I have a short story for you and hope you can take a minute to read it.
It may lend some insight into your operations it may not.
To start, what is the history of your steam plant?
For example, in an older pulp mill it may have been built because they needed a little more steam and had some waste that they had to get rid of.
Kill two birds with one stone, just get rid of that pile of waste sitting in the yard.
For a Biomass Power Generation facility, it was probably built because there was an excess of waste wood in an area possibly associated with a pulp mill or sawmill operations.
If that was 15 years ago or more well things have changed drastically.
Oil, Gas were relatively cheap and hog fuel was free and a nuisance.
Then things started to change as we all know. The original intent of just getting rid of the waste became a juggling of economics and what was once free became a marketable commodity.
The question is:
Did your Steam Plant operation change to match the conditions?
- Higher Fuel costs
- Emissions requirements
- Hog fuel became a commodity sometimes an expensive commodity
- Quality of available hog fuel available was reduced
- Need more fuel to produce the same amount of steam causing stress on original equipment such as infeed and ash systems.
- Seasonal variation has a greater impact
There are several conditions that typically indicate opportunities for improvement.
- High O2
- High CO
- Opacity issues
- Control Parameters in Manual
- Excess carbon in Ash
- Back end of the furnace has excess wear or plugging
These conditions can also be found in newer operations. This is not confined to older boilers any operation that has experienced a shift in fuel and operating conditions is prone to experiencing at least some if not all these conditions.
How much does it cost to produce steam from Natural Gas vs Hog Fuel? Or are you experiencing lost production throughout your operation.
If you are burning 600 to 1000 tons per day and can save 10% that is a savings of 60 to 100 tons. At $30.00 per ton that’s $ 1800 to $ 3,000 per day. 10% may seem high but depending upon the operation the potential exists. At 100 tons per day that is less than 4 tons per hour. Would you even notice that?
What if your hog fuel costs are greater or your plant has a larger capacity or both?
You could also see gains in reliability and or productivity along with the efficiency?
Do the math it is surprising how fast this adds up.
For a pulp mill the cost may be greater if steam must be generated from Natural Gas when Biomass capacity is available but currently unattainable.
So often operations are consumed by fixing the immediate breakdowns that they don’t get an opportunity to examine the root cause. Left constantly dealing with a symptom not the real problem.
The common phrases to watch for:
Its always been like that.
Or
We’ve never done it like that before.
In my opinion this is some of the most dangerous language known…. OK that’s an exaggeration there is much more dangerous things to say. But its not a good attitude.
This can permeate a culture and soon everyone is doing the minimum to collect their paycheck and pointing fingers at everyone else as to why things are the way they are. Not a good scenario.
Its always been like that…. the root issue has not been determined or at least labelled and communicated. It may not have even been identified as an issue.
We’ve never done it like that before…. A change management challenge typically uncovered after you have identified the root cause of the pervious item.
How do you start to change all of this?
This is where we can help.
Our experience with Biomass boiler and furnace operations has given us insight and perspective as where to look and what to look for. The hidden items that you see every day, but they are overlooked and lost in the noise of daily operation.
If you have any of the conditions and indicators that we mentioned above, we can determine the cause and implement the required change. Our technology is added to your existing DCS system to extend its abilities to detect and respond to changes within the combustion process to extract the most energy from the current fuel conditions with the equipment that you have. Our project deployment includes change management and operator training to ensure that the operators and management understand the what and the why of the changes.
Our projects are based upon demonstrable returns. Require little to no interruption of operation and typically see returns within the first 90 days. We track the changes and improvements so that management knows exactly what their return on investment is at all stages throughout the project and beyond.