Fault Detection and Diagnosis of the Deaerator Level Control System in Nuclear Power Plants

Fault Detection and Diagnosis of the Deaerator Level Control System in Nuclear Power Plants

The deaerator of a power plant is one of feedwater heaters in the secondary system, and it is located above the feedwater pumps. The feedwater pumps take the water from the deaerator storage tank, and the net positive suction head(NSPH) should always be ensured. To secure the sufficient NPSH, the deaerator tank is equipped with the level control system of which level sensors are critical items. And it is necessary to ascertain the sensor state on-line. For this, a model-based fault detection and diagnosis(FDD) is introduced in this study. The dynamic control model is formulated from the relation of input-output flow rates and liquid-level of the deaerator storage tank. Then an adaptive state estimator is designed for the fault detection and diagnosis of sensors. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed FDD scheme are evaluated by applying the operation data of Yonggwang Units 3 & 4.