First Efforts in Benchmarking the Stoker/Pulverized Coal Industry

Abstract

Environmental impact of the coal-fired, electrical power industry has led to increased regulatory requirements. For the industry to remain relevant, it is paramount that it maintains a trajectory of progress towards higher efficiencies and cleaner emissions. Research and development might lead to new technologies, but in the meantime, improvement of existing technology must also be a focus. One method being pursued for this is a benchmark study which can identify best practices and areas where performance might be improved. Over the last decade, the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners and certain faculty at West Virginia University have worked together to collect survey data from atmospheric fluidized bed combustion boiler industry members. However, this accounts for only a small portion of the total coal-fired, electrical power industry (~2%). On the other hand, stoker/pulverized coal boiler operation accounts for most of the industry production (~92%). This report gives the data gathered from stoker/pulverized coal industry members for the operational year 2012. From the applied survey methods, the resulting data pool was small due to a small number of respondents. In the future it is important that the number of survey respondents increases to better reflect the industry and allow more successful benchmarking of the industry. For this initial effort, comparisons are made against recent fluidized bed combustion data to show that, for the given survey responses, stoker/pulverized coal boilers operated at a lower average calcium/sulfur ratio, higher average efficiency, and on average, required more non-management staff per gross MW. This study and comparison serves to provide a good starting point for efforts in benchmarking the stoker/pulverized coal industry.