Development of fluidized bed combustion—An overview of trends, performance and cost

The goal of this article is to chart and analyse the development and economical performance of fluidized bed combustion (FBC) and its derivates circulating fluidized bed (CFB) and bubbling fluidized bed (BFB). A descriptive overview is given of the technology and the market penetration is discussed. To make further analysis possible a database is constructed. This database comprises technological and economical data on 491 FBC projects. Analysis of these projects shows that the technology variants (CFB and BFB) diffused differently over time. Drivers, which influenced the market diffusion and technological development are market regulation, environmental legislation and RD&D programs. Important drivers for FBC technology are fuel availability, required applications in the market, innovation spill over and competing technologies. In this article technical characteristics are charted, which show improvements in fuel diversification, technical availability, efficiency and emissions. In terms of economical performance the results show a decline in specific investment cost. Finally, the effect of technological learning and experience on the economical performance of FBC technology is analysed using the experience curve method and theory on economies of scale. A problem with applying the experience curve method is that it is not used often for large power plants like FBC plants and with it lacking a methodological standard. A method is therefore suggested. The analyses yielded progress ratios (PR) from 0.42 to 0.93 for different groups of projects (new plant, repower, retrofit, add-on and conversion) and different parts of the capital breakdown (total project price, engineering, procurement and construction price and boiler price). This means that the specific investment prices (in $/kWe) decline with, respectively, 58% and 7% with every doubling of cumulative installed capacity (in MWe). The progress ratio found for new FBC plants lies between 0.90 and 0.93. These values correspond with the average PR of 0.90 found for power plants in the literature. Further results show that economies of scale have a significant influence on the investment price. Scale factors are found in the range of 0.62–0.81 for different groups of projects. According to these scale factors specific investment price decreases, respectively, between 25% and 12% with every doubling of plant capacity (in MWe).