Research on the Detection and Location of Sound Emission Caused by Tube Leakage in Boilers

By examining the shortcomings of the current condition monitoring system for boiler pipeline leakage, a new method is presented in this paper to accurately identify the leakage location using multi-microphones array for passive source localization. A model of 660MW boiler is taken as an example for simulating the localization of various positions of the leakage source in the furnace of the boiler´s body. This paper also discusses the effect of sound propagation through the combustion temperature-field inside the boiler and the reverberation in the boiler enclosure on the leak-age localization, and subsequent amendment in the localization techniques. It is shown that the combustion temperature gradient field clearly influences localization of the leakage.