Imagine knocking a huge hole in the wall and moving in a massive piece of equipment the size of a bus weighing in at a whopping 80,000 pounds, with only six inches of clearance to slowly slide into place.
That is the challenge that University of Saskatchewan (USask) staff and contractors have taken on in the monumental task of replacing two aging boilers with a new energy-efficient model in the USask Heating Plant facility.
"This is a major project for the University of Saskatchewan and extremely important in support of the entire campus community," said USask's Wade Epp, associate vice-president of campus operations. "This has been years in the planning and is progressing well under the direction of our Facilities staff and supported by our Planning Design and Construction group and trusted third parties, as we remove two end-of-life boilers and replace them with one state-of-the-art unit with more capacity than the other two combined. This is a critical upgrade that benefits the entire campus, including everything from Royal University Hospital and Jim Pattison Children's Hospital to the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, and we thank the Province of Saskatchewan for helping to fund this important project."
Helping lead the way is USask Chief Engineer Andrew Watson, now in his 16th year on campus and tasked with heading the university's $17.34-million steam capacity replacement project, one of the highlights of his career.
"The biggest challenge of pulling a project like this off is to install such a massive piece of equipment and yet keep the plant running," said Watson. "This boiler needs to hook up to the whole system and has to slide through all your lines that are live. And doing that and not interrupting campus, or our customers, has always been one of our biggest focuses to do this without having a shutdown. That is a big challenge in the plant and we have done a lot of preparation to ensure we continue to run throughout this project."
The new boiler arrives on campus for the University of Saskatchewan's $17.34-million steam capacity replacement project. (Photo: Andrew Watson)
In a marvel of modern engineering, planning, and execution that includes knocking out a huge chunk of the north wall of the power plant, workers are removing two old boilers that were installed in 1953 and 1957, and replacing them with one modern unit that out-produces the two old units combined. Getting the old boilers out and the new boiler in has required extensive planning and preparation over the past year to set the stage for using rollers and pads to carefully move the massive new unit into place.
"The only way to get it in is to knock the wall down and the clearances to get through the wall are tight and you have to slide a massive unit through the wall like that," said Watson. "The big challenge of the project was in order to move the boiler into where you need it, it goes through all of our utilities that keep the plant running. So our natural gas line runs past that wall, our steam header line that feeds all of campus runs along that wall. Our fuel oil line, which is the standby fuel for the boilers, runs past that wall, and our low pressure steam lines run through that wall. So last year we did Phase 1 and rerouted those lines so that this summer we wouldn't have to deal with those critical utilities in the way."
Watson said having backup boilers and built-in redundancy ensures the steam plant remains in operation throughout this project, and for future emergency situations to ensure steam capacity to keep campus facilities fully heated.
"That just speaks to the purpose of this plant being redundant," said Watson. "How we operate here is we have backups to backups. When something fails, we are not stuck where campus is left freezing and where the hospitals are being evacuated. We have redundancy and backup."
On track to be completed in January, the three-year project is a critical infrastructure upgrade to the plant, which provides heat and steam to over eight million square feet of building space across campus.
"We are actually going to go up in capacity and I think the key part of why we are doing this is because the campus is continuing to grow," said Watson. "The university continues to expand, and due to the critical role the heating plant plays to ensure all the teaching, learning and discovery and research continues and to keep the hospitals running, you need to renew your equipment and build redundancy. This plant continuously needs to be renewed and upgraded to meet the ever-increasing needs of campus."
The new boiler also supports the university's sustainability strategy, featuring a state-of-the-art low NOx (nitrogen oxide) burner that is the standard in the boiler industry for lower emissions.
"Absolutely, there is no question that this new boiler is going to produce less greenhouse gasses," said Watson, noting this is the kind of project that he and his colleagues will take immense pride in finishing.
"This is what I became a power engineer for," he said. "This challenges me, but I love it. And what's really important is that in order to pull this off, it takes a team. It's my staff who operates the plant, it's about working with the project managers, the Planning Design and Construction Department, and the support from Facilities leadership. That is all so critical. And we will all share great satisfaction in completing this project."
For more information
105 Administration Place
Saskatoon Saskatchewan
Canada S7N 5A2
www.usask.ca
