Abstracts - VGB PowerTech Journal 1-2/2020
2019: Numbers
Christopher Weßelmann
Numbers do not lie if they are the right ones and if they are correct. But don’t start with pessimism when it comes to looking at current figures from the energy industry. [more...]
Sector Coupling - buzzword or future of the energy supply
Wolfgang A. Benesch
Sector Coupling plays a major role in any discussion about energy turn around. But is Sector Coupling as effective as desired? Or are there other possibilities that have not been considered? What are the constraints? Manufacturing should be coupled with the electricity supply. That would mean that a production facility, which is typically running on base load, will only be operated intermittently in the future. The evaluation of the Sector Coupling requires analyses of processes of companies that had not been in dialog before. Not only technical hurdles have to be overcome, but also intellectual processes. Do I allow outsiders to look inside my company? The paper will discuss in which direction future methods of Sector Coupling have to be directed to effectively support the energy turn around. Sector Coupling will even be more important in the future when buildings and the transportation segments will be implemented. Especially the latter with its increasing electricity demand will be challenging. How can it work and how not?
Peter Moser, Sandra Schmidt, Knut Stahl, Georg Wiechers, Arthur Heberle, Christian Kuhr, Kay Schroer, Hiroshi Kakihira, Ralf Peters, Stefan Weiske, Petra Zapp, Stefanie Troy, Marcel Neumann, Bastian Lehrheuer, Thorsten Schnorbus and Sandra Glück
The technical, economic and social challenges for achieving the climate protection goals are immense. The desired reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by the year 2050 requires global radical changes in all areas of economy and daily life that are without precedence in history, comprising all sectors (energy, transport, industry, households) as well as infrastructure and land use. It is immediately evident that the use of existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible not only accelerates the implementation of climate protection measures, but can also reduce the resulting immense costs. For the energy and fuel supply, this evolutionary approach aims to use existing power plants and transport infrastructure and to reduce their emissions with the help of renewable energies, while avoiding structural breaks at the same time. Base chemicals and fuels produced from captured CO2 from flue gases and renewably produced hydrogen (Carbon Capture and Usage: CCU) are coupling the sectors. Important CCU products, such as methanol and dimethyl ether (DME), are cross-sectorally applicable chemical long-term energy storages with a higher volumetric energy density than hydrogen. As a part of the project ALIGN-CCUS, a CCU demonstration plant for DME synthesis is being built in the Innovation Center in Niederaussem and the use of DME in diesel engines is demonstrated in an emergency generator for peak and back-up power generation. In addition the usage of the CCU-fuel oxymethylene ether (OME) for transportation is examined.
36C3 – more questions than answers
Stefan Loubichi
The 36th Chaos Computer Congress (36C3) in Leipzig at the end of December 2019 will have caused to the energy industry more than some sleepless nights. After the Russian Kaspersky Group discovered some security gaps in power plants, the National Security Agency issued a warning message about Windows 10 vulnerabilities to the public. Then there were also problems with Citrix, because there were no patches for important gaps for three weeks. The biggest issue in 36CS was, that the vulnerabilities affected ultimately all manufacturers. The discussion lead also to the point that in many power plants the asset management is documented in excel sheets. In the early 1990´s this was state of the art, but not nowadays. The biggest problem however, is patch management, which is de facto insufficiently implemented in many power plants. All of the measures in asset and patch management cost a lot of m. But all of these measures cost a fraction of what a blackout cost. We should start today. It may be too late tomorrow.
Leakage detection in power-plants based on passive acoustic imagining
Katharina Keller, Fritz Menzer, Florian Perrodin and Walter Umbricht
A reduction of unplanned outages has a major impact on the profitability of thermal power plants. The impact of unplanned outages is becoming even larger due to the advent of capacity markets, which include heavy penalties for plants that do not produce the negotiated amount of power. Gas leaks are an identified cause of such unplanned plant outages, and leaks are often difficult to find due to the time consuming nature of leak detection and the resource constraints on the maintenance crews. Moreover the variety of the gases (methane, hydrogen, compressed air, steam, vacuum) make it difficult for the operators to have a detection tool at hand that suits all situations. The novel technology presented here combines acoustic and optical imaging for gas leak detection in a way that allows for a wide field of view independent of the gas type. Its functioning principle is demonstrated in this article at the example of leak detection in a power plant. With this technology air, methane, LNG and CO2 leaks have been detected at several components of the power plant, such as the aeroderivative turbine or the LNG storage block. In addition to the leaks found, it was possible to detect partial discharges in the power plant switchyard.
Conference report: 51st Kraftwerkstechnisches Kolloquium (Power Plant Technology Colloquium)
Michael Beckmann, Antonio Hurtado, Janette Harms and Sebastian Sotero
For October 2019, the Technical University Dresden again invited to the Kraftwerkstechnisches Kolloquium (Power Plant Technology Colloquium) in Dresden. About 100 speakers and 950 participants as well as more than 100 companies in the accompanying exhibition accepted this invitation. For 51 years now, the focus of this congress has been to provide a platform for communication and discussion on topics relating to the provision of energy, its transport, storage and application.
ko:mon Congress 2019
Nadine Burgschweiger
220 participants exchange information about the control room of the future for three days. Control systems, in which all information converges and in which faults are detected in good time, are also important in the energy industry. Since they have to take over a growing number of functions, it is crucial to adapt hardware and software, process sequences and the design of the control rooms to these requirements. The “ko:mon - Congress for Control Room Technology and Monitoring Systems” will deal with this topic. This largest cross-industry control room forum in Germany took place for the eleventh time in mid-September. Experts, practitioners, specialist planners, equipment suppliers and users from various industries met in Bremen.
100 Years VGB: 60 Years of VGB – Ideas for Collaborative Work
O. Schwarz
The VGB, when set upon 29 November 1920, was originally conceived to have a limited life as an association of interested, large undertakings and designed, through the influence and economic importance of its membership, to give emphasis to their views and requirements. However, it developed into an Organisation which makes specific contributions towards the wellbeing of the individual and the society. Its progressive influence on the successful development of power plant technology from 1920 to 1980 is undisputed. Collaborative work is a Service to the general public. lt requires concentration of effort and crucial points, needs continuity and presupposes constant understanding. The object is consensus and not uniformity.
100 Years VGB: District Heat and Generation by a Gas Turbine
O. Lindholm and J. Linnanvuori
Gas turbines have been used in Finland for the generation of district heat since 1977. Following the extension of the natural gas network many units have been ordered and in the period between 1986 and 1988 two new applications were completed. In both cases a heat accumulator is used. This permits operation of the plant at full output during day-time when the demand for electricity is highest. At night-time the gas turbine can be shut down and energy from the heat accumulator can be discharged into the heat network. In this way part-load operation of the gas turbine can be avoided and the best possible level of efficiency can be obtained.
100 Years VGB: Regenerative Energies — Feasibility, Limits and Environmental Effects
B. Stoy
Irradiation into the atmosphere and the energy balance of the earth are produced as a result of the sun acting as a fusion reactor. The actual State of development of solar collectors, heat pumps and absorbers, wind energy Converters, plant for biomass utilization and first and foremost of solar cells for direct conversion of light into electricity are described in the paper. Proportion of up to 4 to 8% of final energy demand for the Federal Republic of Germany to the turn of the Century will be met by solar energy mainly in the form of water power, environmental heat and biomass.