Advanced Combustion Monitoring Tools for Efficient, Clean and Flexible Utility Boilers
(Room Garuda 10B, 1st Floor)
19 Sep 18
4:30 PM
-
6:00 PM
Tracks:
TRACK C - Optimizing Plant Operation
Standard equipment installed on large utility boilers rarely allows for an online monitoring of key combustion parameters such as burner air and fuel distribution, burner stoichiometric coefficients, Furnace Exit Gas Temperature (FEGT), or solid fuel Particle Size Distribution (PSD). These parameters however influence the combustion efficiency, the emission of pollutants, the quality of the combustion by-products, as well as the load and fuel flexibility of the unit. Advanced measurement tools are now available on the market to accurately monitor those parameters online. They can be used for one-shot combustion tunings, or permanent installation and integration in the boiler control system. This paper gives an overview of such devices used for combustion tuning and/or control in large scale power production units (up to 900 MWe). Cases studies are presented. In all cases, information that was not previously available to the operators have been brought to light and allowed for corrective actions leading to improved combustion balance. The flame temperature system gives an online, 2D image of the temperature field at the outlet of the furnace, while the soft air system and the coalflow system provide an online monitoring of the air and fuel flow rates to the burners. The coal sizer system gives an instantaneous measure of the Particle Size Distribution without sampling and without lab analysis. Depending on the specific requirements for a given unit, the combination of several of these tools addresses the need to retrieve more information on the combustion process, leading to increased performance and flexibility.