BHEL readies design for 800 MW plant with ultra supercritical parameters

Coming up with a Project Design Memorandum (PDM) document for setting up and demonstration of 800 MW coal-fired plant with Advanced Ultra Supercritical (AUSC) parameters was a major stride by BHEL Tiruchi in ‘Engineering and Technology’ during 2012-13.

BHEL has submitted to the Central government that the PDM it has prepared in association with National Thermal Power Corporation and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research is capable of achieving a plant efficiency of 46 per cent, the highest so far in the world.

As part of the project, hot wire GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding) technology was established by Welding Research Institute for joining of tubes and plates of advanced materials such as Super 304H, Haynes 230, T92 and T91, BHEL Tiruchi’s Performance Highlights 2012-13 states. To augment the company’s competitive strength, BHEL Tiruchi has come up with its first 800 MW supercritical boiler design with vertical furnace wall using rifled tubes as an option to spiral wall design, and has also developed design for supercritical boilers in the lower range of 350 MW to cater to industrial customers.

It has developed Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models developed for predicting metal temperature under supercritical conditions through simulation using silver coated 180 degree heated tube in supercritical test facility. Yet another first was chemical cleaning of a supercritical boiler in the pre-commissioning stage, successfully carried out at the Barh site using Di-Ammonium EDTA (ethylenediaminete traacetate). At the Coal Research Centre in BHEL Tiruchi, a Drop Tube Furnace System was established for testing the combustion characteristics of various coals and determining coal char reactivity. A coal sample data bank has been set up for relative ranking of 35 samples of Indian and imported coals. As part of a European Union project on demonstration and deployment of clean coal technology, and carbon capture and storage, co-firing of biomass with coal was successfully tested at the Solid Fuel Burning Test Facility under a Memorandum of Understanding with TREC-STEP (Tiruchi Regional Engineering College – Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park).

According to the report, the technical know-how was prepared in-house for design analysis of 700 MW nuclear steam generator for stress, fatigue, seismic effect and vibration. Cost-effective in-house design was also developed for CFBC (Circulating fluidized bed combustion) boilers of medium capacity range of 40 to 80 MW, it said.