Title: Real-time online monitoring of thermal efficiency in coal-fired power plant boiler based on coal heating value identification

Authors: Yuanhao Shi; Jingcheng Wang; Bin Wang; Yunfeng Zhang

Addresses: Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai, 200240, China ' Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai, 200240, China ' Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai, 200240, China ' Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai, 200240, China

Abstract: This paper presents a comprehensive real-time online calculation model of coal-fired boiler thermal efficiency based on the low heating value identification of the coal. At first, online calculation approach is proposed to overcome the difficulty that the coal qualities into furnace are often changing and not well obtained real-time, by means of the dynamic mass and energy balance method. Secondly, the excess air coefficient and unburned carbon in fly ash which are the important parameters to calculate the boiler thermal efficiency are determined by soft measurement methods. The paper illustrates the effectiveness of the models as well as the validation of the online simulation, starting from real operation data. The outcome is that it is possible to significantly satisfy the accuracy of online identification of the low heating value (LHV) of the coal into the boiler, and the real-time of online calculations provided by indirect heat balance method. The models can be used to the real-time control and optimisation of the coal-fired utility boilers.

Keywords: coal-fired power plants; thermal efficiency; indirect heat balance; low heating value; LHV; excess air coefficient; real-time monitoring; online monitoring; coal heating value; modelling; boiler efficiency; real-time control; optimisation; unburned carbon; fly ash.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2013.057141

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2013 Vol.20 No.3, pp.295 - 304

Published online: 27 Sep 2014 *

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