Heat balance simulation for evaluating a 315 MW low rank coal-fired power plant performance

Abstract

The domination of coal-fired power plant as power generation due to its feasibility to ensure a stable supply of electricity to customer. Unfortunately, the use of coal as power plant fuel faces an issue of air pollution. Some efforts have been proposed to make the operated coal-fired power plant meeting the environmental regulations. One of the most potential ways to solve the problem is by improving the coal-fired power plant efficiency and then equate to a greenhouse gas reduction. Thus, heat balance simulation of coal-fired power plant which operates in different conditions have to be studied in order to analyse the power plant performance. In this paper, the heat balance of a 315 MW low rank coal-fired power plant is simulated by Cycle-Tempo. The simulations are carried out for several different operation conditions of the power plant. The Heat Rate will increase of 3.66% when all HPH are on off-duty while it increases by 2.63% when all LPH are on off-duty. Furthermore, the increasing of Superheater temperature of 5 °C will decrease the Heat Rate of 0.59% and it will decrease of 0.39% when the temperature of Reheater increases of 5 °C.