On-Line Fuel Tracking By Advanced Flame Monitoring : Project Profile

Abstract:

<p>Increasingly, power plants are burning a diverse range of coals (indigenous and imported) under tighter economic and environmental constraints. On-line coal analysers have been investigated in the past, but these are expensive and do not provide a practical solution to the problem. To improve the efficiency of the process, utilities are turning to optimisation packages to assist operation staff. Experience has shown that these optimisation packages can help to optimise the process, but are limited by the wide variation imposed on the system by the constantly changing coal diet. It is therefore desirable to identify the coal being burnt on an on-line, continuous basis to improve the performance of the optimisation packages. Specific objectives are: <bl> <li>To develop an advanced, cost-effective system capable of identifying the fuel burn on on-line continuous basis</li> <li>To establish quantitative relationships between the 'finger prints' of flames and their corresponding fuel types such that an on-line fuel-tracking system could be integrated into a power station control system</li> <li>To evaluate the performance of the system for a broad range of fuels at University of Greenwich's Combustion Research Laboratory and at Innogy's 0.5MW Combustion Test Facility</li> <li>To conduct full-scale demonstration trials on a coal fired power plant</li> </bl></p> <p>This project aims to develop a low-cost, fuel tracking system for the identification of coals being burnt at any one time. The approach is to extract the dynamic 'finger prints' of the flame and hence the fuel type by processing the output signal of an improved flame-eye using digital signal processing and soft-computing techniques. A prototype will be design, implemented and evaluated first on a combustion test rig under a laboratory environment and then on a 500kW coal fired combustion test facility at Innogy. Quantitative relationships between the dynamic characteristics of flames and their corresponding fuel types will be identified such that the on-line fuel-tracking system could be integrated into a power station control system. Full scale demonstration trials will be conducted on a coal fired power station.<p> This profile contains information on the project's: <bl> <li>Objectives</li> <li>Summary</li> <li>Cost</li> <li>Duration</li> <li>Contractor</li> </bl>

Author(s):

DTI