Structural Health Monitoring | Nuclear-Plant
Applications
Location: Bugey, France
Site monitored since: 2009
overall tasks
On Nuclear power plant, cooling tower rejects heat to the atmosphere through a cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature. Fill packs provides a large surface area for evaporative cooling to take place. It’s located beneath the water distribution layer and above the sump of the cooling tower.
Anti-Legionnela packing are used and impregnated with a non-leaching biocide that lasts for the lifetime of the packing, and provides additional protection against bacteria. The fill packs weight need to be monitored in real-time and cleaned during annual maintenance.
On each cooling tower, 24 load sensors connected to our wireless DAQ system were used to monitor the fill packs.
Due to the extreme humidity (more than 99% for a temperature more than 45° ), a double casing design with epoxy potting was used. To reach a battery life of 4 years, each Wireless DAQ system was powered by 6 x D Size Lithium Cells.
Caption 1 : External view of fill packing (counterflow water/air)
Caption 2 - Hyperboloid cooling tower
EQUIPMENT USED
BeanGateway® 2.4GHz Outdoor 3G/4G/LTE – Wireless coordinator
BeanDevice® 2.4GHz AN-mV – Wireless DAQ
Caption 4 - Load cell is used to monitor fill packing weight (counterflow water/air)
Caption 3 - Load cell is connected to a Wireless DAQ (BeanDevice® 2.4GHz AN-mV)
Caption 6- BeanGateway® 2.4GHz Outdoor with 4G connectivity
Caption 5- Top view of wireless sensors deployed on cooling tower
Caption 7- Collected data measurements can be viewed from a third-party cloud software
Caption 8: Network Topology - from sensors to alarm reporting