SRLPN

Application of CFD for Performance enhancement and troubleshooting in Thermal Power Plant

Per capita energy consumption is yard stick to measure the prosperity and growth of any society.
For any infrastructural development the key is continuous supply of electricity .At world level in
totality there is a huge gap between demand and supply of power . This gap can be bridged by
proper operation and maintenance of existing thermal power plant so that they can run
continuously without any failure apart from ,the more number of new installations of new
thermal power plant . Now a days design modifications, troubleshooting and performance
enhancement of thermal power plant with the help of CFD technique is rapidly picking up.
The thermal power plant may be divided into different subsectors and the CFD analysis of critical
equipments/components mainly different type of heat exchangers which are of crucial
significance for efficient and trouble free long-term operation of thermal power plant .
1. Boiler Section

Coal Burners
Economiser
Super heaters and Re heaters
Air Pre heaters

2. Turbine Section
Turbine blade profile
Feed water Heaters
Boiler feed pumps
Condenser
3. Flue Gas System

ID and FD fan profile analysis

Electrostatic precipitator performance as it critical for environmental issues

The Thermal power plant subsystem involves multiphase flow ,phase transformation and complex
chemical reaction associated with conjugate heat transfer.

Steps involved in CFD for problem solving.

Application of the CFD to analyze a fluid problem requires the following steps. First, a set of
mathematical partial differential equations describing the fluid flow are written. Then These
equations are discredited to produce a numerical analogue of the equations. The domain is then
divided into small grids or elements. Finally, the initial conditions and the boundary conditions of
the specific problem are applied to solve these equations. The solution method can be direct or
iterative. In addition, certain control parameters are used to control the convergence, stability, and
accuracy of the method. All CFD codes contain three main elements: (1) A pre-processor, which
is used to input the problem geometry, generate the grid, and define the flow parameter and the
boundary conditions to the code. (2) A flow solver, which is used to solve the governing equations
of the flow subject to the conditions provided. (3) A post-processor, which is used to massage the
data and show the results in graphical and easy to read format.
The equations governing the fluid motion are the three fundamental principles of mass,
momentum, and energy conservation.(r1)

Continuity Equation:
(

Where is the fluid density, t is time, and u is velocity.

Momentum equation:
(

where P is pressure, is fluid viscosity, x is the coordinate and the subscript i indicates
the Cartesian coordinates.
Energy Equation:
( )

where k is the thermal conductivity, T is the temperature, is the dissipation term and S
is the source term.
The governing equations shown above are partial differential equations (PDEs). Since digital
computers can only recognize and manipulate numerical data, these equations cannot be solved
directly. Therefore, the PDEs must be transformed into numerical equations containing only
numbers and no derivatives. This process of producing a numerical analogue to the PDEs is called
numerical discretization. Various techniques used for discretization are the finite difference
method, the finite element method, and the finite volume method.
Finite Difference method describes the unknowns of the flow problem by means of point samples
at the node points of a grid co-ordinate lines. Taylor series expansions are used to generate finite
difference approximations of derivatives in terms of point samples at each grid point and its

immediate neighbours. Those derivatives appearing in the governing equations are replaced by
finite differences yielding an algebraic equation.
Finite Element Method uses piecewise functions valid on elements to describe the local
variations of unknown flow variables. Here also a set of algebraic equations are generated to
determine unknown co-efficients.
Finite Volume Method is probably the most popular method used for numerical discretization in
CFD. This method is similar in some ways to the finite different method. This approach involves
the discretisation of the spatial domain into finite control volumes. The governing equations in
their differential form are integrated over each control volume. The resulting integral conservation
laws are exactly satisfied for each control volume and for the entire domain, which is a distinct
advantage of the finite volume method. Each integral term is then converted into a discrete form,
thus yielding discretised equations at the centroids, or nodal points, of the control volumes.
Various application of CFD in thermal power Plant
Low NOx Burner Design
When fossil fuels are burned ,Nitric oxide and Nitrogen dioxide are produced . These pollutants
initiate reactions which result in production of ozone and acid rain.NOx formation takes place
due to (1) High temperature combustion i.e. thermal NOx and (2)Nitrogen bound to fuel i.e. fuel
NOx and which is insignificant. In majority of the cases the level of thermal NOx can be reduced
by lowering flame temperature. This can be done by modifying the burner to create a larger
(hence lower temperature flame) flame in turn reducing the NOx formation
Philip J Stopfoard [1] in his conference paper on CFD modeling in power generation has given
overview on application of CFD for design of low NOx burner developed by ABB combustion
systems incorporating both air and fuel stage staging. To optimize the performance of the burner
in specific applications, CFX-4 has been used to calculate isothermal and combusting flows, in
both single burner and multi-burner furnace simulations. Results were obtained for meshes of
28,000 and 82,000cells, the standard and RNG k- turbulence models and with hybrid and
CONDIF upwind differencing schemes. Good agreement for the axial and swirl velocities was
obtained with the measurements for most cases ..
CFD analysis of Economiser
Krunal P. Mudafale et al[2] carried out CFD analysis of tube type economizer associated with
tangentially fired boiler for predicting the pressure, velocity & temperature distribution by using
SATR-CCM+ software. The CFD model may be used to optimize economiser's thermal
performance by varying the location in the economizer and in turn improves the performance of
boiler. The temperature and velocity fields were in agreement with the expected behaviour of a
tangentially fired coal combustion chamber. The temperature of feed water increases along its
length as it picks up the heat from hot flue gas while moving towards outlet. The velocity plot
reveals that the hot flue gas looses heat as it moves downward and the heat is gained by the feed
water. The pressure of feed water at in the tube is higher at inlet and decreases as it moves
towards outlet. The high pressure gradient along the tube length is due to friction between feed

water and the tube wall. In this study of the economizer the critical zone has been seen at the
turning bend of the coil.
CFD analysis of Superheter
Ajay N. Ingale et al [3] carried the CFD analysis to study boiler tube leakage problem in the super
heater. A 2-D modeling of super heater performed using CFD and temperature of the flue gases
over the coils using the actual boundary conditions have been studied. The CFD results obtained
can be useful for the maintenance engineer to make suitable prediction of the tube life and make
suitable arrangement for the high temperature zone to reduce the erosion of tube coil and
restricting the tube leakage problem. CFD model of super heater was developed to study the
velocity, pressure and temperature distribution of the steam inside the superheater and to evaluate
the effect of the operating parameter on the tube erosion rate and focusing on simulating
isothermal turbulent flow within the boiler superheater. The CFD result shows the temperature
near the U-tube bend found more than the permissible. In one U-tube pass the temperature of
steam in the tube increases by 570oC. This fluctuation of temperature causes the boiler tube
leakage, hence leading a conclusion that more attention should be given to maintain the designed
values of velocity and temperature throughout operation.
CFD analysis of Pulverized Coal Combustion
Cristiano V. da Silva et al [4]used CFD tool for analysis of Combustion of coal in 160 MWe
thermal power plant by using CFX as tool The models based on the fundamental conservation
equations of mass, energy, chemical species and momentum, while the closure problem was
solved by turbulence models as the k- , with the objective of simulating the operational
conditions and identifying factors of inefficiency. The behaviour of the flow of air and pulverized
coal through the burners were analyzed, and the three-dimensional flue gas flow through the
combustion chamber and heat exchangers was reproduced in the numeric simulation.
The CFD application in other areas of Thermal power plant
Apart from above mentioned some specific areas of application of CFD for thermal power plant
many other researcher worked with CFD application in other areas of thermal power plant for
performance evaluation and efficient operation
SowjanyaVijiapurapu et al [5] apllied CFD code CFX for coal and air balancing in thermal
power plant. They emphasized that Unbalanced coal/air ow in the pipe systems of coal red
power plants will lead to non-uniform combustion in the furnace ,and hence a overall lower
eciency of the boiler. A common solution to this problem is to put orices in the pipe systems to
balance the ow. if the orices are sized to balance clean airow to individual burners connected
to a pulverizer , the coal/airow would still be unbalanced and vice versa. However, the current
power industry practice is to size orices for balancing the clean air ow and accept the resulting
imbalance in coal/airow. For calculating the pressure drop coecients , standard handbook data
can be used[7].However, the data for two-phase ow (coal/air) is found to be unreliable. So, the
pressure drop coefficients for the coal/air as well as the clean air ow were calculated using CFD.
For calculation of the steady state ow in the piping systems, continuity and momentum equations

were solved along with the standard ke two-phase ow calculations were adopted to simulate the
air ow and coal particles. The multi-phase models were used to simulate the complex ow eld
of each phase and the interaction between air and coal particles. It is believed that the numerical
solution was able to provide reasonable pressure drop coecients in the current study.
Jairo Z. Souza et al [6] in their work addressed the problem of water wall erosion of furnace of
thermal power plant with the help of CFD (ANSYS CFX). This problem is generally caused by
three different sources: flame misalignment, thermal attack and erosion due to the contact with
chemicals. This work mainly focuses on the problem of flame misalignment as a result of
alteration in fluid dynamics factors due to burner geometry and with the help of CFD as tool the
the numerical simulation for burner carried out. The results shows velocity profiles, pressure
profiles, streamlines and other data that is helpful to understand the fluid flow phenomena inside
the equipment. The coal particles trajectories simulated allow identifying where particles collide
with the boiler wall. All obtained results were meeting with the field observations .
It is clearly evident from above examples that how crucial is the application of CFD in addressing
the bottlenecks in thermal power plant and improving power plant efficiency assist in
maintenance.

References:1. P. J Stopford, Recent Application of CFD Modeling in the Power Generation and
Combustion Industries, Applied Mathematical Modeling, Vol 26, Pg. No. 351-374, 2002.
2. Krunal .P Mudafle , Hemant S. Farkade "CFD analysis of economizer in a tengential fired
boiler", International Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (IJMIE) ISSN No.
2231 6477, Vol-2, Iss-4, 2012.
3. Ajay N. Ingale, Vivek C. Pathade, Dr. Vivek H. Tatwawadi" CFD Analysis of Superheater
in View of Boiler Tube Leakage" International Journal of Engineering and Innovative
Technology (IJEIT) Volume 1, Issue 3, March 2012
4. Cristiano V. da Silva, Maria Luiza S. Indrusiak, Arthur B. Beskow " CFD Analysis of the
Pulverized Coal Combustion Processes in a 160 MWe Tangentially-Fired-Boiler of a
Thermal Power Plant" Journal of the Braz. Soc. of Mech. Sci. & Eng. October-December
2010, Vol. XXXII, No. 4.
5. SowjanyaVijiapurapua , JieCuia, SastryMunukutla "CFD application for coal/air balancing
in power plants" AppliedMathematicalModelling30(2006)854866
6. Jairo Z. Souzaa, Leonardo P. Rangel" Numerical Simulation of Coal Boiler at Electric
Thermal Plants Using Computational Fluid Dynamics" 10th International Symposium on
Process Systems Engineering - PSE2009
7. H.Versteg ,W.malalasekra " An Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics" Second
edition,Pearson Publications.