Returkraft replaces 450,000 Euros of boiler scaffolding with a UT drone

Waste-to-energy power generation · Confined space inspection · Vendor published

The job

Returkraft operates a waste-to-energy plant in Norway and must inspect its boiler internals for corrosion, pitting, and tube wall thinning. The traditional method put a team of 10 to 15 scaffolders inside the boiler for a collective 1,700 hours, followed by 300 more hours of ultrasonic thickness measurements by NDT inspectors. The plant now flies an Elios 3 with a UT payload, and 1 to 2 pilots capture the visual and thickness data from the ground, with scaffolding built afterward only where repairs are actually needed.

The operation

The plant incinerates 140,000 tons of waste and produces 11MW of electrical power and 33MW of heating power (published-by-vendor)

The equipment

Flyability Elios 3 with ultrasonic thickness (UT) payload, 4K camera, and LiDAR

The published numbers

Scaffolding and inspections alone would cost 450,000 Euros under the traditional method (published-by-vendor); 10 to 15 scaffolders spending a collective 1,700 hours inside the boiler (published-by-vendor); 300 hours of UT measurements traditionally versus 8 hours for the entire drone process of flying, changing batteries, and capturing measurements (published-by-vendor); over 150 ultrasonic thickness measurements captured in 2.5 hours of flight time (published-by-vendor); boiler tubes of 44.5 or 57 millimeters (published-by-vendor); outage time 48 hours less than a traditional inspection and 7 days of scaffolding work saved (published-by-vendor); crew of 1 to 2 pilots (published-by-vendor). Drone program cost: not published. Payback: not published.

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

This works because the measurement targets are known tube geometries and the plant's maintenance engineer planned the UT grid in advance; it is not a wave-the-drone-around exercise. A buyer must confirm their NDT authority and insurer accept drone-collected UT points as equivalent to manual readings, since that acceptance is what lets the 300 hours go away. Probe contact on fouled or slagged tube surfaces is the practical limiter, so ask for a trial on your actual boiler condition, not a clean demo panel. The 450,000 Euro figure is the avoided traditional cost, not a measured net saving, and the drone, training, and pilot time are not costed in the account. Any repair the inspection finds still requires access, so treat the saving as conditional on a clean bill of health.

Sources