From Cleaning to Consultation, Chemistry Services Provides Complete Solutions

“The main goal in Chemistry Services is to offer nuclear plants comprehensive chemistry services and products, and the advice and consultation necessary to keep their plants running at optimum efficiency,” said Cary Bowles, FTI’s Manager of Projects in Plant Component and Chemistry Services.

“We can help plants determine proper water chemistry to minimize corrosion and fouling, remove deposits from steam generators and other plant components like condensers using a variety of chemical and mechanical means, and then analyze what is removed and devise maintenance in order to prevent future deposits and corrosion,” said Bowles. “Some of this may be reactive to particular problems, but we increasingly are moving into the prevention of problems in plant components affected by chemistry.”

In the mid-1980’s pressurized water reactors began to experience fouling in the steam generators as a result of deposits. In 1990 Framatome Technologies formed a chemical cleaning product line in response to this industry need, and FTI purchased chemical cleaning equipment from Duke Power that the utility had previously used to chemically clean Oconee Units 1&2.

“After purchasing additional equipment and redesigning the fixed base Duke equipment to become a mobile cleaning system,” said FTI’s Charlie England, Vice President of Plant Component & Chemistry Services, “FTI conducted its first chemical cleaning at Three Mile Island in 1991.”

Today FTI offers a variety of chemistry services for nuclear plants, including chemical cleaning, mechanical cleaning using lancing technologies, water chemistry, and specialty waste processing.

Building on its expertise in these areas, FTI is branching out into new areas of chemistry services—new not just for FTI but also for the nuclear industry.

“Our main goal is to continue to maintain our position as the number one supplier of steam generator chemical cleaning, by advancing the state of the art in response to our customers’ needs,” says Cary Bowles. “Besides working to devise ways to prevent steam generator deposits up front by improving water chemistry and using more aggressive maintenance, we are also working to find other areas of the plant in which our expertise and techniques can be applied.”

“We are also working with other companies to develop teaming agreements to join our expertise with other companies’ proprietary chemicals or processes and bring them to the nuclear industry,” Bowles said.