Case Studies Onsite Technical Services Brings Plant Back Online in 10 Days

A gas-fired power plant in the Northeast region of the United States had a problem. The accessory drive on one of its GE Frame 7 gas turbines had developed an oil leak. But because of the turbulence within the compartment when the turbine was running it was impossible to determine the location of the leak with any certainty.

Enter Philadelphia Gear's OTS team. During a scheduled 14-day outage on the turbine, the OTS team was charged with finding the leak, correcting it, changing out all existing bearings and seals, disassembling and reassembling the entire unit as well as the ancillary equipment that was mounted to it, machining scored shafts as appropriate, check the housing bores for parallelism, etc., etc., and all of this was to be accomplished in the field in time for the unit restart.

Only 10 days later, the OTS team completed its work scope, documented "as found" and "as left" conditions and waited for power plant maintenance staff to flip the switch and bring the unit back online. As they did so, the compartment remained safe and dry, and the gearbox ran as smoothly as when it was first installed more than a decade earlier.