Operating_Experience.fh8 09.04.

2001 8:17 Uhr Seite 1

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C M Y CM MY CY CMY K
Coal Fi red Pl ant s:
Hori zont al Boi l ers Make 70 0C St eam Economi c
COMMUNICATING POWER TECHNOLOGY WORLDWIDE
Reprint from
ModernPowerSystems
Power for Generations Siemens Power Generation
Author:
David Smith
I
n a world of rapidly advancing deregu-
lation, it has become increasingly diffi-
cult for coal fired power generation to
compete. Now the pendulum may be
beginning to swing back.
It is not just the forecast of a doubling in
natural gas prices in the next three years that
is driving this trend. Under the influence of
stringent political regulatory regimes, unsta-
ble gas prices, the prospect of heavy emissions
trading costs, carbon taxes and the response
to Kyoto, interest in advanced coal fired gen-
eration technology is enjoying a resurgence.
Often dismissed by many senior pundits as
having little prospect of economic viability in
the foreseeable future, ultra supercritical coal
fired utility boilers to generate steam at over
700C and 350 bar is beginning to be more
vigorously pursued, particularly in Europe,
and in Germany and Denmark in particular.
The main hurdle in the past has been the
horrendously high cost of the high nickel al-
loys needed to withstand these temperatures
and pressures. However, new designs of boil-
er using a horizontal furnace configuration
have now been developed by Benson licensor
Siemens that greatly reduce the impact of the
cost of high nickel alloys (see Figure 1). The
concept has been developed in the context of
a study of future advanced coal fired plants
with ultracritical steam conditions.
Development work has been underway on
horizontal furnace boiler technology for some
years. In the medium term, a demonstration
plant incorporating the new boiler, working
at current state of the art conditions, could
prove the viability of the design. A fully de-
veloped ultra supercritical version could start
operation in 2010.
Horizontal vertical tube boilers
There is nothing new about vertical tube
Benson boilers from as early as 1930 up to
the mid 1960s the use of vertical tubes with
refractory linings was the popular design ap-
proach. Since then the furnace tubing has gen-
erally been configured in a spiral
configuration with the tubes welded togeth-
er to form membrane walls.
Various concepts for using vertical tubes in
the form of membrane walls were developed
in the USA in the late 1950s. The main prob-
lem with this arrangement was achieving ad-
equate cooling of all of the tubes under a wide
range of load conditions. The use of high mass
flow densities was the generally adopted so-
lution.
In the 1980s Sulzer developed a concept
that used internally ribbed tubing which has
been used in the 2 x 700 MWe gas fired power
plant at the Kawagoe site and the Matsuura
700 MWe coal fired plant in Japan.
Full load mass flow density in the tubes for
this design of boiler is in the range 16002000
kg/m
2
s.
To accommodate temperature
variations that would occur at the
evaporator outlet due to differ-
ences in heat input conditions,
tubes expected to be subject to
insufficient heat input are fitted
with flow restrictors. But rather
than assume complete evapora-
tion in the furnace, a convection
evaporator section is added for
completion of the evaporation process.
Siemens has been conducting experimen-
tal research into heat transfer and flow con-
ditions in such tubes for some years in a high
pressure test loop in Erlangen, and many re-
ports have been published by Joachim Franke,
Rudolf Kral and his colleagues over the last
decade. They have produced an extensive
database which shows that the heat transfer
is highly sensitive to changes in internal rifling
rib geometry.
Heat transfer in a rifled (also called ribbed)
tube (Figure 2) is exceptionally good, espe-
cially during evaporation. This is because cen-
trifugal force transports the water fraction of
the wet steam to the tube wall. The resulting
A novel design of Benson boiler with horizontal furnace and internally rifled vertical tubes has been developed by
Siemens. In association with the EU-funded Thermie advanced 700C PF power plant programme it has been
designed for steam conditions of 350 bar/700C/720C. The reduced height of the boiler minimises the amount of
expensive high nickel alloys required for the steam lines to a point where the economics are competitive. Mounting
the steam turbine at the level of the boiler steam outlet headers results in further cost reductions.
Horizontal boilers make
700C steam economic
Figure 1. Layout of the
new horizontal furnace
boiler, with vertical tubes.
Note the vortex burners
located on the front of the
furnace
Figure 2. Internally
rifled tube
David Smith
1000
980
960
940
920
900
880
860
840
820
800
0.40
0.38
0.36
0.34
0.32
0.30
0.28
0.26
0.24
0.22
0.20
Middle tube
(with burner)
Middle tube
(without burner)
Corner tube
Mass flux m (kg/m
2
s) Relative heat input (q
n
/q
o
)

q
n
/q
o = 1
.
.
m
q
1
/q
o
q
2
/q
o
q
3
/q
o
Figure 3. Typical measurements on a supercritical
boiler with vertical rifled-tube water walls, showing
the relatiuonship between heat input and mass flux.
May 2000 Modern Power Systems 37
May 2000 Modern Power Systems 39
wall wetting causes excellent heat transfer
from the wall to the fluid. This has the fol-
lowing advantages over smooth tubes:
G No deterioration of heat transfer even in
the range of high steam quality
G Very good heat transfer even at low mass
flux
G Only slight increase in wall temperature in
case of film boiling near critical pressure
(interval from about 200 bar to critical
pressure)
G Potential for increased heat transfer by op-
timisation of rifling geometry.
The low mass flux design not only enables
downward extension of the output limits for
vertical tubes to 300 or 200 MW and use of
large-diameter tubes, but in particular it also
changes the flow characteristic of a once-
through system: with increased heating of an
individual tube, the throughput of that tube
increases instead of decreasing.
In a rifled tube, the boiling crisis does not
take place until steam quality is less than 0.9
shortly before the end of evaporation due to
the swirl flow generated by the spiral ribs in-
side the tubes. Differences in centrifugal force
separate the water from the steam fraction and
force the water towards the tube wall. This
maintains wetting up to high steam quality lev-
els, resulting in high flow velocities even at
the boiling crisis location.
The main advantages of vertical internally
rifled tubes in a Benson boiler can be sum-
marised as:
G Reduced mass flow, from 2000 to 1000
kg/s, with flow characteristics as in drum
boilers, ie increased heat input to an indi
vidual tube increases throughput in that
tube (as shown in Figure 3).
G Cost effective fabrication and assembly
G Minimum Benson output can be as low as
20 per cent.
G Simple start up system for 20 per cent
evaporator throughput
G Reduced slagging on combustion chamber
walls.
Siemens, Babcock Lentjes
Kraftwerkstechnik and Steinmller carried
out large scale testing in a rig installed in
PreussenElektras supercritical 320 MWe
Farge coal fired power plant in 1993 which
served to verify the experimental results and
yield input to design codes for a new vertical
tube Benson boiler concept.
The theoretical conclusions for this con-
cept regarding pressure drop and thus for flow
distribution with non-uniform heating were
tested in practice in the Farge plant. It was im-
portant to achieve the physical height which
is significant for a natural circulation charac-
teristic but which cannot be attained in labo-
ratory operation. A furnace heat exchange
surface with the low mass flux design was in
trouble-free operation at the Farge plant for
more than 10 000 hours. This confirmed the
calculation fundamentals and at the end of
trial operation the tubes were still practically
as good as new, the rib profile not smoothed
by deposits.
Heat transfer measurements were not per-
formed in Farge, as important factors such as
heating and the thickness of the insulating ash
layer on the tubes vary constantly, preventing
reliable, reproducible measurement results.
But the low mass flux design with its opti-
mised internally rifles tubes has even greater
benefits when applied to the low profile hor-
izontal furnace boiler configuration.
The thermohydraulic principles of low
mass flux design have already been proven in
commercial operation in the horizontal
Benson heat recovery steam generator used in
Siemens most advanced V94.3A gas turbine
combined cycle field development plant, at
Cottam, UK (see MPS, September 1999, pp
40-43), shown in Figure 4.
The parallel tubes of the evaporator for the
HP and IP stages arranged sequentially in the
exhaust flow path are characterised by ex-
tremely different heat uptakes. In the select-
ed concept, mass flows automatically adjust
to the heat input ie all parallel tubes of the HP
evaporator show saturation temperature at
first pass outlet and low temperature differ-
ences between the rows of the second pass
(Figure 5). The thermoelastic construction of
the Benson boiler significantly increases flex-
ibility of the com-
bined-cycle power
plant over that of a
drum boiler, espe-
cially during start-
up.
One third of
the height
Figures 1 and 6
show the schemat-
ic layout of the hor-
izontal coal fired
boiler for which
very considerable
cost reductions are
claimed, particular-
31m
63m
91m
Tower Two pass Horizontal
Figure 5. Mass flow distribution, steam quality and temperatures in the HRSG for the Cottam combined cycle plant
Figure 6. Size comparison
of coal fired boilers for
550 MW output
Figure 7. The modular design of the boiler lends itself to variations in output rating
Figure 4. Cottam, UK, uses a horizontal HRSG
ly for the most highly supercritical power
plants. Such boilers will have a height of little
more than 30 m.
Typical turbine plinth levels today are
around 16 m high. But with the new hori-
zontal furnace there is the possibility of rais-
ing the turbine floor level to the boiler main
steam outlet pipe level, ie to about about 30
m above datum, to minimise superheated
steam pipe length and complexity. Power
plant designs being developed with the hori-
zontal furnace boiler combined with
Siemens new four-stage turbine have this con-
figuration.
The main advantages of the low-profile boil-
er configuration are obvious:
G Reduced structural steelwork costs.
G Simplified installation.
G Installation time is reduced as the furnace,
lateral pass and vertical pass can be in-
stalled in parallel, which also reduces in-
terest during construction.
G The steam lines between the boiler and
turbine are shorter and more direct.
G All of the burners are mounted on one
side of the combustion chamber.
G The modular design of the boiler lends it-
self to variations in output rating a 700
MWe version can be put together with
dual furnace sections to make a 700 MWe
unit with twice the width but the same
height as a 350 MWe unit (see Figure 7).
Whereas with more conventional steam
conditions the superheated steam lines ac-
count for some 3 per cent of the power plant
costs (see Figure 8), this number increases to
about 15 per cent in plants with steam tem-
peratures of 700 C (using Ni base alloys and
state of the art power block design). But with
the compact horizontal furnace boiler the fig-
ure decreases once again to around 3 per cent.
This is because with the horizontal furnace
boiler the length of pipes is reduced to 20 per
cent of that in the conventional design.
Also, in the horizontal furnace boiler, the
convection section with the horizontal and
vertical passes is located downstream of the
horizontal furnace, and is largely identical
with proven two-pass boilers (see Figures 1
and 6).
Materials
Increasingly purposeful negotiations have re-
cently been held between nickel alloy suppli-
er Inco and the 40 strong members of the
Thermie 700 project, which include all of the
boiler makers in Europe, many utilities and
manufacturing concerns.
Significantly, other German
utilities and the power plant
operators association VGB
are expecting to join the
group before long.
It seems that the projected
cost of the high nickel alloys needed to han-
dle the 700 C steam is now down to around
10 x the cost of present P91 and P92 materi-
als instead of the 40 x figure recently mooted.
The new boiler layout clearly reduces the
amount of High Nickel Alloy 617 in the su-
perheated steam pipes, but thick castings in
this material are still needed for the high pres-
sure turbine casings. Table 1 indicates the pro-
gression of high temperature steam system
alloy applications to date.
Four-stage turbine
As already mentioned, the turbine envisaged
for use with the horizontal furnace boiler has
four stages: HP1, HP2, IP and LP (see Figure
9). The design takes into account the high
costs of nickel-based alloys and the need to re-
strict component weights. Accordingly, the
HP cylinder is split into separate HP1 and HP2
cylinders. The HP1 cylinder includes parts
made of nickel-based alloys and is designed to
be very compact. The HP1 exhaust steam
flows directly into the HP2 cylinder, which
can be designed for moderate steam condi-
tions and thus manufactured from conven-
tional materials, eg cost effective 9 ... 12 per
cent chromium steels. Reheat steam enters the
IP cylinder, in which the hot areas will be man-
ufactured from nickel-based materials, while
conventional materials will be used for the
colder areas (Figure 10).
Reference
J. Franke and R. Kral, Advanced boiler design for
high efficiency power plants, to be presented at
Parsons 2000, Cambridge, 3-7 July 2000. These au-
thors acknowledge participants in the advanced
700C PF power plant project carried out under the
EU funded Thermie programme and the financial
contributions from the European Commission and
the Swiss government.
Figure 10. Materials for the IP and HP2 stages of
the 700C steam turbine, 400 MWe single reheat
power plant
Figure 8. Reductions in costs gained by horizontal
furnace (HF) boiler design for the highest steam
temperatures
Rotor nickel based alloy
Inner casing
nickel based alloy
Casing G17CrMoV5-10
Outlet casing 9...12% Cr steel
Inlet casing 9...12% Cr steel
Inner casing nickel based alloy
Rotor nickel based alloy
Table 1.
Materials for steam generators
with high steam temperatures
Components Material Temperature for
105h creep at 100
N/mm2 (C)
Membrane wall 13CrMo44 515
7CrMoVTiB910 580
HCM12 600
NF12/SAVE12 640
Superheater tubes X3CrNiMoN1713 630
Esshete 1250 640
TP347HFG 655
Alloy 617 ~690
Alloy 625 ~740
Headers P91 590
E911/NF616 615
NF12 640
TP347HFG 655
Modified 617 ~700
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
540C
Conventional
design
700C
Conventional
design
700C
Conventional design
with HF boiler
100%
120%
107%
Steam
piping
Boiler
Turboset
Other
Relative power plant
investment costs (%)
IP HP1
Figure 9. Siemens has designed
a new four-stage steam turbine
generator set for highly
supercritical power plants
HP1
HP
Old design
New design
IP LP LP
HP1 HP2 IP LP LP
HP2
May 2000 Modern Power Systems 41
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s
This article appeared in:
Modern Power Systems
May 2000, page 37-41
Published by and copyright 2000
Siemens AG
Power Generation Group (KWU)
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91058 Erlangen, Germany
Phone: +49 913118-3787
E-mail: contact
@
erl11.siemens.de
http:www.siemens.de/kwu
Siemens Westinghouse
Power Corporation
The Quadrangle
4400 Alafaya Trail
Orlando, FL 32826-2399 (USA)
Phone: +001407736-2000
http://www.siemenswestinghouse.com
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