Engineering challenges of boilers in biomass, waste, and coal power plants: catastrophic failures limiting energy efficiency improvement

Under the global pressure for energy transition and carbon emission reduction, increasing steam parameters has emerged as the most critical pathway toward enhanced energy efficiency in power plants. However, increasing steam parameters can result in catastrophic failures of boiler heating surface, which have become the most critical factor limiting the leap forward in energy efficiency. This paper systematically reviews the failure causes, types, and underlying mechanisms of boiler heating surface in biomass, waste-to-energy, and coal-fired power plants operating at high steam parameters, encompassing diverse failure modes such as overheating, corrosion, erosion, ash fouling and slagging, steam oxidation, fatigue, stress corrosion cracking, and welding defects. Drawing on numerous engineering case studies, the paper summarizes the processes of material degradation and consumption induced by the synergistic coupling of multiple mechanisms in complex environments, emphasizing the crucial influences of temperature, fuel composition, microstructural evolution, and stress fields on the evolution of failures. Finally, in response to the aforementioned challenges, emerging advances in multi-sensor-fusion-based intelligent monitoring, multifunctional composite surface coatings, high-performance alloy design, and the efficient utilization of advanced working fluids are systematically discussed, providing comprehensive strategies to overcome current limitations and achieve high-efficiency operation of future energy systems.