B403 - Optimization and Controls of Furnaces, Boilers & Steam Plants

4 days - 2.9 Continuing Education Units Awarded

The "Optimization and Controls of Furnaces, Boilers & Steam Plants" course is intended for process engineers, control engineers or instrumentation personnel with responsibility over the optimization of the powerhouse processes including boilers, furnaces, steam headers, turbines, power plants and steam plants.

This is a 4-day course that uses a first-principle process simulator as a learning tool to better understand the different process control challenges of a powerhouse. This simulator provides hands-on experience to the participants by allowing them to apply the concepts learned in the lecture to a virtual steam plant. Topics for this course include thermodynamics, steam/boiler process design, typical steam plant regulatory controls, advanced process controls and optimization of the boiler/header/turbine load response.

Prerequisites: B402 or a good understanding of the boiler/steam process

OBJECTIVES

At the end if this session, the participants will be able to:

• Demonstrate how to optimize the response of PID loops for steam plant applications
• Describe the applications of cascade, feedforward, mid-range, split-range and ratio control in a steam plant
• Describe the impact of thermodynamics and steam system design on the controllability of a steam plant
• Describe cross-limiting combustion logic with %O₂ trim control
• Describe how to reduce furnace draft, steam temperature, drum level and header pressure variations during rapid unit load response
• Describe the control challenges of cogeneration
• Demonstrate and describe some of the main troubleshooting methods for plant variability analysis

COURSE OUTLINE

• Lecture 1
  • Introduction to process variability and its different representation (Auto-correlation, cross-correlation, 2-sigma and frequency analysis)
• Lecture 2 (+Lab)
  • Process dynamics: 1^st order processes, 2^nd order processes, integrating processes
• Lecture 3 (+Lab)
  • Mixing/Agitation/Heat Sinks and its impact on process variability
• Lecture 4 (+Lab)
  • Controller tuning for 1^st order processes
• Lecture 5(+Lab)
  • Controller tuning and its impact on process variability
• Lecture 6 (+Lab)
  • Controller tuning for integrating loops
• Lecture 7
  • Approach to a multi-variable processes (pairing variables, cascaded loops, decoupling controllers)
• Lecture 8 (+Lab)
  • Advanced Control Concepts (Feedforward Control, Adaptive Control – Fuzzy Logic, Near-Integrating Rule, Derivative Control)
• Lecture 9
  • Optimization Lab

ONSITE  PERFORMANCE PROGRAM OPTION

The "Onsite Performance Program" is a hands-on option to the B403 course. This program is valuable to professionals who wish to apply the troubleshooting methodology learned in the lectures to specific applications of their steam plant or power plant. The Onsite Performance program includes:

• Practical concepts to field testing
• Practical concepts to the loop tuning methodology
• Practical concepts to process dynamics analysis
• Practical concepts to drum level and temperature control
• Practical application of variability analysis (statistical analysis, and spectral analysis)