TECHNOLOGY
The Problem
Much of the world is focusing on transitioning to cleaner energy sources. However we know that coal-based utilities will still be relied upon for decades to reliably produce energy especially when supply shortages of oil and gas emerge. To participate in the global movement to reduce coal emissions such plants mush optimize their efficiency and reduce related toxic emissions.
Background and Solution Highlights
Over the last 9 years, AI Energy Partners has developed an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Platform called Navigator to address heat rate deviation and related emissions problems.
Navigator is a state-of-the-art platform designed to improve power production efficiency and reduce toxic emissions by optimizing real time operating decisions by plant engineers.
Navigator has been deployed in a major European utility over the last 2 years. The utility has realized increases in efficiency in excess of 1%, resulting in significant savings in coal and CO2 emissions.
System Application
Navigator was originally designed to address efficiency and reliability problems in hard coal power plants.
However, it can be applied to any type of coal fired plant, on any type of boiler and DCS system.
It can also be deployed in combined cycle gas turbine power plants.
Problem Solving Attributes of Navigator:
Currently generates savings in excess of 1% of coal consumption and reduction of related environmental emissions.
Produces positive ROI in the first months of operation.
Is compatible with any major DCS vendor.
Navigator - Immediate ROI, Less coal, less CO2 and other pollutions
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Software that supports immediate ROI with no additional hardware installation
The following provides a few important highlights of Navigator’s AI based platform that formulates operational decisions for unit operators. This results in significant savings by optimizing the efficiency of the unit while ensuring the necessary safety conditions.
Mitigate Controllable Losses
This is a chart of losses on different processes. Losses are represented as heat rate deviations. Implementation and use of this tool allows for generating a significant savings. The chart shows the deviation from optimal operation on all processes that we can influence in real time. The most important line here is a blue line, which indicates the sum of deviations on all processes.
Operator’s objective is to keep this line as low as possible, to minimize cost of power generation. Operator can immediately identify the sub process generating the highest losses and conduct proper regulatory actions. Importantly, the operator can instantly confirm the result of the corrective action.
Precise AI Navigator recommendations
The operator receives recommendations from the system in the form of simple commands. Those recommendations contain precise information about which parameters should be changed to improve efficiency. The operator can immediately see which settings should be changed to optimize the combustion process. The results of operator’s corrective actions are displayed on the graph in real time. Operator can also immediately confirm significant heat rate deviation reduction which occurs as a result of that action.
Heat Rate Awareness Improvement
This is a comparison of losses over two cycles of power unit operation: one cycle during which the technology has been implemented (red area) and the other without (blue area). After system implementation, heat rate deviation distribution was corrected, resulting in higher unit efficiency.
The heat rate reduction potential has been proven to be 1 to 3%. This is significant because power plants burn thousand tons of coal PER HOUR. Saving even one half of one percent results in significant reduction of coal consumption and CO2/toxic emissions.
Malfunction Alerts and Reliable Data Identifying Losses
Data reliability and process safety is crucial to efficient plant operation. Navigator alerts the operator in real time about sensor malfunctions.
The reaction time by the operator is very important, because invalid sensor data can lead to the mistuning of automation systems and generate losses. With these real time alerts, the operator can be made aware of potentially system compromising malfunctions such as leakages.
This AI based tool ensures that the operator bases his corrective actions on validated data.
