5/25/2006

Coal-Fired Boiler Design

By Bob Brown, P.E.

Bibb and Associates, Inc.

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

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 5/25/2006

Boilers: Using Coal and Air to Produce Flames, or…

Earth
Wind
& Fire

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Boiler design can be a rather bland topic, so I started thinking of ways to spice up
the presentation.

In boilers, you supply coal and air to produce flames to extract the energy.

Coal, air and flames can be interpreted as Earth Wind and Fire, my ambassadors of
boiler design.

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Earth (aka Coal)

Q Huge emerging coal-fired energy markets
– India and China – rapid increases in demand
– China is world’s largest producer/consumer of coal
Q Coal found on every continent
Q Abundant domestic supply
– Current production ~1 billion tons/year
– 275 billion-ton reserves = 200-year supply
– More energy in U.S. coal than total world oil supply

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The United States has the more recoverable coal reserves than any other country in
the world.

The PRB region of Wyoming/Montana puts out a unit train of coal every 10
minutes.

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U.S. Coal Reserves

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Up until the 1980s, the vast majority of the coal came from the Appalachia region,
mostly West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
The coal from that region is high in heating value (12,500-14,000 Btu/lb) and
mostly high in sulfur.

The Illinois basin coals are lower grade bituminous (10,500 to 12,000 Btu/lb) high
sulfur, often 3%+.

Powder River Basin Coals now make up more than half the coal production in the
country. These coals are sub-bituminous (8,300 – 9,500 Btu/lb) and low sulfur
<0.5%.

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Coal Mining

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Eastern mines are mostly deep shaft mines. In addition to being dangerous, shaft
mining is also expensive.

Western mines are surface mines. Surface mines move the overburden of dirt and
rock (20-40 feet deep) to expose the coal seam (60-100 feet thick). The coal is
blasted with explosives, and then scooped up by giant shovels and loaded into large
earth-mover trucks. The trucks run down a haul road to a train loading facility.

Surface mining is a much more cost effective mining technique. PRB mines are able
to sell coal for $7/ton, while shaft mines are often $35/ton

After a section is mined, the land is reclaimed by replacing the overburden and
replanting with native vegetation. More than 2 million acres of land have been
reclaimed.

Surface mines are also used in Appalachia (mostly Kentucky). The practice there is
much more controversial because mountain tops are removed to expose the coal,
with the fill going into the adjacent valleys. This causes a more drastic change to the
landscape and often affects streams.

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Why Coal?
Q It’s cheap
– Delivered price is often under $1.50/MBtu vs.
natural gas that is currently at:
XXXX
$6.00/MBtu
$10.00/MBtu
XXXX
XXXX
$12.00/MBtu
$8.00/MBtu
$?????

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The abundance of U.S. coal, in conjunction with cost-effective mining and

transportation, makes coal a very cheap source of energy.

After the cheap gas days of the 1990s ($2.50 to $3.00/MBtu), gas began a rapid
price increase. From 2002 to 2006, gas increased at about 30%/year to its current
rates between $7.00 and $8.00/MBtu.

So the relatively high capital cost of a coal plant can be justified when fuel costs are
factored in.

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Why Coal? (continued)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Gas prices remained flat during the 1990s, but then began rapidly increasing.

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Why Coal? (continued)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts the future price of coal and gas. Coal
is expected to closely follow general inflation. Gas prices are expected to rise fairly
slowly for the next 10 years, followed by steeper prices increases.

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Why Coal? (continued)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Levelized costs are a common way to assess the long term power production costs
of different technologies. The values shown represent fairly typical costs associated
with circulating fluidized bed (CFB) and combined cycle (CC) plants.

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Why Coal? (continued)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This shows graphically how the lower fuel price of coal more than offsets the higher
capital cost, maintenance costs and lower efficiency.

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What Exactly is Coal?

Q Rank
(Anthracite, Bituminous, Sub-bituminous, Lignite, Peat)

Q Proximate Analysis
(Btu, Moisture, Ash, Volatiles, Fixed Carbon)
Q Ultimate Analysis
(Carbon, Hydrogen, Sulfur, Nitrogen, Ash, Moisture, Oxygen)
Q Ash Analysis
(SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, CaO, MgO, Na2O, K2O, P2O5, TiO2)
Q Ash Fusion Temperatures
(Slagging Predictors)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Ranking coals gives a general idea of coal properties.

The proximate analysis is performed frequently to monitor the coal quality (sulfur is
often added) Moisture is very important – not only does it “water down” the Btu
content, but it also requires about 1000 Btu/lb to vaporize in the boiler. Each 1%
increase in moisture translates to a heat rate increase of about 20 Btu/kWh and a
cost of $40-50k per year to our 250 MW plant

The ultimate analysis gives the chemical analysis of the coal, which is required for
combustion calculations. Since these analyses are performed much less frequently
for a coal, I recommend normalizing the properties to conform to the Btu, ash, and
moisture from the proximate for that mine.

Ash analyses give us the composition of the burned ash. High silica indicates high
erosion; sodium and potassium are often considered to correlate with fouling. Some
published indices correlate iron or base/acid ratios with slagging. Calcium and
magnesium can actually assist in sulfur removal.

What you can’t tell is what was the contaminate in the coal, such as clays, quartz,
pyrites or calcite.

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Slagging and Fouling Impacts on Design

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Higher slagging and/or fouling coals cause the need for larger, more expensive
pulverized coal boilers.

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Combustion Calculations
Q Calculations (excess air)
Q Unburned carbon
Q Adiabatic flame temperature
Q Use of sorbent for SO2 removal
Q Products (and byproducts) of combustion

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Important engineering calculations associated with the boiler include:

•Air requirements for fan sizing
•Limestone use rates (CFB)
•Ash composition (possible sales)
•Ash disposal rates (Bottom ash and fly ash)

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Boiler
Terminology

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This shows an overview of the boiler equipment to understand the nomenclature

used.

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Boiler Processes
Q Radiant heat transfer
Q Convective heat
transfer to water/steam
Q Convective heat
transfer to incoming air
Q Combustion

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

As I stated earlier, the function of the boiler is to move heat into the steam.
Before I talk about the boiler as a whole, I’d like to briefly go over the processes
that take place within the boiler.

Radiant heat transfer is really not a significant factor in HRSGs, but it is very
significant in utility-sized boilers. Radiation is a function of T4, so it is extremely
temperature-related. Other factors affecting radiant heating are the emissivity of the
heat source and the absorptivity of the heat receptor. Coal properties affect both of
these.

Convective heat transfer is a function of temperature differential and heat transfer

coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient depends on velocity and fluid properties.

Inside the boiler, convection is used to transfer heat into water/steam as it flows
through tubes crossing the gas flow path. After the boiler, the hot gas is used to heat
air, either in the same way (tubular air heaters) or by heating metal that is used in
turn to heat the air (regenerative air heaters).

Of course, all of this heat has to come from somewhere, which leads us to the earth,
wind and fire of the boiler. Combustion of solid fuels, unlike natural gas, is a rather
involved process.

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Combustion

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Coal is a heterogeneous material consisting of a composite of:

• Hydrocarbons (referred to as volatiles)
• Non-volatile combustible material (referred to as char; this is mostly carbon in
solid form)
• Ash, which doesn’t really play much of a part in combustion, but it is very
important to the design of the boiler
• Water

To burn the coal, there must be sufficient oxygen, sufficient mixing of the fuel and
oxygen, sufficient temperature for ignition, and sufficient time to complete the
process.

For combustion to take place, the coal particle must heat up, and it can’t really do
that until the moisture is vaporized and removed.
As the particle continues to heat up, the volatile hydrocarbons are released as a gas,
and they burn very readily.
Finally, the char burns. This process can take several seconds, and some of it never
does burn and just becomes part of the ash.

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Coal
Feeders

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Coal is sent by conveyor to silos near the boiler. Below each silo is a feeder, which
is basically a short conveyor belt with load sensors on the middle idlers that weigh
the coal on the belt. Fuel flow is controlled using the feeders by adjusting the speed
of the belt.

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Pulverizers
(mills)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

In a PC unit, the coal goes from the feeder down into a pulverizer (also called a
mill). The coal feeds in through the center of the mill onto a circular trough. Large,
heavy wheels (called rollers) roll around the trough and crush the coal. Hot primary
air comes into the mill and flows in an upward direction, entraining the smaller coal
particles. At the top is a classifier, which is used to send larger pieces back down for
more grinding. The finely crushed coal (70% passing through a 200 mesh screen)
that has also been dried by the hot air leaves with the air and is divided into several
burner lines.

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Wind

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This shows an elevation view of the flow path of air to a PC boiler. Air is delivered
in two parts: primary air and secondary air. Primary air flow is roughly the same as
the full-load coal flow on a mass basis. Secondary air flow is much higher
(approximately 8 times more). The total air supplied is regulated to maintain the
target oxygen content in the flue gas, which indicates the amount of excess air.

Part of the primary air is heated, and part is not. The tempering air (unheated) flow
is controlled to maintain the target pulverizer outlet temperature. Too cold can lead
to problems with insufficient drying, and too hot can lead to mill fires.

All of the secondary air is heated and sent to the burners via the windbox on the side
of the boiler.

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Wind

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This shows the physical layout of the air supply systems.

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FANS Primary Air, Forced Draft, Induced Draft

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Typical power plant centrifugal fan.

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FANS Primary Air, Forced Draft, Induced Draft (cont.)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Axial fans are often used for forced draft (secondary air) and induced draft duty.
The pitch of the blades can be hydraulically controlled to vary the flow without
wasting energy in dampers, much like using a variable speed motor.

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Fire

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

After all that complicated process, we finally get to burn the fuel……come on baby,
light my FIRE!

This shows a schematic of a burner. The flame shape is very important for proper
combustion, flame detection and NOx formation. The secondary air distribution in
the burner is controlled by manual adjusters at the burner front.

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Mass
and
Heat
Flows

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This shows a heat/mass balance on a boiler using our 250 MW design discussed
earlier.

First, we need 120 tph of PRB coal, 4 tph of limestone, and nearly 2,000,000 pph of
air.

As a result of the combustion process, we have a little more than 2,000,000 lb/hr of
hot flue gas and nearly 10 tph of ash.

On the fluid side, we have 1.6 million pph of feedwater that is boiled and
superheated.

Then we have a slightly lower amount of cold reheat steam that must be brought up
to temperature. Anyone know where the “lost” steam went? (extraction to FWHs)

As far as a heat balance goes, the vast majority of the heat goes into producing the
main steam, a much lower amount to reheat, and about 15% of which is lost.
Most of the losses are heat leaving out of the stack or used up to vaporize water in
the fuel; some other losses include general heat losses from the boiler surface and
carbon that never burns.

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Water/Steam
Flow Path

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Natural circulation (shown here) uses the density difference between the water in
the downcomers and the water/steam mixture in the waterwalls to drive the flow.

Some boilers use forced circulation, where there are boiler water circulating pumps
located at the bottom of the downcomers. This is done to allow circulation before
the fire is even started and to allow smaller, higher pressure drop waterwall tubes.

Subcritical boilers such as the one in the drawing have a drum to separate water
from steam. Supercritical water/steam have no such distinction; therefore, a drum
would be of no use. The flow can still be mostly as shown, or the walls can be spiral
wound.

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Tube Banks

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Typical layout of a horizontal economizer. Tubes could be about 1”

diameter with 1” gaps between circuits. Tube bank spacing increases for the
sections closer to the furnace to reduce the chance of plugging and because
the volumetric flow rate is higher where the gas is hotter.

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Waterwalls Interior

Exterior

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The waterwalls are tubes that are welded to spacers between the tubes to
form a gas-tight wall. The water flows up through the walls as it turns to
steam.

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Boiler Design:
Traditional
Pulverized Coal

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This is the traditional PC unit I have been showing. Coal is ground up and mixed
with air. Heat is released at the burners.
Notice that below the burners there is not much going on – just a water-cooled
hopper that is sealed in a water trough. The ash drops out and is taken away by drag
chain or a water sluice system.

Water is boiled in the waterwalls (mostly by radiant heat transfer), and then the flue
gas goes through the backpass to give up its heat to the various tube banks (much
like an HRSG).

Then (unlike an HRSG) the flue gas gives up the remainder of its available heat to
the incoming air in the air heater.

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Air Heaters

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The air heater is a key part of a fossil plant design. The air heater captures much of
the heat leaving the boiler and sends it back to the furnace.

Air heaters can be tubular (shell and tube) or regenerative as shown here.

Flue gas goes from ~730° F to ~220° F and heats the air from ambient to ~680° F,
some of the air leaks over into the gas stream. An important parameter to monitor is
AH cold-end average temp (the average of the to-gas streams on the cold side) This
must stay above a certain number depending on the sulfur in the coal, ~150° F for
low sulfur PRB.

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Boiler Design:
Bubbling
Fluidized Bed

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Fluidized bed boilers don’t use pulverizers and burners. The fuel is thrown in and
allowed to burn more slowly at the bottom of the boiler in a bed formed by the coal,
ash, limestone, and usually some sand as well. The fluidized part of the name comes
from the fact that the bed is constantly stirred by air forced up from the bottom. This
also makes the bed less dense and causes it to act like a fluid.

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Fluidized Bed

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This is a diagram of the different parts of the fluidized bed. You can see a
photograph of some bubble caps connected to the air ducts.

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Boiler Design:
Circulating
Fluidized Bed

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

In a circulating fluidized bed (CFB), the air velocity is increased from 6 fps to
maybe 15 fps. Smaller particles become entrained and flow with the flue gas up and
out of the furnace. The hot ash is captured and returned to the furnace.

The schematic on the right shows a 2-stage variation used by B&W

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CFB Plant Schematic

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

This diagram shows the components of a CFB power plant and the primary boiler-
related processes:
•Fuel and limestone are fed into the boiler
•Air from the PA and FD fans is heated and delivered to the boiler
•Some of the ash is removed from the bed, cooled and disposed of
•The remainder of the ash travels with the flue gas through the boiler backpass and
air heater before being collected by the baghouse
•A portion of this ash is hydrated and re-circulated into the flue gas stream to
increase SO2 removal (called a polishing scrubber)
•Finally, the ID fans send the flue gas out the stack

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Why CFB boilers? Because they’re cool

• Emissions
9 Lower NOX emissions (<100 vs 800)
allows for cheaper SNCR, not SCR
9 In-bed SO2 removal up to 95%
simpler/cheaper flue gas scrubbing
• Eliminate slagging and reduce fouling
(less soot blowing)
• Fuel flexibility
Any grade coal, waste coal, pet coke, even wood,
agricultural waste, tire chips, etc.
WITHOUT significant boiler modifications
MONEY: Potential savings on capital, maintenance and aux power

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

CFB furnaces operate around 1600° F vs. 2500° F for PC boilers. This lower
temperature greatly reduces the amount of NOx formed during combustion.
Another big advantage of this particular operating temperature is SO2 removal. To
remove SO2, limestone is added to the furnace. The heat breaks down the CaCO3
into CaO and CO2, then the CaO reacts with SO2 to form CaSO4. The CFB
temperature is hot enough to calcine the limestone into lime and cool enough to
allow the sulfation of the lime.
Even though current emissions limits demand post-combustion air quality control,
much cheaper technologies can be used due to the lower boiler emissions. SNCR
instead of SCR and FDA (or polishing scrubber) instead of a dry lime scrubber or
wet limestone scrubber.
The lower temperatures in a CFB eliminate slagging and fouling, which also
eliminates the need to buy and maintain sootblowers.
Pulverized coal units are very fuel-specific in their design. The only way to get fuel
into the system is through the pulverizers. As we have seen with the natural gas
market, predictions of future fuel prices are often not accurate. Fuel flexibility
allows the owner to pursue low-cost fuels as the market changes and to go after
short-term opportunity fuels that can pop up.
You could possibly even charge a disposal fee for wood-waste if the alternative is
land-filling.
As always, the bottom line answer is…. money. It is possible for a CFB plant to be
cheaper to build and operate, mostly due to eliminating air quality control
equipment.

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CFB Design
(Typical)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Most manufacturers (Alstom, Foster Wheeler and Kvaerner) use large cyclones that
separate the furnace from the backpass

The ash flow from the cyclones goes through a J-valve (or loop seal). The J-valve is
a goose-neck trap (like under your kitchen sink) that prevents hot furnace gases
from short ciruiting the upper furnace and flowing up through the cyclones. But,
because ash is a solid, it would tend to just pack itself in and plug the flow. So air is
used to fluidize the ash and keep it flowing.

The ash is very hot (1200°-1500° F). One way to regulate the bed temperature is to
take a portion of the hot ash and cool it in a FBHX located outside of the fluid bed.

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Bed Ash Coolers

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

The bed ash is at 1600° F, so it must be cooled before disposal.

There are several types of coolers for this job.

Some use water-cooled surface, some just use water-cooled screw conveyors and
others use air (called stripper coolers).

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CFB Design
(Alstom Modular)

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

Alstom recently came here and gave a presentation on their CFB boilers, including
their modular design for sizes from 10 to 70 MW.

The modular design uses furnace boxes that are completely refractory-lined (no
waterwalls) and bottom-supported.

The squat height of the furnace allows the cyclones to be mounted on the roof and
return the ash directly back to the bed (no J-Valve or FBHX).

The backpass (also bottom-supported) does have waterwalls. Below the backpass is
a 3-pass tubular air heater.

This shows a diagram of the furnace – notice the small amount of heat transfer
surface in the bed zone of the furnace.

Alstom claims this design can be built faster and cheaper than a traditional
waterwall CFB in the size range offered.

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Coal-Fired Boiler Design

By Bob Brown, P.E.

Bibb and Associates, Inc.

Advanced Environmental Systems, Inc. 2001

38