Abstracts - VGB PowerTech Journal 3/2006

An Energy and Technology Roadmap

Antonio Pflüger, International Energy Agency

There are three key energy policy objectives to address today. Curbing growing dependence on imported energy is one. Another is easing economic vulnerability to high and volatile energy prices, notably through increased energy efficiency. Then we need to reduce the environmental impact of the world’s increasing reliance on fossil fuels. Energy-sector investments of some 16 trillion US $ will be called for to underpin expected growth in energy demand, two-thirds being for electricity supply. In technical terms, this represents something like 4800 GW of new electricity production capacity worldwide.

Energy Perspectives in Central and Eastern Europe – A View from Poland

Michal Klawe, Krzysztof Lipko, Jan Solinski

The paper presents energy perspectives in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region with some more extra emphasis on the Polish context. The majority of forecasts used in the paper are mostly based on the study about the Energy Sector in CEE Countries performed this year within the project CENERG 2005 of the Institute of Power Engineering in Warsaw with the outlook up to the year 2030.

The Supply with Primary Energy – a Common task for Politics, Industries, Sciences and Technology

Dietrich H. Welte, Dietrich Böcker

Sufficient and secure supply with primary energy is vital for any state and region. This applies in particular to Germany that does not dispose of huge own primary energy resources and is therefore highly dependent on energy imports. Efficiency as well as environmental compatibility and acceptance are the second and third important aspects in this context that are to be considered. Frame conditions are analysed and recommendations for the energy supply in a constantly changing world are discussed.

Consequences of the New EU Environmental Regulation on European Power Production with Particular Regards to Fortum as a Nordic Power Plant Operator

Pauli Dernjatin, Kari Kankaanpää, Seppo Haapajoki, Marja Englund

The basic idea of the burner design is to create a high-temperature (HT) zone near the burner using a special flame stabilisation ring (FSR). In this high-temperature region fuel bound NOx is effectively reduced. Also, this high-temperature zone provides good flame stability, making it possible to reduce boiler load and use low reactive coal. Using the latest burner type (HT-NR3) we have reached NOx values of 250 mg/m3n at the Hemweg power plant (unit 8660 MWe) in the Netherlands, and our development target is to reach the future EU Directive value 200 mg/m3n by using only primary methods.

The Task of Chemistry in Biomass Plants Applied in the Timelkam Power Station

Josef Waltl, Norbert Rechberger

Based on the EU objectives for increasing the electricity generation from renewable sources, Austria pushes and promotes the erection of biomass plants. Against this background Energie AG Upper Austria has decided to build a biomass plant at the Timelkam power station. The plant is a bubbling fluidised bed combustion furnace designed for the use of natural timber (forest chips, bark, sawdust) and waste wood. In the planning phase a set of chemical problems was subjected to examination and concepts for taking into account the demands for operation and supervision were worked out.

Sewage Sludge Co-combustion in a District Heating Power Plant Burning Hard Coal in Mellach, Austria

Werner Schöngrundner, Franz Raudner, Manuela Dissauer

Co-combustion of sewage sludge in coal-fired power plants is state of the art, well-tried and environmentally compatible. A project on the co-combustion of municipal sewage sludge in the Mellach district heating power plant was launched at the beginning of 2003, verified positively through comprehensive test operation at the end of 2003 and licensed by the authorities in February 2004. Commercial operation started in November 2005.

Membrane Technology for Power Generation Implementation and Operation of the Water Treatment with Ultrafiltration and Reverse Osmosis for Vattenfall Europe Berlin

Armin Brödtler, René Sauer

Membrane processes of today provide an economical and ecological alternative for water treatment. The system realised at Vattenfall Europe Berlin can be operated with feedwater originating from surface water (decarbonised water from the river Spree). The organic matter in the water is efficiently reduced and the chemical consumption is reduced to a minimum.

Modification and Optimisation Measures on the Demineralisation Plant of the Boxberg Power Station

Frank Udo Leidich, Adelja Markert, Sigrun Hajdamowicz, Winfried Kleespies

The demineralisation plant at the Boxberg Power Station, Unit QA (Plant IV), owned by Vattenfall Europe Generation AG & Co KG, officially started its operation in 2000. In the course of the operation, technical shortcomings became apparent that rendered the quality of the deionised water inadequate and did prevent the plant from being operated in a normal, fully-automatic mode. Due to the insolvency of the supplier, it had not been possible to eliminate a series of problems and optimise the processes in such a way that the plant could be operated as planned. Nevertheless, thanks to measures like retrofitting the system with lowering loops, replacing the regenerating stations by frequency-controlled excenter-screw propeller pumps, installing automatic vents, and optimising the control concept of the plant, it finally was possible to solve some of the main problems. Longer intervals between regenerating procedures came as an additional benefit.

Adsorption of Mercury with a Fabric Filter Using a Non-carbon, Mineral Based Sorbent

Martin Mineur, Martin Sindram

The incineration of sewage sludge is always linked to mercury emissions. The ecotoxic compound mercury is a constituent of the sludge. The VERA sewage sludge incineration plant burns approximately 135.000 tpy from the city of Hamburg. The majority of the mercury emissions are reduced in the HCl-wet scrubbing unit by the addition of sodiumdimethyldithiocarbamat. The ecotoxic compound mercury at the stack is always very low below the limits of German 17th BImSchV. At the VERA sewage sludge incineration trials where conducted with a new type of sorbent between January and May 2005. Bromine-enhanced Mercury Abatement from Combustion Flue Gases – Recent Industrial.

Applications and Laboratory Research

Bernhard W. Vosteen, Rico Kanefke, Heinz Köser

The paper is reporting on bromine enhanced mercury abatement. The emerging low-cost technology is based on mercury bromination in the flue gas of coal-fired power stations or of waste incineration plants during boiler passage and/or passage of an SCR-catalyst bed and dust removal system. The process was applied for patent. The US patent 6,878,358 as well as the German patent DE 10233173 have been issued lately. In the meantime the technology has been successfully demonstrated on a commercial scale on US coal-fired boilers in US-DOE projects with considerable success.

Primary Frequency Control for Gas and Steam Turbine Power Plants

Reinhold Ackenheil, Oldrich Zaviska

The commercial separation of power generation and power distribution obliges transmission network operators to ensure demand-oriented, reliable operation of interconnected power systems. The primary control capacity is provided exclusively by the gas turbine (GT) in conventionally operated CCPPs. With a view to reducing the GT primary control component and GT loading, Siemens Power Generation (PG) is now offering an option which makes it possible to employ the steam turbine on demand for primary control. The concept is based on throttled operation of the ST and provision of positive primary control capacity under open-loop control by the ST in the event of major frequency deviations (> -50 mHz).

Proposition for an Advanced Nozzle Design (AND)

Axel Schulz, Robert Wernicke, Matthias Friedrich

In this paper it is shown by the example of a nozzle optimisation that the improvement of the traditional component design like nozzles and high pressure header may lead to an increase of the long-time creep resistance. In a next step – on the basis of these results – software tools could be developed, which enable the designing engineer to accomplish a design without complex and costly FEM computations. In the context of a prototype building the manufacturing conditions are to be specified.

Five Enhancements to the Standard Indirect Method for Determining a Steam Boiler´s Efficiency

Andrej Senegacnik, Igor Kustrin, Janez Oman

In this paper some of the specialties and deficiencies encountered when determining the efficiencies of steam boilers fired by fossil fuels are analysed. The efficiency can be determined using direct or indirect methods. In this paper we propose five enhancements to the standard indirect method for determining the efficiency of a steam boiler. Four of these enhancements improve the accuracy of the fluegas loss determination. The fifth proposal is not to neglect the amount of uncontrolled combustion air, which improves the accuracy of the calculation of the heat input to the steam boiler. The proposed enhancements are easy to employ, since all the quantities required for their adoption are measured during the standard procedure.