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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Bubbling fluidized bed retrofit with modern design tools

Conference ·
OSTI ID:20006765
Imatran Voima Oy (IVO) has experience of more than 10 years in the design, construction and operation of power plants utilizing fluidized bed boilers (BFB). This operating experience, together with active fuels testing and the development work of computer aided design tools, has offered IVO a good possibility for product development. The new product was demonstrated by converting an old grate fired boiler into BFB at IVO's Vanaja plant. This boiler conversion project and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based tool used in the design of the combustion will be presented. The results of the model verification will be described briefly. At the Vanaja plant, a 60 MW{sub coal} fired grate boiler built in the early 1950s was converted to BFB in 1997. The old chain grate was removed and replaced with a fluidized bed with appropriate fluidization air and biofuel feeding systems. The automation system was also modernized. The primary fuel was changed to peat, whereas coal remained as secondary fuel together with natural gas and biofuels. IVO has long tradition in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) aided engineering of combustion processes. Since 1990, Ardemus, a CFD based combustion modeling package has been applied for pulverized coal combustion. Recently Ardemus has also been applied to the simulation of the freeboard of BFB. The development work is still going on concerning the bed behavior and emission formation description. In the retrofit project, the change of the fuel and the combustion technology were analyzed with the Ardemus model. Because of the shortness of the furnace, the focus in the design process was laid on the optimization of air staging and adequate mixing of combustion air and fuel. The effect of the modification on the operating conditions of the turbine plant was calculated with a process simulator. The design was completed by cold model tests. The modified boiler was commissioned successfully at the beginning of 1998, which is the most evident proof of a proper design. Further validation has been carried out with the aid of in situ measurements.
Research Organization:
Imatran Voima Oy, Helsinki (FI)
OSTI ID:
20006765
Report Number(s):
CONF-990534--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English