Boiler Model and Simulation for Control Design and Validation

Abstract

A plant validated boiler simulator is a very useful tool for controls design, analysis and performing experiments because of the cost involved in doing experiments on a real boiler or even lab-boiler. This paper presents the dynamic model simulator of a typical power-plant boiler derived based on the first principles and a hybrid approach of suitably combining lumped and distributed modeling approach for the relevant subsystems. The developed model simulator is validated using an actual plant-data covering the dynamic plant startup scenario. The plant-data of steam flow-rate, feed-water flow-rate, feed water temperature, and heat input defines the boundary condition of the plant startup, and the model-simulated response of the drum-level and pressure are compared with the actual plant-data of boiler drum-level and pressure. The validation results are very encouraging considering the challenges posed by complex behavior and uncertainties in the actual power-plant boiler-drum, and the measurement inaccuracies in the industrial plant conditions.