Successful continuation
Well, after last year’s big success of the AOV/MOV Joint Conferences in Orlando, Florida, USA, this year the event took place in San Antonio, Texas, USA from 11 – 15 January. With the conferences being an important part of the United States and to some extends global valve industry with the special focus on nuclear power generation, Valve World attended the event to report directly from the expo floor and the conference sessions.
By Christian Borrmann
“Last year everything was about anticipation and this year it is already about confirmation. We are really curious, where this will go next year.” This and similar phrases were the answers to the question, what do you think of this year’s AOV/MOV joint conferences. It didn’t matter who was asked, be it valve manufacturer, valve supplier, other the valve industry supporting companies, and end users, everywhere the positive atmosphere could be felt.
A result of this positive mood was the increase of participants and exhibitors. Karen Miller, part of the organising team of the event: “This year we had around fifty companies exhibiting, which are three more companies then last year. As for the number of conference attendees, there were around 620 experts from the valve energy sector, which is a lot, given the economic situation.” As a result of all this, the AOV/MOV Joint conferences will stay in San Antonio for at least another two years.
Focussing on MOVs
On Monday 11 January the conference started off with its MOV section. During the morning hours the Limitorque Technical Advisory Group meeting took place and following this there was an open discussion forum. After the lunch break the official opening ceremony took place. The opening speech was held by MOV Chairman Mr William Morris, from River Bend. During his opening speech he stressed the importance of this event and, for this reason the steering committee had worked hard to put together a conference of great interest and high importance. After his welcome speech he started reading out all nuclear power plants in the US to find out whether they had sent people to attend the conference.
Next on the agenda were presentations from Dennis Adams from INPO, who discussed the equipment reliability of motor-operated valves in nuclear power plants. Following this Mr Curt R. Dupill, from Dupill Group, together with Tim Calvert, from Davis Besse, talked about the benefits of reducing valve seats on in-body gate and check valves in pure water nuclear plant systems.
On the second and third day, the conference was dedicated to case studies and exchange of experiences, for example Mr Fabrice Guérout, from the AECL at Chalk River Laboratories gave an interesting presentation about the MOV Stem/Nut Lubrication testing of Mobilgrease 28 at their laboratories and Mr Zhilin Dong from AmerenUE from the Callaway Plant, informed the attendees about Terry Turbine Trip/Throttle Valve Lubrication OE and discussed possible corrective action. Another session of high importance was the presentation from Mr Michael Farnan from the NRC. He gave an informative update on the status of Motor-Operated Valve Regulatory Activities. The MOV concluding sessions on Wednesday morning were devoted to three company updates coming from, Areva Teledyne and Crane, who are all strongly involved in the nuclear business.
Importance of AOVs
With the MOV part ending in the course of the day, the AOV sessions started Wednesday morning. AOV Chairman Mr Tim Scoggins from USA-STARS welcomed roughly 300 attendees and introduced the members of the steering committee to the audience and he thanked the committee for helping to organise this year’s conference. Then Mr John Deyton, from Catawba, explained the audience about the lessons Catawba had learned about Rod Bearing Assembly Failure. After this session Mr Bill Fitzgerald, from Fisher Control Valves, presented together with Kevin Cortis, from Dominion, a paper about Feedwater Heater Level Improvements at Millstone. The first day was rounded off by a presentation from Mr Ken Thomas about the fundamentals of solenoid valves and their application in power plants AND a welcome reception for the AOV attendees in the expo hall. This gave room for the exhibitors to present to the conference attendees what new offerings they had to make and also this was the right time for meeting existing and possible future clients.
On the following day, the AOV sessions continued with two plenary sessions followed by a set of breakout sessions, which also carried on after the lunch break. In opposite to last year, where these had not taken place, the steering committee found that these sessions gave a better forum to some topics. The topics that were mostly discussed were maintenance, equipment reliability, diagnostics and trace analysis, and AOV obsolescence amongst others.
On the third and final day, the focus was again on solving valve challenges before they are actually happened. Amongst others, Mr Sean Dunlap, from Diablo Canyon, and Mr Robert Powell, from LDS, talked about how to use acoustic emission for troubleshooting valves and Mr Ziegler gave a presentation on the simple improvement of plant efficiency before Mr Scoggins closed the AOV 2010 Conference around noon time.
Conclusions
After last year’s very anticipating and this year’s assuring atmosphere, the general trend is that the industry is doing very well despite economical situation. The plans for new build nuclear power plants and lifetime extensions of existing power plants is actually going on and all this makes a promising future years for the industry and all its different sectors working in it. And something has to happen because the demand of energy is getting increasing more than ever, not only in the United States but all over the world. So, if one takes the AOV/MOV 2010 edition as a sign for what is to be expected in the coming years, then there will be a lot to come.
AOV/MOV in 2011
In 2011, the AOV/MOV Joint Conferences will take place at the Marriott Rivercenter San Antonio, Texas from 19 – 23 January.
For more information please check out the websites:
www.aovusersgroup.comwww.movusersgroup.com