Biomass for cleaner power generation

PLCs, DCSs & Controllers

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October 2008 PLCs, DCSs & Controllers

Biomass is a good way of using renewable and reproducible – rather than fossil – sources of energy to reduce the environmental impact of power-generation. The reproducibility of these energy sources is a crucial aspect in order to alleviate limitations in availability.

Worldwide there is a lot of biomass that comes from the wood industry, straw, bushes, hemp, bamboo and buffalo grass. The usage of other plants is still under investigation, because of their influence on the soil and of industrial harvesting.

Biomass in China

Since total energy consumption is on the rise in China, the Chinese government is putting great emphasis on the subject of environmental protection and power-savings. The reduction of carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions is an important goal.

This biomass power plant in Shandong is the first national demonstration project in China. It burns straw to produce energy. A 30 MW single stage bleed and condensing turbine generator with a high-pressure, high-temperature boiler is used for biomass firing. This method of generating green electricity can reduce annual emissions by 100 000 tons.

In addition to environmental impact this ecological approach creates economic and social advantages for the entire region. The farmers that provide the fuel generate revenue of more than 4 million Euros; additionally, more than 1000 jobs are created in the region. The ashes that are produced as the end product are used as fertiliser on the fields of neighbouring areas.

Project outline

The bid for the national biomass plant included a distributed control system (DCS) for the boiler, the main controller for the turbine and sub-controllers for systems like chemical waste-water treatment, fuel transport and heating.

After an extensive evaluation process, the APROL process control system was selected due to its suitability for this kind of application.

APROL offers an integrated solution for main and sub control. The system includes a redundant runtime server configuration which is used to store all the realtime and historical data with high reliability. Seven operator stations make it easy to monitor and control the several parts of the power plant independently.

The data from more than 3000 I/Os is collected by intelligent I/O stations, that can process sequence of events (SOE) variables with a scan-rate of 1 ms. In order to provide the necessary availability the bus systems have been designed with the appropriate amount of redundancy.

B&R support

The system-integrator for this project was the Shandong Luneng Huitong Science Technology Company. Working closely with B&R they demonstrated the value of cooperation. After only three months of commissioning the power plant went online.

For more information contact Rob Snowball, Klare Technologies, +27 (0)41 503 9900, rob@klare.co.za, www.klaretech.com

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Biomass for cleaner power generation

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