On-line monitoring of ash fouling and soot-blowing optimization for convective heat exchanger in coal-fired power plant boiler

This paper presented a comprehensive approach of on-line monitoring and optimization for the soot-blowing system in coal-fired power plant boilers. Due to ash fouling monitoring of heat transfer surfaces of the boiler based on dynamic mass and energy balance method, on-line calculation of boiler thermal efficiency and soft measurements for gas flow rate at the double breezing tail and steam flow rate of reheaters, the performance of boiler's soot-blowing system can be evaluated on-line. And then, the suitable soot-blowing strategies are developed for soot-blowing frequencies and duration optimization. Monitoring results and analysis of an experimental application are given to illustrate the proposed methodologies. The methods proposed in this paper can be applied to state assessment and guidance of soot-blowing operation of boiler's soot-blowing system in order to achieve the purpose of energy conservation, without demanding special instruments or complex computing systems.