Paved the way for economic and environmental benefits
The implementation of the ÅF Balance+ adaptive boiler control concept in Thailand’s largest coal power plant, Gheco-One, has led to major efficiency enhancements. The plant’s carbon footprint has been reduced by improving efficiency, and sustainability has been upgraded thanks to a longer service life for the boiler.
The integration of the ÅF Balance+ control concept into the Gheco-One plant has brought numerous advantages. The most important are faster startups with less oil and demineralised water make-up, a higher utilisation rate and improved efficiency. ÅF experts began work on the project in June 2012 with a control performance evaluation. This showed that there was a potential for introducing numerous improvements.
Throughout the project ÅF specialists and plant staff collaborated closely to optimise the plant, and by the time the project was completed in 2014, ÅF’s efforts had supported Gheco-One’s selection as winner of the prestigious ASEAN Energy Awards 2013 in the category “Best Practices – Clean Coal Use and Technology in Power Generation”.
Pressure to improve efficiency
It is the increased use of lower quality fuels together with pressure to reduce emissions and increase efficiency that often is the main driving forces behind the development of new control and optimization strategies in power plants.
The Balance+ concept
ÅF has developed advanced control strategies that facilitate optimal control of power plant processes without the need for time-consuming tuning procedures. The solutions developed by ÅF’s Advanced Process Control team have been incorporated into a single, straightforward control concept called Balance+. This can be customised to meet individual demands for enhancing plant performance and availability.