3D boiler tube leak detection technique using acoustic emission signals for power plant structure health monitoring

This paper propose a 3D source location technique for locating leak in boiler tube of power plant using Acoustic Emission technique. In order to verify the effectiveness of the suggested technique, this paper presents a case study to locate the source of leak in the boiler tube of a 500MW class thermal power plant. Test were carry out using soot blower signal from 62 points with a pressure of 10 bar when plant is under a normal working condition. The conventional approaches for detection leak in power plant involved the measurements of RMS signal and peak value. In this study boiler tube leak from the inside of boiler is investigated using 3D source location technique as well as determination of the actual leak based on various analysis method such as amplitude, duration, RMS, and so on. Our results show that we can detect and prevent unexpected plant accident early, and contributes to maximize the effectiveness of power generation.