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No. 112976
ID: 9dcda2
Y'know how some military vets are triggered by fireworks? Well it's pressure cookers for me.
I was at a site with a gas turbine in the basement with the exhaust feeding a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG). They also have a couple of other boilers and a steam turbine hooked up to a generator. The turbine was shut down when I arrived so I do my inspection while the operator is off messing with something over by the steam turbine. I complete my visual inspection and the operator says he's ready to start the gas turbine. Cool, I can check for leaks and get some running data.
The usual procedure is to start the gas turbine and just run it at idle for a little while to let the HRSG heat up. The HRSG is a boiler that uses the turbine exhaust as the heat source. Sometimes they will also have a "duct burner" which is like an afterburner on a jet, but its job is to make more heat (and steam) not thrust.
The operator starts it up, idles for a while, looking good, then commands the turbine to load up. Once you start putting on load the turbine, that's when the exhaust temperature and volume really starts. After a few minutes the steam pressure is starting to rise, and rise, and rise. The operator was off messing with the steam turbine and taking boilers offline, ok cool he's running the show.
I'm in the control room looking over some stuff on my computer when I hear "POP HIIIIIIIISSSSSSSS" coming from the plant. After a couple of seconds the building fire alarm goes off telling everyone to evacuate. I look out of the control room window expecting to see a burnt and scalded man appearing from a cloud of steam, but there was no visible steam and the operator was fine.
> pressure cooker venting sound, loud as fuck
The operator hauls ass back to the control room and tells me he wants to shut down the turbine. I initiate a normal stop from the control computer then go out to the turbine and hit the e-stop. For the next 20 minutes the fire alarm is going off, people are calling the control room phone asking what the fuck, and the operator going in every direction. The facility fire and safety people show up, wearing no protective gear at all, and look around a bit. Supervisors and managers start to appear.
After the steam whistling stopped, I went over to the steam turbine to find the offending pressure relief valve puking water everywhere. I figured this was a good of a time as any to get the oil sample from the gas turbine, so that's what I did, then packed my shit and left.
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