for plant success, regardless of the size of your facility or the industry you serve. The unexpected is inevitable, so keeping your plant up and running all day is a daunting task. How can your plant make the most of planned outages to avoid unplanned… Read More
With profit margins as they are, some kind of maintenance in pulp and paper is a must. The advances in the industry’s tech and machinery, while invaluable in meeting demand, does not afford foolproof production indefinitely. Equipment can, and does, stop working or even outright breakdown—which can crater productivity and… Read More
Downtime, or any period of time when a machine is not in production, is the largest source of lost production time for most manufacturers. As obvious as downtime is when it occurs, most companies seriously underestimate their true downtime costs—in fact, over 80% of companies aren’t able to accurately calculate… Read More
Industries of all kinds rely heavily on the efficiency of their manufacturing for both the quality of their products, and keeping the costs of those products reasonable for their consumers—because we all know, the less efficient (and therefore more expensive) your manufacturing process, the more expensive your products have to… Read More
Power plant managers have to do a balancing act, juggling multiple things in order to keep their plants running efficiently and keeping stakeholders happy. The trouble is, there are so many problems a plant manager faces on a day-to-day basis that it can be difficult to keep on top of… Read More
When it comes to boilers, efficiency is the name of the game. Lower efficiency leads to worse performance, which impacts the revenue and profit margin of a plant, either directly (for a power plant) or indirectly (for a steel plant, pulp & paper mill, etc.). Stokers have a lot to… Read More
Heat rate, as any power plant engineer knows, is the amount of energy a plant has to expend in order to generate a unit of work or electricity. It’s expressed in Btu/kWh, or how many Btu/hr of energy are needed to generate one kW. For decades, the gold standard of… Read More
