Fuzzy Applications in a Power Station

Power generation today is an increasingly demanding task, worldwide, because of emphasis on efficient ways of generation. A power station is a complicated multivariable controlled plant, which consists of boiler, turbine, generator, power network and loads. The power sector sustainability depends on innovative technology and practices in maintaining unit performance, operation, flexibility and availability . The demands being placed on Control & Instrumentation engineers include economic optimization, practical methods for adaptive and learning control, software tools that place state-of-art methods . As a result, Fuzzy techniques are explored which aim to exploit tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, and partial truth to achieve robustness, tractability, and low cost. This paper proposes use of fuzzy techniques in two critical areas of Soot Blowing optimization and Drum Level Control. Presently, in most of the Power stations the soot blowing is done based on a fixed time schedule. In many instances, certain boiler stages are blown unnecessarily, resulting in efficiency loss. Therefore an fuzzy based system is proposed which shall indicate individual section cleanliness to determine correct soot blowing scheme. Practical soot blowing optimization improves boiler performance, reduces NOx emissions and minimizes disturbances caused by soot blower activation. Due to the dynamic behaviour of power plant, controlling the Drum Level is critical. If the level becomes too low, the boiler can run dry resulting in mechanical damage of the drum and boiler tubes. If the level becomes too high, water can be carried over into the Steam Turbine which shall result in catastrophic damage. Therefore an fuzzy based system is proposed to replace the existing conventional controllers