Woody Biomass Co-Firing in Pulverized Coal Fired Boilers

With legislation requiring utilities to produce a significant fraction of their electrical energy with renewable fuel supplies, it is anticipated that cofiring biomass in large utility boilers will become increasingly popular. Boilers that are designed to burn pulverized coal (PC) can typically burn woody biomass at up to 5% of the rated heat input. An 800 MW PC-fired unit could, therefore, produce up to 40 MW of renewable energy with biomass co-firing. The generating plant may experience a net capacity de-rating whenever biomass is co-fired. This potential reduction in net plant output may be attributed to reduced boiler efficiency and additional auxiliary power requirements. Biomass fuel handling related auxiliary power requirements are dependent upon the form in which biomass is delivered to the plant. Preparation of woody biomass for co-firing in large PC-fired boilers is typically performed onsite with hammer mills or by off-site processing. For an 800 MW unit, onsite fuel size reduction will usually result in an incremental increase in auxiliary power of 3–4 MW, whereas the use of pre-processed biomass such as wood pellets will require a minimal increase in parasitic load. However, delivered fuel costs for raw wood requiring onsite processing are at least 60% lower than that of densified biomass on a heat input basis. This paper includes an economic comparison of co-firing woody biomass that is processed onsite by direct injection vs. co-firing densified woody biomass by co-milling in a large PC-fired boiler. This comparison will consider delivered fuel costs, capital costs, CO2 emissions and impacts upon boiler efficiency and net heat rate.

Parameter Identification of Steam Turbine Speed Governor System

The dynamic characteristics of the steam turbine speed governor system is one of the major factor that influence the security of the power system. It has important practical significance for the security of the power system to establish the detailed dynamic model of the steam turbine speed governor system through parameter identification. This paper starts from the actual needs of the modeling of steam turbine speed governor system, several key issues such as field test of the speed control system, data preprocessing, parameter identification and simulation verification are researched, the solution of the key problems in the field static test and dynamic disturbance test is summarized, a variety of data preprocessing algorithms and parameter identification algorithms are achieved, and a new method for the simulation verification is proposed. On this basis, software based on MATLAB for the parameter identification of the steam turbine governor system is developed, which can perform the data preprocessing, parameter identification and simulation verification. The software offers a variety of parameter identification method to identify the linear and nonlinear part of the system model quickly and efficiently, and provides detailed qualitative and quantitative method for the evaluation of the simulation verification. The parameter identification results of steam turbine governor system of a power plant show that the software is user friendly and feature rich, and also show that it can complete parameter identification of steam turbine speed governor system intelligently and precisely.

A Numerical Simulation of Fuel Premixing for PCCI Combustion by Direct Injection

Diesel engine has some advantages that thermal efficiency is high and control response is fast. On the other hand, more particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) are contained in the exhaust gas of diesel engine. Premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) combustion is proposed to reduce the PM and NOx. In the lean range of equivalent ratio, unburned fuel is left and in the rich range, PM and soot are generated. For the practical use of PCCI combustion, mixing fuel and air well is important under the low equivalent ratio of injection. In this study, the mixing characteristics of fuel and air in a cylinder were numerically evaluated. A numerical simulation was performed with general-purpose simulator. The fuel has been injected into the vertical direction of cylinder and injection angle has been defined as 0 degree. In order to express the collusion, impingement on the wall model, that defines behavior of a droplet impinged on the wall with the Weber number of a droplet, was applied. By the injection timing, standard deviation of local equivalent ratio at Top Dead Center (TDC) was plotted. In this study, Frequency of mixing in each cell statistically was observed to evaluate the fuel-air mixing degree. The authors have taken notice of the condition which can be reduced the amount of scatter in the distribution of local equivalent ratio.

A Demonstration Study on a High Performance Vertical Roller Mill for a Pulverized Coal Firing Boiler

We have developed new technologies to improve particle classification performance of vertical roller mills using a rotary nozzle ring with reverse swirling flow and a louver separator. A rotary nozzle and a louver are installed in primary and secondary classification sections of the mill, respectively. A series of tests using a pilot scale mill showed that these technologies reduce the fraction of coarse particles, power consumption of the mill and mill differential pressure. For an industrial scale-up, we conducted a demonstration test using a vertical roller mill equipped in a 700MW thermal power plant consisting of a pulverized coal firing boiler and six mills with approx. 70t/h nominal grinding capacity in each. In this paper, we discuss demonstration test results on the viewpoint of decreasing coarse particle fractions, power consumption and mill differential pressure. Under normal operating conditions, the coarse particle fraction in pulverized coal was reduced more than 50%, power consumption was reduced 7% and differential pressure was reduced approx. 50%. Additionally, power consumption was reduced approx. 15% under high coal feed conditions. We confirmed that these new technologies effectively improved performance in higher mill loading rates. These results provide a prospect of upgrading the plant performance, especially in reducing unburned carbon in fly ash and power consumption of auxiliary equipment.

Technical Challenges of Retubing the E´lectricite´ de France (EDF) Belleville Unit 2

This paper describes the numerous challenges involved in the partial retubing of the Belleville Nuclear Station Unit 2 steam surface condenser using 64,242 tubes. Specific challenges of the project included retubing with both duplex stainless steel tubes and with brass alloy tubes, analyzing the risk of flow induced tube vibration and designing a staking system to prevent such vibration, and, replacement of six tubesheets. The tubesheet stresses were analyzed using a beam strip analysis and ANSYS, and new tubesheets were reverse engineered from original drawings. Tubesheets were aligned to the support plate holes using a newly developed laser alignment system. Prior to the retubing, extensive mockup tests were performed to optimize the rolling torque, and to determine rolling parameters that limit the work-hardening of the brass tubes. Testing also included leak testing the mockup joints with a small pressure vessel and then performing a helium leak test of the pressurized tube joints. Tests were performed with both smooth and serrated holes.

Challenges in Designing and Building a 700 MW All-Air-Cooled Steam Electric Power Plant

Large natural gas fired combined cycle electric power plants, while being an increasingly efficient and cost effective technology, are traditionally large consumers of water resources, while also discharging cooling tower blowdown at a similar rate. Water use is mostly attributed to the heat rejection needs of the gas turbine generator, the steam turbine generator, and the steam cycle condenser. Cooling with air, i.e. dry cooling, instead of water can virtually eliminate the environmental impact associated with water usage. Commissioned in the fall of 2010 with this in mind, the Halton Hills Generating Station located in the Greater Toronto West Area, Ontario, Canada, is a nominally-rated 700 Megawatt combined cycle electric generating station that is 100 percent cooled using various air-cooled heat exchangers. The resulting water consumption and wastewater discharge of this power plant is significantly less than comparably sized electric generating plants that derive cooling from wet methods (i.e, evaporative cooling towers). To incorporate dry cooling into such a power plant, it is necessary to consider several factors that play important roles both during plant design as well as construction and commissioning of the plant equipment, including the dry cooling systems. From the beginning a power plant general arrangement and space must account for dry cooling’s increase plot area requirements; constraints therein may render air cooling an impossible solution. Second, air cooling dictates specific parameters of major and auxiliary equipment operation that must be understood and coordinated upon purchase of such equipment. Until recently traditional wet cooling has driven standard designs, which now, in light of dry cooling’s increase in use, must be re-evaluated in full prior to purchase. Lastly, the construction and commissioning of air-cooling plant equipment is a significant effort which demands good planning and execution.

Equilibrium and Kinetics Analysis of NOx Reduction From Biogas Combustion

The undeveloped potential generation capacity of landfills, wastewater digesters and food digesters is estimated at 600 MW in California and 3,000 MW in the United States. California’s 2000 dairies have the potential to produce an estimated 40 million cubic feet of biogas per day, representing a potential generation capacity of about 140 MW. One of the most significant challenges facing the combustion of digester biogas is high NOx emissions. Sulfur in the biogas poisons post-combustion catalysts, rendering them ineffective for reducing NOx emissions. To address this challenge, an integrated pollution capture and microwave system has been developed to reduce NOx emissions from biogas engines. The feasibility of reburning the captured NOx was assessed and the effect of various operating parameters, including temperature, pressure, and reactant composition were determined using chemical equilibrium and kinetic modeling.

Hydrogen Production by Bio-Fuel Steam Reforming at Low Reaction Temperature

The authors reveal the dominant chemical reactions and the optimum conditions, supposing the design of ethanol steam-reforming reactors. Specifically speaking, experiments are conducted for Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst, together with those for Ru/Al2O3 catalyst for reference. Using a household-use-scale reactor with well-controlled temperature distributions, the authors compare experimental results with chemical-equilibrium theories. It has revealed by Shinoki et al. (2011) that the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst shows rather high performance with high hydrogen concentration CH2 at low values of reaction temperature TR. Because, the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst promotes the ethanol-steam-reforming and water-gas-shift reactions, but does not promote the methanation reaction. So, in the present study, the authors reveal that the Ru/Al2O3 catalyst needs high TR > 770 K for better performance than the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst, and that the Ru/Al2O3 catalyst shows lower performance at TR < 770 K. Then, the Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is considered to activate all the three reactions even at low TR. Furthermore, concerning the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst, the authors reveal the influences of liquid-hourly space velocity LHSV upon concentrations such as CH2, CCO2, CCO and CCH4 and the influence of LHSV upon the ethanol conversion XC2H5OH, in a range of LHSV from 0.05 h−1 to 0.8 h−1, at S/C = 3.0 and TR = 520 K. And, the authors reveal the influences of the thermal profile upon CH2, CCO2, CCO, CCH4 and XC2H5OH, for several LHSV’s. To conclude, with well-controlled temperatures, the reformed gas can be close to the theory. In addition, the authors investigate the influences of S/C.

Combustion Characteristics of a Dual Fuel Diesel Engine With Natural Gas (Influence of Cetane Number of Ignition Fuel)

This paper investigates the performance, exhaust emissions, and combustion characteristics of a dual fuel diesel engine fueled by CNG (compressed natural gas) as the main fuel. The experiments used standard ignition fuels prepared by n-hexadecane and heptamethylnonane which are used to define the ignitability of diesel combustion, and focused on the effects of fuels with better ignitability than ordinary gas oil such as fuels with higher cetane numbers, 70 and 100. Compared with gas oil ignition, a standard ignition fuel with C.N. 100 showed shorter ignition delays, and lower NOx exhaust concentrations, and engine noise. The results also showed that regardless of ignition fuel, misfiring occurred when the CNG supply was above 75%. While the CNG ratio where misfiring occurs lowered somewhat with increasing C.N., the combustion stability (defined as the standard deviation in the cycle to cycle variation of IMEP divided by the mean value of IMEP) was little influenced. In summary, the results show that the influence of the ignitability on the engine performance and emission characteristics of the dual fuel operation is relatively small when the ignition fuel has C.N., and similar to or higher than ordinary gas oil.

Development of 60Hz Titanium 48-Inch Last Stage Blade for Steam Turbine

The titanium 48-inch last stage blade that has world’s largest class exhaust annulus area and tip speed for 60Hz steam turbines has been developed. Concept of this blade is to achieve high performance and compact design of steam turbine for 1000MW thermal power plant and 300MW combined cycle plant. In the design of this blade, the optimization design has been done by using the recent analysis technologies, three dimensional CFD in aerodynamic design and FEA in mechanical design. The blade has curved axial fir-tree dovetail, snubber cover both at the tip and at the mid-span. To achieve superior vibration characteristics, continuously coupled structure was adopted for blade connection. To confirm the validity of design, first, sub-scale model blades were provided and tested in model steam turbine test facilities. Second, one row of actual size blades were assembled on the wheel of test rotor and were exposed rotating vibration test in a wheel box. Finally, these blades were tested at actual steam conditions in a full scale steam turbine test facility. In this paper, aerodynamic and mechanical design features will be introduced, and the test results of both sub-scale and actual size blades under real steam turbine operating conditions will be presented.