Abstracts - VGB PowerTech Journal 1-2/2017
Editorial: Topics 2017
Christopher Weßelmann
With this issue, VGB PowerTech is starting in certainly interesting and challenging new year for our energy industry. The “fourth industrial” revolution is becoming increasingly important for companies to develop suitable solutions for their business. Digitalisation is one main keyword. The aim to reduce the emissions of climate relevant gases puts pressure on fossil energy use. Decarbonisation is the keyword. There are more and more electricity generating facilities – e.g. in Germany only 15 years ago about 1,100 power plants with high capacities provided the consumers and secured the around-the-clock power supply. Today, there are more than 1.5 millions installations in the range of some hundred watts to about 1,400 megawatt. Decentralisation is a further keyword.[more...]
Wind farms without subsidies: Challenges and risks for the operator
José Ángel Díaz Álvarez
The regulatory changes adopted in many different regions have created a new set of conditions for wind energy projects making them live in a very different environment from the one where the industry was born and quickly expanded. The change in operating conditions raises many challenges in order to keep the business cases within reasonable values. This new environment is putting under test the strength of the wind industry. But any time there are challenges there are additionally some opportunities and all the effort put in facing and overcoming a tougher environment finally results in an increase in the competitiveness of wind energy.
Overview of nuclear new build projects and global perspective
Jean-Pol Poncelet
Nuclear power is an important source for electricity production in Europe: today 131 reactors are operated in 14 EU Member States, delivering 28 % of the European power and one half of its low-carbon electricity. The turnover of the sector is about 70 billion € and there are about 800,000 high qualified jobs. Worldwide the capacities of nuclear power are extending. New build activities are moving to the Eastern countries. Today, the whole electricity market in Europe is characterised by uncertainties for all investments due to political market interventions. A common European energy policy does not appear to exist.
Flexible conventional power plants and volatile renewable power production – control opportunities
Daniel Lehmann and Hendrik Lens
Flexible conventional power plants play an essential role in stabilising the current electrical energy system. In particular, conventional power plants increasingly need to compensate the intermittent production by renewables in order to match power production and power consumption at any time. The aim of this paper is to propose approaches on how to properly integrate flexible conventional power plants into the future energy system by structurally combining intermittent renewable power production – PV and wind - and conventional power plants in order to create a reliable virtual power plant. It is shown that by extending the information exchange between the renewable energy producing units and the conventional power plant an almost constant power output can be provided independently of the actual weather situation.
Interaction of renewable & conventional energies – large-scale battery systems as a connecting link
Christian Karalis and Michael Mühl
Due to the increasing proportion of fluctuating generating facilities along with their feed-in-priority, managing the stability of the power grid becomes more and more challenging. Hence for the integration of decentralised generating facilities and loads virtual power plants will play a decisive role. Only by bundling these facilities and loads operating on the power and control energy market becomes efficient. For operating on both the power and the control energy market, the management of balance groups and the provision of reserves for both conventional and decentralised power plants are brought together into STEAG’s optimisation network “STEAG OneOpt”. Here large-scale battery systems serve as a link for conventional power plants, decentralised facilities, renewable energies and the power market for short-term flexibility thus upgrading STEAG’s portfolio.
Cofiring in sugar mills industry in Colombia
José María Rincón, Marco Aurelio Vera, Pedro Guevara and Sofia Duarte
In Colombia, the installed power generation capacity is 64 % hydraulic, 31 % thermal (gas and coal), other energy 4.5 % and 0.5 % cogeneration. Under normal hydrology conditions, 80 % of generation is hydroelectric. Colombia located in the intertropical zone, is the second sugar cane producer in South America. It has 230.000 ha farmed with a sugar cane production of 120 t by ha year, and 6 Mt of bagasse that are used as fuel in boilers. Biomass cogeneration is very important to solve the problem of shortage of electric power, and its generation capacity is increased using coal in cofiring with biomass and high pressure modern boilers and improved energy efficiency in the sugar mills.
An energetical and political invariance: Component safety
Albert Bagaviev and Ansgar Kranz
A demand regarding prediction of realistic remaining lifetime of power plant components operating under high temperatures and pressures is very high due to many actual political and economic challenges. Number of uncertainties e.g. manufacturing and montage tolerances, operating load history, additional kinds of material damage make difficult a realistic assessment of the current component damage. Actually there is no practically applicable industrial standard in the area of high temperature application enabling adequate quantitative assessment of the accumulated material damage and, thus, a latent available lifetime potential of the highly loaded high temperature components. This knowledge is crucial for the proceeding the flexibilisation of the power plants.
Modernisation of the high pressure part of a 200-MW-class steam turbine – lifetime extension and performance improvement
Radoslav Wisniewski
The Polish power generation industry is currently facing significant changes which are connected with step increasing of renewable energy supply, decreasing of energy prices and environmental requirements. The majority of 200 MW coal-fired units (which are basis of power generation) demonstrates substantial level of use with >200,000 operating hours. Steam turbine deep retrofit with application of the most up-to-date steam path technology, is able to provide the highest performance benefits but it requires significant investment cost too. On the basis of more than 20 projects executed the modernisation of HP part of 200 MW steam turbine acc. to EthosEnergy’s technology will be presented in this paper.
General overhaul of an industrial steam turbine and redesign of steam housing
Malte Vogt and Hans Schäfer
Since the beginning of the 1990s Currenta has operated two Siemens back-pressure turbines of type HGS 40/25 with an output of 13 MW at the Chempark Leverkusen site. These expand the steam in two coal-fired fluidised bed boilers (128 bar) to that of the steam network at the Chempark site (31 bar). The fluidised bed boilers are used in base load operation for the energy supply system at the Chempark site. Owing to the economical operation of the fluidised bed boilers it is essential that the availability of the turbines is as high as possible. For this reason both turbines were overhauled in recent years and adapted to the latest safety standards. During the overhaul, for example, the strapping used for sealing in the steam chamber was replaced by a shrink-fit grooved bushing. This avoids the tricky and error-prone process of strapping the sealing shell. In addition, the turbines’ protective devices were brought up to the latest standard in the wake of safety reviews.
Tray installation – Increasing performance of a wet FGD without additional pressure loss and with simultaneous reduction of operational costs
Sven Kaiser, Stefan Binkowski, Uwe Schadow and Axel Thielmann
At the Novaky power station, the SO2 removal efficiency was increased from ca. 96 % to >99 % to meet the existing IED 2010/75/EU emission limit of 200 mg/Nm³. The pressure loss across the entire system was slightly reduced and one spray level was removed (reducing pumping capacity by ca. 700 kW). With the customised combination of new spray level design, the use of new spray nozzles, optimised mist eliminators and the tailored tray design it was possible to guarantee no additional pressure loss and achieve the new SO2 emission limits of 200 mg/Nm³ even with increased inlet SO2 concentration and higher flue gas volume flow.
Release of gas phase potassium during combustion of biomass - experimental and modelling observations
Patrick E. Mason, Leilani I. Darvell, Jenny M. Jones and A. Williams
Pulverised fuel furnaces fired with biomass or co-fired with coal and biomass commonly operate at temperatures above 1,600 K. Such temperatures affect the partitioning of inorganic components through phase transformations. In most biomass fuels, potassium is a significant component present as inorganic species or bound to organic molecules. At temperatures approaching 1,600 K KOH and KCl become volatilised and are released to the gas phase. These gases condense out in cooler parts of the furnace and lead to increased corrosive deposits and adhesion of ash. In order to model these processes and predict the likely fate of potassium during the combustion process, it is necessary to understand the release mechanisms and patterns of release.
The climate-problem: Evaluation after the Paris-Agreement and the Marrakesh-Conference
Eike Roth
The Paris-Climate-Agreement came into effect on November 4th 2016. Still, the contradiction in this agreement – ambitious goals and (presumably) inadequate commitments – has persisted. Also in the follow-up conference in Marrakesh, this discrepancy remained unresolved. 2017 the countries will meet again. However, since Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States of America, uncertainty about how the largest economy in the world will act in the future has intensified. This amplifies the pressure to clarify the true level of human influence on the climate in a scientifically consistent manner, as a basis for more reliable decisions. This paper tries to contribute to that effort.
With flexibility to more climate protection – Energy management in the Marl Chemical Park
Rebecca Loschen
The Marl Chemical Park is one of the largest chemical industrial sites in Europe. On an area three times the size of Monaco, 4.4 million tonnes of chemical products are produced every year and exported all over the world. The energy demand of the site with about 10,000 employees is huge. How can the location meet the challenges of the “Energiewende”? Flexibility is a key and plays a particularly important role in all areas. Efficiency and resource conservation support climate protection at the same time.