The nature of the power production business is changing. Deregulation of the utility business creates serious competition which demands the need for cost reduction. Economic pressure has required fossil power boilers to operate more flexibly and to extend maintenance outages. Stringent emission regulations have placed more operation burden on fossil power plant boilers. Nearly 70% of U.S. fossil power plants are reaching the aging status with no plan of retirement in the near future. Asset management becomes one of the essential strategies in the competitive environment. Power plant component life management is an important part of overall asset management. The boiler is one of critical and vulnerable systems in the fossil power generation plant. It is imperative to establish an integrated boiler component life management strategy to ensure safe and reliable system operation in the future. A well-structured boiler component life management strategy requires balancing reliability, capacity, emission, efficiency, and cost.
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