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U.S. Department of Energy
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Operational and design strategies to improve PFBC power plant efficiency

Conference ·
OSTI ID:20018828
Nowadays the state of the art of PFBC technology lies halfway between the demonstration stage in units of intermediate size (72--79 MWe) and the commercial availability of larger scale plants. The operation of existing power stations has demonstrated that several points remain widely open to improvements. Due to fuel quality effects and the use of retrofitted plants, the PFBC power plant efficiency presently demands significant improvements. Likewise, the high energy efficiencies offered by the PFBC concept had not been completely demonstrated. To overcome these difficulties and further develop the technology a semiempirical model of a pressurized fluidized bed power plant has been developed. The model has been validated with actual plant data, being able to predict the Escatron (Spain) PFBC power plant behavior under different operating conditions. It has been widely tested to study not only the fluidized bed behavior, but also the influence of fluidized bed variables in the rest of the power plant. Good agreement has been found between the computed results and actual plant data at different operational regimes for the most important variables of the power plant. The main aim of this model is to study different strategies to improve the efficiency in the power plant. These strategies include: the improvement of soot blowing schedules of external heat exchangers; air preheating system optimization; selection of operational set-points that bring the highest efficiency; evaluation of the efficiency improvements due to design changes (changes in retrofitted steam turbines and heat exchangers, natural gas reburning, selection of different types of coal). This paper describes the model developed, the strategies to improve efficiency, as well as its results, and as conclusions, point out the improvements and perspectives for future work.
Research Organization:
Centro de Investigacion del Rendimiento de Centrales Electricas (ES)
OSTI ID:
20018828
Report Number(s):
CONF-9806214--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English