This paper presents an approach to control pluggage of a coal-fired boiler. The proposed approach involves statistics, data partitioning, parameter reduction, and data mining. The proposed approach was tested on a 750 MW commercial coal-fired boiler affected with a fouling problem that leads to boiler pluggage that causes unscheduled shutdowns. The rare-event detection approach presented in the...

In this work, multiple model control of a boiler-turbine system is studied. Multiple linear local models are obtained through piecewise linearization. A bank of Kalman filters is constructed using these local models. States and model parameters used for future predictions within the predictive control are updated online through computation of probability density functions. Simulations show that...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic or mutagenic and are important toxic pollutants in the flue gas of boilers. Two industrial grade biomass boilers were selected to investigate the characteristics of particulate-bound PAHs: one biomass boiler retro-fitted from an oil boiler (BB1) and one specially designed (BB2) biomass boiler. One coal-fired boiler was also selected for c...

For the participation of the steam power plants in regulating the network frequency, boilers and turbines should be co-ordinately controlled in addition to the base load productions. Lack of coordinated control over boiler-turbine may lead to instability; oscillation in producing power and boiler parameters; reduction in the reliability of the unit; and inflicting thermodynamic tension on devic...

In this paper, we describe the implementation and usage of a simulation with graphical visualization for a steam-boiler [Abri94]. The simulation imitates the behaviour of the steam-boiler and can be controlled using a simple ASCII protocol. It reacts to defined commands and sends information about its state every five seconds. Furthermore, we describe the options available, the protocol which f...

This thesis goes into the task of analysing a bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) bark boiler and the structure of its automatic control system. The boiler being discussed is located at Billerud Karlsborg AB, although the results are to be able to be used on any BFB bark boiler. The main objective is to try to answer the following question: Exists there any changes to be made to the current structure ...

In this paper we compare and discuss the performance of a boiler evaporator system when the system is controlled by a traditional PID-type strategy and when the system is enhanced by using fuzzy logic blocks to provide set-points for the system. The strategy used in fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs) is called fuzzy supervisory control and it generates set-points for the conventional controllers. T...

A concept of "Fractal Fracture Mechanics" for HDR .(Hot Dry Rock) geothermal reservoir design has been developed as an extension of conventional rock fracture mechanics. It is suggested that this concept is successfully applicable to characterize and model subsurface fracture network in HDR geothermal reservoir. Furthermore, this modeling procedure makes it possible to evaluate the thermal ener...

A novel, targeted approach to sootblower activation has been demonstrated recently at a large, T-fired, coal unit. Targeted sootblowing techniques are designed to activate blowers based upon the conditions of the boiler rather than a traditional time and/or sequence based approach. Various approaches have been used in the past to perform targeted sootblowing including neural network based model...

This paper considers an approach to design a controller used for the air-to-fuel ratio (AFR) optimization in the combustion process of a power plant boiler. The optimization of the AFR will reduce the excess air level and improve the combustion efficiency in the boiler system. The combustion improvement indicates boiler operating cost savings. The fuzzy logic controller, which is a method of a ...