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Philadelphia Section Newsletter
January 2003 www.asme.org/sections/philadelphia
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Chair’s Letter
It is with deep sorrow that we inform you of George Kotnick's passing in November. George was an ASME Fellow and held numerous positions at the Section, Regional, and National levels, including President. He will be missed!
We have numerous activities planned for the remainder of the 2002/03 season (see details in this newsletter). There are quite a variety of topics, which we hope you will find interesting.
One of the Engineers Week events is the Future Cities Regional Competition, which will be held on January 25, 2003 at Widener University (Chester, PA). Details are in this newsletter. We are looking for Engineers to help judge this event. If you are interested in helping, please contact us. More info can be found at www.futurecity.org.
On Thursday January 30 2003 at Villanova, David Levinson - ASME Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer- will give a presentation entitled "The Amazing Effectiveness of the Mathematical Sciences". Mr. Levinson is well known for his ability to explain complex ideas in an informative way. (This is interesting… since engineers are sometimes accused of taking a simple concept and making it complicated.) Of course, as engineers, we all love math, so this should be an exciting discussion.
On Wednesday February 12, we will be holding our annual Student Night Meeting at Villanova. This is open to non-students as well. Mr. Larry Chickola, Chief Corporate Engineer for Six Flags Theme Parks, will be giving a talk entitled "Rollercoaster Design and Manufacture". If you've ever wondered how many g's you're actually experiencing when you ride through those roller coaster loops, perhaps you can find out at this discussion.
Engineers Week will be celebrated February 14-22, but Engineers Week activities will run throughout January and February. It will begin on Friday Feb 14, with the Proclamation Luncheon. The Delaware Valley Engineers Week Committee has arranged a program with several events. There are numerous ways that engineers can become involved in Engineer's week. For more info, check out www.eweek.org.
Mr. Joe McGeehan, Chair of the Philadelphia section of the American Institute of Steel Engineers (AISE), has informed me that the AISE will be hosting a President's Night presentation on Monday February 24 at 5PM. The speaker will be Mr. Steve Miller, President of Bethlehem Steel. The topic: "Impact of International Competition on the Domestic Steel Industry". The location of the meeting is to be determined. If you are interested in attending, you can contact
Mr. McGeehan at jmcgeehan@cartech.com or 610-208-3522.
In April, we will have our annual 25 and 50 year Member Recognition Dinner. The topic and location are still being finalized.
On Saturday May 17, we will be holding a Landmark Dedication Ceremony, denoting Eddystone Generating Station Unit 1 as an Engineering Landmark. Landmark status indicates that this site has been designated by ASME to represent a significant step forward in the evolution of mechanical engineering and is the best known example of its kind. Special thanks to those at Eddystone who have provided their time and knowledge to help us make this happen!
On Tuesday May 20, we will have a presentation on the Acela Train Design. The speaker will be Mr. George Binns, Chief Mechanical Engineer of Amtrak.
If you are interested in volunteering some of your time to help set up future events, please contact us. We are always looking for fresh ideas!
I would like to wish all of you a Happy Holiday season and a joyful and prosperous New Year!
Jim Tully
January 30 Meeting
The Amazing Effective of Mathematical Sciences
February 12 Meeting
Roller Coaster Design and Manufacture
See page 6 for details
Internet Access
If you would like to read the section newsletter on the web, contact the editor. Postage rates have go up again. Even using Pre-Sorted First Class rates, it now costs over 20 cents to mail each newsletter and post card. It does not sound like much but with over 2000 members in the section, it quickly mounts up.
By using the Internet to read and print the newsletter, you can help us reduce our mailing costs. We are asking each member to decide on the method of receiving the newsletter. Of course, we could just send an email notice to members and let it go at that. But it is necessary to make sure that each member is notified of section events and other information. Some of our members do not have email and others would prefer to receive the newsletter by mail. For these reasons we are asking that those who are willing to get the newsletter on the Internet, take the positive step of notifying us. Please contact the newsletter editor if you would like to read the newsletter on the Internet. You can read this issue at www.asme.org/sections/philadelphia/jan03.htm.
A number of people have recently requested email notification of the newsletter on the Internet. Inadvertently they were left off the recent list. If you are still receiving the paper copy and requested the Internet version, please notify the editor and the correction will be made.
Philadelphia Section Officers 2002/03
Chair – Jim Tully
(215) 256 5536
jtull5@aol.com
Vice Chair – Anastas Lazaradis
(610) 499 4192
anastas.lazaridis@widener.edu
Secretary – John Chen
(856) 256 5345
jchen@rowan.edu
Treasurer - Fred Willis
(856) 256 5345
fwillis@net-gate.com
Senior Director – Lou Fendo
(610) 595 2369
louis.fendo@exeloncorp.com
Junior Director – Open
News Letter Editor - John Wolf
(856) 795 1379
73211.3452@compuserve.com
Please send letters and comments to the Editor. Letters will be published unless otherwise requested depending on space limitations.
Eddystone Landmark Designation
The Philadelphia Section has obtained Engineering Landmark status from ASME International for the Exelon Power Generating Station at Eddystone near Chester. In 1954, Philadelphia Electric Company reached an agreement with equipment suppliers Combustion Engineering and Westinghouse Electric Corporation to cooperate in building the super-critical generating station. Combustion Engineering is now part of ASEA Brown Bouveri and Westinghouse is now part of the Siemens Corporation.
1954 was an exciting time for the power industry in the United States. The country’s economy was expanding and the need for electric power was growing with the economy.
Eddystone was the first commercial unit to use a super-critical pressure
as inlet to the steam turbine. Throttle steam pressure was 5000 psi and
temperature was 1150 F.
Thanks to George Silvestri, who worked on many of the design areas of the Eddystone plant and is the source of information for the article on page 3 which describes the Eddystone
Add your business card here. Contact the editor.
design. George is also the author of the booklet which will be published by ASME on the history of the Eddystone station.
Lou Fendo of the section executive committee managed the application process for landmark status and coordinated all the activities to insure the timely completion of the process.
The dedication ceremony for Eddystone’s landmark designation is scheduled for May 17. It will be at the plant in Eddystone, Pennsylvania starting at about mid-morning. If you would like to come, please contact one of the executive committee members. Watch for more information in coming newsletters.
George Kotnick
George Kotnick, P.E., died last month in Media, Pa., where he lived. He was 83. George served as ASME president during 1984-85 and was section chair of the Philadelphia section. After retirement, he continued to remain active in section administration for many years.
His career spanned more than 30 years in the power industry and 14 years in the Navy and Merchant Marine. His career started in the Merchant Marine as a seaman and officer. In 1942 he graduated from the Pennsylvania Maritime Academy and immediately began active duty with the US Navy during World War II, where he served as lieutenant commander of the U.S.S. Lehigh.
After the war George attended the University of Oklahoma and graduated in 1952. He began his working career with Philadelphia Electric with various assignments related to plant design and operation.
In 1979, he joined United Engineers and Constructors in Philadelphia as project engineering manager. There he was responsible for the engineering of a sulfur dioxide removal system for two 800-megawatt coal-fired generating units, at that time the largest of their kind.
A Fellow of ASME, George contributed his time and knowledge not only to ASME but to a number of other technical organizations as well. He was chair of the American Association of Engineering Societies in 1989.
George continued to remain active in ASME activities. He was a major force in the Old Guard committee and continued to attend committee meetings up to the spring of 2002. He was also a member of the American Nuclear Society and he served on the Edison Electric Institute’s Energy and Environment Committee and on the Delaware Valley Council Clean Air Committee. His awards and recognitions are too numerous to mention.
George’s efforts on behalf of ASME and the engineering profession are greatly appreciated and he will be missed by many.
Contributions in his memory can be sent to Chambers Memorial Presbyterian Church, 2 East Sylvan Ave., Rutledge, PA 19070.
January’s Puzzler
Do you know what this is? On the surface, it looks like a slide rule of some type. It is obviously used to perform some calculation. More than likely it is used to solve a nomograph.
The “slide rule” is made from heavy cardboard. There are two circular sections connected as shown at the center of the picture by a pin. The upper circular section consists of a fixed disk. The lower section consists of a fixed and a rotating disk with numbers arranged around the circumference from .006 to .500 in decimal and fractional notation.
There is also a tab on the lower disk
which rotates with the disk and seems to align with the arcs on the top disk,
probably for some purpose during the calculation.
The top disk has two sets of arcs. The arcs with the greater curvature are marked “1st” through “8th”, with “1st” at the bottom of the disk.
There is a scale on the right side of the upper disk which ranges from 30 to 98 from bottom to top. The text on the right side of the upper disk says “TOTAL PERCENTAGE REDUCTION OF AREA”. The scale on left of the upper disk ranges from 10 to 40 and the text says “PERCENTAGE DRAFT PER HOLE”.
It is possible that it is used to calculate the effect of adding holes to some device and to calculate the change in draft pressure. If you know what this device is used to calculate, contact me. John Wolf
Directions to Villanova University
Take the Blue Route (Interstate 476) and exit at the Villanova exit. Proceed east on Lancaster Pike and cross Route 320. At the next light, turn right into the main Villanova parking lot. Park anywhere in the lot. Note: A SEPTA lot is on the right and is not available for this event. Cross Lancaster Pike at the light and continue up the steps toward the Villanova Chapel. Turn left at the chapel and continue for about 500 yards to the CEER Building (the new modern building on the left). The meeting is on the lower level of the building in Room 1.
Section Outreach Activities by Pallavi Lal
Outreach activities are the proud focus of the Philadelphia Section. The Section competitively awards student project funding and faculty advisor support toward attendance at the ASME International Exposition and Congress. The Section Executive committee supports these initiatives with judging and coordination efforts. I will join the Section’s executive committee to serve in the capacity of Outreach and K12 Educational Programs Coordinator. My efforts will involve developing real life engineering teamwork and enhancing skills of students carving their paths to be an Engineer and meeting industrial requests for assistance. ASME, through its outreach activities will assure contribution to the widespread interest in engineering and technology.
In continuing with the enhancement of ASME Philadelphia Section's Outreach Activities, I invite Professional Engineers, Engineers and Engineering Students to volunteer as Judges in the Future Cities Competition. Firstly, I would like to provide some background on what is "Future Cities Competition". It is a competition for the seventh and eighth graders to experience a hands-on application to present their vision of future cities. The prime intent here is to foster engineering and problem solving skills.
The judges will evaluate the participating team's electronic cities, essays and models/presentations. Further information on participating as a Judge can be found on the following website: http://www.futurecity.org/docs/judgemanual.pdf. The competition date is January 25, 2003, Saturday. If you would like to contribute in developing an engineering soul amongst our younger generation, please contact Pallavi Lal at plal@ltk.com or 215-641-8882.
If you would like to help with the sections student outreach activities, contact Pallavi Lal at plal@ltk.com
Help Wanted: Engineer/Designer with FEA experience to assist with redesign of components on a BattleBot combat robot. (See Mechanical Engineering October 2002, page 51.) This Super-Heavyweight robot has fought in several BattleBot competitions, has been seen on TV and is ranked in the top 25. Your assistance in helping the Team improve our design and performance in this new and exciting sport will be the experience of a lifetime. No experience with robotics required. A touch of creative destruction is helpful. Call Walt Lenard at 856-853-4409 or walt.lenard@elpaso.com.
Don’t forget to keep Monday, May 12 open for the Philadelphia Section Spring Golf Outing.
Eddystone Power Station
In 1954, the hunt for higher thermal efficiencies led to the construction of the Eddystone supercritical steam power plant. This search involved many of the major industrial companies of the time. Combustion Engineering, Westinghouse Electric and Philadelphia Electric Company agreed to develop a new steam electric plant to produce power using supercritical steam. Combustion Engineering and Westinghouse are now part of major European companies and Philadelphia Electric is now PECO Energy and part of Exelon Corporation. Also contributing to the design were Ingersoll Rand for the boiler feed pumps, Leeds and Northrup for the control system, M. W. Kellog for high pressure piping and Graver Water Conditioning Company for water treatment equipment. Each of these areas has major problems which had to be solved because of the high steam pressure and temperature.
No matter how complicated the thermal cycle, the overriding controlling factor is the temperature difference of the cycle. And since the outlet temperature is fixed by the ambient air temperature, the only way to increase the thermal efficiency is to increase the inlet temperature. Within the limitations of the system’s materials, it is possible to increase the steam temperature to very high values. But as the temperature increases, the steam density decreases. In order to maintain the total mass flows necessary to generate reasonable power, it is necessary to increase the size of the steam turbines. At a certain point, the turbine size becomes impractical.
The solution is to increase the pressure of the steam as the temperature increases and thereby maintain the steam density and mass flow rates. Normal steam temperatures in generation equipment are around 1000F with pressures of about 3500 psi. Increasing the steam temperature by just 200F requires an increase in pressure to about 5000 psi to maintain appropriate mass flow rates. These are the steam conditions which were used in Eddystone I. At these steam conditions, the unit operates above the critical point of steam. There is no phase change from liquid to vapor in the boiler.
This simple description hides a large number of problems which had to be solved before the plant could be built. The first problem was that the steam tables did not exist at the desired temperature and pressure. A major research effort started to expand the standard ASME steam tables to the desired range.
Initially steam properties were estimated by extrapolating the existing correlation equations. Graphical extrapolations were also used on the steam property graphs. These techniques, of course, were not adequate for the final design of the plant. An ASME subcommittee was formed to develop an interim table using existing data. An existing international effort to develop steam tables up to 1500F and 15,000 psi would take about 4 years to complete their work. The ASME subcommittee decided in 1955 to develop the interim table.
Westinghouse Electric, General Electric and Allis Chalmers worked together on determining the elevated steam properties. Westinghouse determined the specific volumes. General Electric determined the enthalpy and entropy from the specific volumes using numerical methods on high speed computers. Allis Chalmers verified the results by determining these steam properties using different methods from Westinghouse and General Electric.
The use of computers for engineering applications in the mid 1950s was very limited. In many ways the computers were analogous to today’s hand held programmable calculators. Available computer programs replicated manual calculation methods. Finite difference numerical methods, which led to today’s finite element methods, were still under development.
Efforts continued to develop computer programs to help in determining the steam properties at elevated temperatures and pressures. But the time to develop these new tools prevented their use in the design of the new plant. Manual look-up of steam properties in the new tables was used to design the new equipment.
New methods were also required for pressure drop and heat transfer calculations for steam flow. The other fluids such as combustion air and gases were more easily handled since thermodynamic properties at elevated temperatures were known.
Material properties at elevated temperatures were also a problem. The rotor forging for the Super Pressure (SP) section of the steam turbine was made from Discaloy, which was developed by Westinghouse for aviation gas turbines. Additional materials were also investigated for the turbine rotor but a successful forging was made by Bethlehem Steel Company. The forging was successful in operation partly because of a unique shaft seal design that shortened the length of the shaft.
Material for piping systems also presented new problems. 316 stainless steel was limited to 1150F. For systems above this temperature, 17-14 CuMo steel was used. This material was developed by Armco Steel during World War II. A new material was developed for the control valve bodies by the William Jessop Company of England since using 316 stainless would result in very thick wall thicknesses..
The piping design for the high pressure piping presented unique design problems. In the high pressure sections, pipe outer diameters were more than twice the pipe inner diameter. New methods of stress calculations were used in designing the pipe systems and supports.
The steam generator was a once through design. The term steam generator is more appropriate than boiler because above the critical pressure of 3208.2 psia. water does not “boil”. Above this critical pressure, the fluid changes from a liquid to a vapor without going through a phase change. A transition temperature is used to mark the difference between the liquid and vapor stages. There is no steam drum on the unit since there is no steam to collect from a boiling process.
The operation of the steam generator must be closely matched to the turbine because of the high pressure. During start up 30% design flow was maintained through the steam generator and pressure increased to 3500 psi. During startup the entire flow was bypassed around the turbine until proper steam conditions were reached. After the proper steam temperatures were reached, the control valves were open.
During start up, the by-pass flow was sent to the condenser which was designed with a special high pressure section. After the pressure and temperature were decreased, the flow entered the normal condenser section and then was pumped back to the steam generator.
After acceptable operating conditions were reached at 3500 psi and 1200F, the control valves were opened and steam generator pressure could be increased to 5000 psi. An interesting feature was that at 3500 psi the control values were 100% opened. Power levels in the plant were controlled by increasing and decreasing the inlet turbine pressure. This type of operation is known as sliding or variable pressure operation.
During operation, Eddystone set new records for operating efficiency. In 1962, a plant heat rate of 8,534 Btu/net Kwh was achieved. This is equivalent to 40% thermal efficiency. The plant availability was 82.6% and its average load was 331 Mw.
The plant has continued in operation for more than 40 years with the normal share of operating problems. The initial operation of the plant restricted the turbine inlet temperature to 1150 F for a year. After this period the plant consistantly operated with an inlet temperature of 1200 F.
In the mid 1990’s the turbine rotor developed vibration and instability problems that damaged the shaft seals. During repair of the system, distortion was discovered in the inner shell of the super pressure section. Redesign and replacement of the shell and replacement of the shaft seals were done at this time.
Considering the complexity and innovations in the plant, Eddystone has had generally trouble free operation. Its contributions to power plant systems are many and it truly deserves its landmark status.
Joseph Santoleri - ASME Fellow
The Philadelphia section has nominated Joseph Santoleri as a Fellow of the Society. Mr. Santoleri’s nomination was recently approved by the Society based on his accomplishments in the engineering profession.
Joseph Santoleri's career spans 54
years starting as a co-op student from Drexel in 1947 and presently as a senior
consultant in the combustion, heat transfer and incineration field. Mr.
Santoleri's first involvement as a combustion and air pollution control
engineer began as a fuels engineer at Lukens Steel Co., Coatesville, PA.
At Thermal Research and Engineering Corporation in Conshohocken, he developed a line of high intensity burners and waste liquid vortex burners, which were extensively used throughout industry. He combined his combustion background with highly specialized heat transfer analysis for development of fired heater waste heat recovery and liquid natural gas vaporizer applications.
Mr. Santoleri's background in development, design, application manufacturing, field-testing and startup enabled him to provide consulting services to industry and government as a principal consultant at Four Nines, Inc. His expertise in these areas enabled many industrial operations to continue operations of waste disposal systems by proper redesign, retrofit, testing and final acceptance by state and federal regulators. He has provided training to the regulators and engineers in these fields and served as a peer reviewer for US EPA for guidance manuals as well as new regulations covering the hazardous waste combustion systems.
The section is continuing the nomination process for four additional section members. We hope to complete the process by the summer of 2003. We are also seeking nominations from our membership for new nominations. If you know of anyone in the section with outstanding professional or academic achievements, please contact one of the members of the executive committee.
Paul McCready to Receive Bower Award
In April Paul McCready will receive the Bower Award from the Franklin Institute in recognition of his achievements in aerodynamics. The presentation is in conjunction with the celebrations this year of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903. Mr. McCready is well known for his unique contributions to human powered flight. Among his many achievements is the design of the Gossamer Albatross, the first and only human powered machine to fly across the English Channel.
The Bower award presentation will be at the Franklin Institute on April 23. On April 24 at Villanova University, the section will sponsor a seminar featuring Mr. McCready as speaker. Watch the next newsletter for more details.
