MODELLING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THERMAL POWER PLANT BOILER FURNACES

SUMMARY The performance of the thermal plant depends upon the efficiency of each component encountered in it. The furnace which is expected to transfer heat from hot gases to sink surface is the heart of such a plant. Efficient furnace can be designed on the basis of accurate estimation of heat transfer. Due to inadequate data on fluid flow, heat transfer and combustion processes, even today no complete analytical procedure has been established either to design a new furnace or investigate the performance characteristics in case of an existing furnace. To handle this complex problem, combustion engineer prefers to first model the furnace characteristics and then optimize the design parameters It would be either too expensive or sometimes perhaps impossible to obtain the same information experimentally. The objective of this article is to present a generalized procedure for modelling the characteristics of boiler furnace and compare the results obtained from the model equations with the experimental data of the same furnace. Large number of furnace parameters such as shape and size of furnace, air-fuel data, operating conditions, radiative properties of hot gases and those of tube walls, environmental conditions etc. make it too tedious to deal with the furnace model. To tackle the problem, a generalized computer program has been developed. The effects of various radiative properties on the performance of the model can be investigated conveniently by computer interaction.