In April, PROMECON engineers conducted a survey at the Santa Maria Power Station in Chile. After PROMECON had installed their MECONTROL Coal flow measurement system and density dampers, all PF pipes were ready for tuning. Objective was to optimise the combustion by balancing the coal flow to the individual burners. At the beginning, the differences of the coal distribution in the individual PF pipes of each mill was between 17% and 25%. This was reduced considerably to values between 4% and 6% after the dampers were set according to the measurements. As a consequence, an efficiency increase is expected.

Additionally, this coal balancing could create the bases for further optimization and cuts in expenses for operation and maintenance, such as:

• reduced repair costs due to less thermal stress on furnace walls and super heater metal temperatures
• less UBC in the fly ash
• reduced electricity consumption of auxiliaries (e.g. fans)

But also the environmental aspects could be improved in light of the worldwide stricter regulations, as the NOx values could be reduced considerably. As a conclusion, PROMECON with their measurement systems for coal flow, could provide a relevant tool to achieve favourable conditions for a safer, easier, less expensive and more flexible operation of a power plant.