The needs of the power generation industry include year-in and year-out reliability, optimum performance for maximum efficiency, and absolute on-time delivery to meet plant outage schedules.
Yuba has been meeting the needs to the power generation industry for more than six decades.
Yuba's quality makes the company the most respected supplier of heat transfer equipment in the world and the dominant supplier of feedwater heaters. More than 5,000 feedwater heaters bearing the Yuba name have been installed in electric power plants worldwide. Yuba also produces exhaust steam and dump condensers, moisture separator reheaters, header-type high pressure feedwater heaters, shell-and-tube heat exchangers, deaerators, flue gas reheaters and combustion air preheaters.
Yuba is one of the few companies capable of supplying the total range of heat transfer equipment needs to the power generation industry.

• Feedwater heaters for every application
Yuba is the dominant supplier of feedwater heaters to the power generation industry. Special design features of Yuba feedwater heaters include venting systems with positive control of vent flows, pass partitions with multiple designs for access, large corner radii on high pressure tubesheet-to-channel junctions, thick drain cooler end plates, single and double desuperheating section zones for moderate and extreme steam temperatures, and U-tube bend supports of larger radius bends.
The reason is simple: Yuba understands power generation and its special problems. Yuba's engineering and manufacturing personnel are dedicated to supplying feedwater heaters that exceed the requirements of its customers. Yuba feedwater heaters are precisely optimized for each installation. Yuba employs sophisticated computer design and engineering programs to evaluate pressure drop, study velocities throughout the feedwater heater, analyze to eliminate tube vibration and examine performance at overload conditions. In-depth experience and technical expertise provide an extra measure of assurance that Yuba feedwater heaters will meet varying load conditions, thermal cycles and requirements imposed by forced outages.

• Yuba's patented Hemilok® head closure

High pressure feedwater heaters are subject to thermal shock in cyclical service. Any high pressure feedwater heater in cyclical use is subject to thermal and pressure loads of a magnitude not encountered during base loaded continuous service. Therefore, high pressure feedwater heaters mandate special designs to prevent the high stresses prevalent in cylindrical channels in cyclical service. The design of the juncture between the tubesheet and a cylindrical barrel is especially critical since the tubesheet changes temperature at a much greater rate than the cylindrical barrel.

Recognizing the need for a full access head capable of withstanding the demands of high cyclical use, Yuba engineers created the Hemilok® head, an innovation so unique it was granted a United States patent in 1989. This is one of the few patents granted in feedwater heater technology in recent years.

The Yuba design employs an internal spherical shape which is stronger than a cylinder and has lower mass to minimize the temperature difference that causes high stresses between the tubesheet and the cylindrical barrel. The Yuba design provides a large radius at this junction to prevent stress magnification without a corresponding increase in the outside diameter and the mass of the barrel. Hemilok® technology will prevent the large stresses inherent in the previous designs for base loaded units and will provide the fatigue life required for cycling and load-following units.

The Hemilok® design provides full access for maintenance and employs shear keys to take the large hydraulic end load. The shear keys, which are also specially shaped to prevent fatigue cracks, minimize bolting in the gasketed design and reduce component weights for ease in opening and closing.

The Hemilok® design assures fatigue free operation in difficult service. It provides additional space for ease of full access maintenance which is especially applicable in channel sizes below 48" inside diameter. Hemilok® designs are available in all sizes and all high pressure applications, including supercritical applications with design pressures over 5000 psi.

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