Clean, efficient electricity from coal -- The U.S. Department of Energy`s low emission boiler systems program
- Federal Energy Technology Center (United States)
The US Department of Energy`s Federal Energy Technology Center is working with private industry to develop highly advanced electric power plants called Low Emission Boiler Systems (LEBS) that are based on long-proven pulverized coal combustion technology but that will have significantly higher thermal efficiency, superior environmental performance, and a lower cost of electricity than current coal-fired power plants. Although LEBS is intended primarily for new plants, individual LEBS subsystems could be used to retrofit or repower existing plants in order to improve efficiency and/or environmental performance. The integrated design approach takes advantage of the interactions among the combustion, boiler, power cycle, and emissions control subsystems, resulting in a power plant that attains maximum performance at minimum cost. Although the exact configuration and performance of LEBS will be tailored to meet user requirements, typical performance levels that can be expected are SO{sub 2} and NOx emissions of 0.1 lb/million Btu (40 g/GJ), particulate emissions of 0.01 lb/million Btu (4 g/GJ), and a thermal efficiency of 42--48%, net, based on the coal higher heating value. These emissions levels are about one-sixth of the current US standards for SO{sub 2} and NOx and one-third the standard for particulate. The average efficiency of current coal-fired plants in the US is about 35%. Several advanced technologies are being developed for use in LEBS. The technologies include the Kalina cycle, the U-fired slagging furnace, ultra-low NOx combustion, the moving bed copper oxide flue gas cleanup process, and limestone injection dry scrubbing. Rather than use pure water as the working fluid, the Kalina cycle uses mixtures of water and ammonia to achieve efficiencies of up to 48% at steam temperatures and pressures comparable to those used in conventional subcritical plants. The U-fired slagging furnace converts coal minerals to relatively small volumes of environmentally inert slag rather than to large volumes of flyash. Low NOx combustion systems use newly developed burners and staging techniques to reduce NOx to levels approaching the 0.1 lb/million Btu target. The copper oxide flue gas cleanup process utilizes a regenerable sorbent and removes both SO{sub 2} and NOx from the flue gas and produces sulfuric acid or sulfur as a byproduct instead of solid waste.
- OSTI ID:
- 324663
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970931-; TRN: IM9911%%360
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 14. annual international Pittsburgh coal conference and workshop: clean coal technology and coal utilization, Taiyuan (China), 23-27 Sep 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Fourteenth annual international Pittsburgh coal conference and workshop: Proceedings; PB: [1500] p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Engineering Development of Coal-Fired High-Performance Power Systems
DB Riley-low emission boiler system (LEBS): Superior power for the 21st century