An Intelligent Tool for Evaluating Bids for Circulating Fluidized Bed Boilers

Abstract

Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boilers have gained wide scale acceptance in both the process and utility industries in sizes up to 300 MWe. Their ability to burn opportunity fuels such as petroleum coke has carved out a special niche for CFB boilers in the energy market. Presently more than 600 CFB boilers are either in operation or under construction worldwide. Boiler purchasers have a much wider choice of available designs and manufacturers to choose from, making bid selection more difficult. Even with performance guarantees in place, it is prudent for buyers to evaluate proposed designs in order to fully appreciate the various options and to identify potential problems. CFBCAD© is an intelligent software developed by extensive research into design methodologies for CFB boilers and critical analysis of the design of many CFB boilers manufactured by different companies around the world. The model used considers user-inputted fuel specifications and steam conditions, and performs sizing calculations for the furnace and heat transfer surfaces. A variety of heat transfer surface configurations are available for analysis. It has been used to evaluate the design of some operating plants and to try and predict deviations from design parameters.