Would not want to be standing beside it when it fails like that. Could cause what some might think is worse than death. Might get boiled alive within inches of your life only to be put on life support the rest of your life with severe pain.
I was told by my Uncle, that in the Navy when checking for a steam leak they would wave a wooden broomstick ahead of them. Because you might not be able to see it. The steam leak would cut right thru the broomstick in a heartbeat. I didn't see any such safety procedure. Wish there had been audio as you can hear a leak.
Not really. Std practice was to use a straw broom to locate any main steam leaks. Leak would trim the broom, NOT the stick. Even 600 psi steam leaks are invisible and inaudible, and sufficiently violent that if you were using your hand to find them, you'd lose fingers or more. Must be really fun with 1000 psi steam.
@@jacquesblaque7728 My Uncle retired as Chief Machinist Mate after serving 20 yrs and was recalled as a Warrant Officer for the Korean War. As I remember these sticks were positioned where necessary so one could quickly navigate the confined spaces safely by rapidly waving the stick ahead of you if there was a leak, and if a significate leak hit the stick it would slice through the stick. He served on cruisers but mostly Destroyers in wartime. I think a full broom would slow you down, I would remember trimming straws. Maybe to isolate a leak. His destroyer was with the returning carriers to Pearl Harbor after the attack. The USS Wren, I believe. Elmer Callihan passed in 1975. That's all.
@@richardcallihan9746 Not how the engineers explained it to me on the 600 psi FRAM-1 Gearing-class I served on. Steam leaks would mostlikely occur at flange-gaskets, resulting on excessively-rapid changes of steam temperature. Mostlikely you'd not be trying to hustle past, and there'd be room to keep clear of the relatively large steam lines, largely above you. The broom-straw bits would be used to locate a leak without suffering amputation. Handle, no, sorry. The ones I saw in the engine rooms were ordinary straw brooms; leak sufficient to trim them definitely would mandate immediate attention. We, on the bridge, would always take care while underway to assist the engineers in stabilizing main steam temps, as directed by our CO, an ex-Shipfitter, so we never got to put it to the test, fortunately. Easy to understand how gas turbines totally took over propulsion of cans.
While in the NAVY,running a main feed pump @1280 psi and 1000 degrees, supper heated steam,we had a turbine shroud failure, and a segment of the blades blew out of the case so this failure was nothing.
@@hankscorpio6111 i was steaming again from 2015 to 2022. until we had an explosion, hospitals first, my 2nd. First one was onboard ship. two more killed one a good friend. in 2022, couldnt take it anymore....hospital wasnt fixing shit ended up with severe anxiety and stress. plus diagnosed with PTSD from ships accident. other than that...love the job!!! BTs Rule the UNDERWORLD..
@@donk8472 I've been working for the same company for over 30 years now. I've worked at several hospitals here around the valley. The biggest problem I see with them is that they expect everything to go perfectly when they understaff. Luckily my boss is willing to make sure we fix things right when they go wrong and he trusts my judgement. So much so that it pit's me against administration "and our water treatment company that wants me to change chemicals to they're own". I'm still using the manufacturer's chemical. Our state doesn't license boiler operators, "although Salt Lake City used to until 2010 when they stopped". I think that attitude is odd when you consider that you have to be licensed by the state to work on women's fingernails but not something that can wipe out a city block. When I started I worked at a very large hospital and we did cogeneration. We had 2 noncondensing steam turbo generators and had 2 boilers operating at 250psi and 480 degree's superheat. It was a really slick operation. It was fully staffed 24hrs a day. "well we were alone on afternoons and nights" but there was still someone qualified there. When they shut down the turbines for the last time they went from a staff of 8 down to 2. They don't man it around the clock anymore obviously and they don't have separate management for that team. They've tried to offer me $10 an hour more to go back there but I've hit the jackpot as far as hospitals to work for in this company. I work for a smaller one that's still large enough to need a boiler mechanic but they're basically closed over the weekend and my on call is only once every 6 weeks. At the other place I was on call half of my life!! I was asked to apply for the job I have here "kind of like what's going on over there lol!" But I have no inclination on ever going back so long as I feel like I'm being treated fairly, and they allow me to fix what needs to be fixed. "in fact my boss is a stickler for good maintenance and insists that we get it done right regardless of cost". Needless to say I don't have a lot of equipment failures here because of that which makes my job easier "and imo cheaper in the long run for the company because they aren't having to buy new equipment as often"!
@@donk8472 Oh sorry! I meant to give you my condolences about your friend too! People outside of our field don't always understand the risks of what we do. Around the year 2000 I replaced a cast iron sectional boiler for a motel. The manager was a woman and her boyfriend was an independent contractor that they wanted to have help us. I wasn't working for a company to do this job I was working independently because they wanted to get it done on the cheap. After replacing the old one with a used one that was in very good shape we got it going. It wound up putting steam in the steam line "lol pretty obvious" but there was a steam leak in the line that went under the driveway. There was a small crawl space that it went through. While the guy was really helpful he saw the leak and I just said we got the boiler going and that was that.. "the owner decided to be a butt about paying". He was going to go in there to find the leak. I told him not to because the steam was going to displace the air in there.. He ignored me.. he went in maybe 3 to 4 feet before starting to scream that he couldn't breath!! We of course didn't go in but he was able to reach the hole out and we pulled him out. I didn't bother lecturing him that I told him so.. Almost if almost dyeing isn't statement enough then nothing will teach him.
I used to operate the steam plant for a hospital. We had a battery of four Kewanee 150 HP Scotch marine fire tube boilers. One day a seal on a hand hole became loose and began leaking one one of the boilers. It was blowing steam until I could shut down the boiler and take it off line. It did not explode. What we are viewing here is a leak, as opposed to an explosion.
Not sure where this is or their operating procedure… but the last thing I would have done was run into a room where uncontrolled steam was being released!!! The operating controls should be in a separate room, and if something like this happens go through emergency shutdown procedures and let all pressures drop before entering the area!!
While the ‘explosion’ may have seemed a bit underwhelming, a very real danger is from suffocation. If the steam released has enough volume to displace the available air, one can very quickly be overcome by the lack of oxygen available. Those dudes in the background were very fortunate it wasn’t a catastrophic steam release.
We had a small back pressure machine come apart on us back in 1993. Luckily the steam stop for it was located across the turbine room floor so that we did not get hit with pieces that were being strewn about. No one injured.
what a rip off... just vacuum lost, broken seals... i was waiting to see the stages blowing the casing in thousand pieces... and the shaft coming out to say hello
Was this a rupture of the turbine exhaust? If so, was this a condensing engine (most are) and the problem initiated with a vacuum failure? It certainly was not a blade ejection. Neither was it a bearing failure. A steam supply flange leak perhaps? An explanation seems in order.
My Union, the International Brotherhood of Electrified Workers, stole a training video from the Plumbers and Pipefitters. It showed a man walking through a steam plant, waving a broomstick ahead of him as he walked. As he was waving it, a good 6 inches fell off the end. He said, "And that is a steam leak. I'm glad that wasn't my head." I'm into the Alternative Energy scene, but, there are reasons I avoid steam and Methane Generators. That reason is, "Boom."
Thats what happens when you hit a turbine with wet steam. most have had a slug on condensate pool in the inlet piping and it slammed the turbine blades.
@@gregorymalchuk272 I doubt the shaft seal was "destroyed", They're not made of rubber. But if they lost the condenser circulating pumps, the steam stopped changing to condensate.& the condenser overpressurized.
So what was the cause of the leak? A stage extraction line leak? Gland steam seal failure? It didn't look intense enough to be a main steam line failure. So many unanswered items... where is this power station? What size is the unit (looks like maybe 20 MW max)? What is the operating steam pressure?
That's no steam explosion, that's a seal failure. No big deal, steam locomotives are so much worse when it comes to failures - the boilers are far more dangerous than turbines when it comes to overpressure event since they're the power sources (except for high rotational speed events, then the picture changes, as turbine dovetails have limits to how much they can hold themselves together before they catastrophically fail and indeed you don't want to be in the way when a fan blade lets go). And steam is no joke either.
real accidents with steam turbines look very different, e.g. when the rotor of a 300MW steam turbine exit the hall trough the roof and lands 300m away in the field
A turbine explosion is huge. The massive amount of energy inside a turbine is capable of lighting a medium sized town. Imagine all that energy released in 1 second. That was a leak.
I'm guessing this "Explosion" was like when my friend 'destroyed' her car, and all it was is that she got a flat tire that cost her $28 and 45 minutes of inconvenience one day.
During summers in college, I was hired by an electrical utility to paint 250 MW generators and turbine housings ... crawled all over the machines, I'm still here.
You obviously have never seen a steam high pressure explosion. If this was one then there would be a micro second of video followed by total destruction. Not a mild sauna like video.
Well.. this doesn't look like a turbine working with an 8 MPa pressure vessel but if it was happening in a nuclear power plant with a worker in the same room, then forget that worker, he's grave walking. Wait, sorry, he has evaporated
