Firing Biomass is a complex task requiring new technologies in the field of fuel distribution measurement. PROMECON has developed MECONTROL coal into a universal fuel mass flow measurement system, helping clients to optimize the operation of their biomass fired units, especially in regards to efficiency enhancement and tackling the associated corrosion problems.

• Vattenfall Uppsala Power Station:
  
  The largest biomass fired boiler in Europe has chosen PROMECONīs MECONTROL Coal system as replacement for their rotary feeder system in order to get a better handle on stoicheometry problems.
  The fuel which is combusted is peat, which has a tendency towards fuel pulsation which makes combustion difficult. PROMECON will participate in an increasing number of biomass projects, especially in the field of fuel and air flow measurement.
  
  
  Uppsala Biomass Fired Power Station

Wind generation capacity will be growing over the next decades. At the same time electricity markets will be deregulated. This together will result in larger load swings across the grid which to date are hard to compensate. In fact load swing generation capacity is rewarded at twice the price than base load generation.


Wind Farm (creating low emission energy but also load swings)

The ideal candidate for load swing capacity is a coal fired power station. These stations have large capacities as well as energy reservoirs that can be tapped and used to stabilize the frequency in the grid even at largely varying power demands.


Coal Mill

The limiting factor for this however is the coal milling plant, because a coal mill reacts rather slowly to fast changes in coal input, because it stores the coal while grinding. The time delay of that coal storage is a variable that can be controlled on line. The key factor in making the coal mills faster in response is to actively control mill roller pressure as well as classifier speed. This however can only be done in a stable manner if one knows the real time coal output of the coal mill. This can be achieved with MECONTROL Coal and its absolute mass flow measurement capability.

• Vattenfall
  
  .. is currently testing MECONTROL coal at one of their plants in order to enhance load swing capacity. First tests have shown that the PROMECON signal is well suited for enhancing the mill dynamics and hence giving the whole power station a little more cutting edge in increasing load swing capacity.
  
  
  step change in mill load with fast response
  
  Cutting edge load swing capacity
  
  
  Load gradient higher than 3% is achievable in modern coal fired plants

In the industry there is little doubt that clean coal technology including coal gasification and carbon sequestration will become the corner stone for the electricity generation in the next decades. Due to high pressure and high temperatures these new technologies require new materials, new process-know-how as well as new measurement techniques. Especially hot and dusty gases need to be measured where nobody has measured them in the process before.

PROMECON is on the cutting edge when it comes to exactly that. Our MECONTROL Air systems have been successful in the Cement and Steel industry at locations, where continuous online measurement was not possible (hot and dusty gas flows up to 1200 °C). This experience as well as our leadership in this frontier of measurement technology make PROMECON an ideal partner for exploring these new technologies.

• Southern Company
  
  PROMECON has delivered a gas flow measurement system for the coal gasifier at the Southern Company test facility in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Through the daughter company PROMECON USA Inc the measurement system has been installed and is working in process conditions of 1850 oF and 350 psi pressure!
  
  
  
  Other projects for measuring fuel flow, unburned carbon as well as recirculation gases for oxyfuel plants are underway.

Cement production is causing large CO2 emissions the majority of which comes from the decarbonisation of the limestone. The potential for reducing CO2 from clinker production is quite limited. The biggest potential lies in the cement production by replacing a larger fraction of clinker by fly ash from coal fired power stations. Especially markets like India have a vast amount of fly ashes, due to the large coal based electricity generation as well as due to the high ash content in Indian coals.

In Order to use fly ash as additive for Cement it is very important to have a tight quality control of the fly ash, especially of its unburned carbon content.

• New projects in the Cements Industry in India
  
  PROMECON GmbH is the largest supplier of on line measurement systems (MECONTROL UBC) in Europe. India will be a quickly growing market for these systems. PROMECON is already involved with 2 projects in the Cements Industry in India through gtz (Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit) in order to optimize cement plantsī and power stationsī fuel efficiency.
  
  
  
  In addition to the power industry PROMECON is also serving the ash beneficiation and sellerīs market in the USA, where market leaders such as STI (separation technologies Inc.) are using PROMECONīs MECONTROL UBC to enhance the ash sorting and cleaning process.