A Compartmental Model for Supercritical Coal-Fired Boiler Systems

Abstract

A compartmental furnace model for supercritical coal-fired boiler systems is presented in this paper. Instead of the traditional lumped parameter method, the furnace is divided to seven compartments along the height based on the positions of the burner groups. The lower six compartments correspond to the six groups of burners, respectively. This model provides the possibility to connect the pulverization system and the furnace, the variability of the combustion property caused by changes of the pulverization system can be studied by switching the operating conditions. To evaluate the proposed model, simulation results are compared with available data from a 600 MW supercritical coal-fired boiler and reasonably good agreement is achieved. The simulation results also show that the compartmental model features a better precision than the lumped parameter modeling. This model allows for evaluating different control strategies and subsequently proposing optimization strategies for boiler system operation.