Development of 900 M W coal-fired generating units

The CEGB now has 64 large generating units of 500MW or 660 MW which are fossil-fuelled.These units form the backbone of the British power system but they are now of relatively aged designs. Following a review, it was decided to increase unit size of new generators to 900 MW

by R. N. Burbridge, OBE

The CEGB commissioned its first 500 MW generating unit in 1965, and this has steam conditions of 160 bar and 565C with reheat to 565C. This marked the limit of commercial development of steam conditions to the present day; units of 660MW were built in the 1970s with similar steam conditions. The last order for fossil-fuelled plant was placed in 1977 for 3 X 660 MW coal-fired units to complete the Drax station in Yorkshire. This order was essentially for a repeat of the first half of the station whose designs were rooted in the 1960s. Since the mid 1980s the national demand for electricity has been rising significantly from the plateau of the late 1970s. Current projections indicate that the CEGBs installed capacity will be inadequate to meet the demand from 1994 onwards. The CEGB has adopted a policy of mixed planting comprising pressurised water reactor (PWR) nuclear power stations and coal-fired stations, and a start has been made on the Sizewell B PWR; a small family of similar PWRs will be built for commissioning around the turn of the century. Nonetheless lead times for nuclear stations are necessarily long and there is a pressing need for the construction of coal-fired stations for commissioning in the mid 1990s. The CEGB recognised the need to move from the designs specified for the completion .of Drax to a new specification and design of plant that would reflect international trends in technology and economics. In late 1984 the CEGB began studies on the design and parameters for future coal-fired stations. The objective was to achieve capital and generation cost savings and a shorter construction period compared with the CEGBs previous stations. As a consequence of this review the CEGB decided that this objective could best be POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

achieved by increasing the unit size from 660 MW to a nominal 900 MW rating.

Consultation In carrying out its study the CEGB made great efforts to involve all those who could contribute to the conception of a new design of power plant. In particular the major British manufacturers of power plant which had achieved some notable export successes were keen to participate in the evolution of the new stations. Success for them in their home market will be the ideal showcase from which to market their products abroad. The new design will be competitive with international standards and is expected to be attractive to many utilities around the world. Operators of commissioned plant were also consulted. It is important to incorporate feedback from operators and maintenance staff into the design process to ensure that

1 Drax power station

147

the designs were required to incorporate new stringent controls on flue gas emissions and to be compatible with the needs of prospective overseas purchasers Of course, the plant has not yet been built, but the CEGB is confident that the objectives of the study have been met There is now an outline design of plant available which can be constructed in four years and which will have lifetime costs substantially lower than those which might otherwise have been available The wide consultdtion with all those involved has ensured a comprehensive commitment to the new stations which will help to ensure the success of the projects Plant specification The specification for the turbine-generator plant reflects the functional requirements of this plant to be operated on the CEGB's integrated system during the next 40 years. In particular the requirements for flexible twoshift operation of the plant are particularly onerous, calling for some 4000 hot starts involving the plant being raised from no load to 900 M W in 45 minutes. The specified plant life and duty presents no significant technical constraints. The envisaged plant will meet all the declared needs for flexibility, although overall these are more onerous than in the USA, Japan and Germany. A turbine generator of 900MW rating can be achieved with only small changes in technology, materials or size of components to meet system needs. It represents a modest extrapolation on the present 660MW sets with features and parameters already established by experience or component development. There are no constraints to providing suitable feedwater pumping plant. The lessons learned from the early experience of the 500MW units were fully applied to the 660MW programme with the result that the time to achieve a satisfactory settled down availability was markedly reduced. A cautious approach has also been taken with 900MW plant with emphasis on proven technology, concentrated design efforts, planned design and development to achieve the required reliability and availability. Within these constraints of a secure extrapolation of existing technology it was necessary to define the optimum steam cycle. Three combinations of unit size and steam conditions were studied, as shown in Table 1 The lower case repeated the Drax steam conditions, and the three cases were with single reheat. The main case raised pressure to the limit of development of drum-type boilers and raised feed temperature by taking a tapping from the HP turbine. The 900 M W supercritical cycle was similar to that employed in Japan (250/541/568"C),except that the superheater outlet temperature was raised to 568"C, exploiting materials widely used in CEGB, and where new materials were required, there was wide international experience which could be drawn on. The steels used to construct the main POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

2 An artist's impression of

the proposed West Burton coal-fired power station (left) alongside the existing west Burton A coal-fired power station

3 Target design and construction programmes

assumptions made about operating techniques and reliability are valid. Throughout the investigation this consultation was maintained. It was necessary to balance potentially conflicting requirements. For example, operators like to have plenty of spare auxiliaries such as coal mills and feedwater pumps to cover any breakdowns, whereas the plant designers want to cut spare plant to the minimum commensurate with achieving minimum lifetime costs. Likewise manufacturers are generally keen to incorporate new developments into the design, but the project managers require secure and fixed designs and are therefore reluctant to accept any major deviation frl)m tested technology which could threaten the construction programme or early commercial performance of the plant. The objectives of the study were clear; these were to reduce the specific capital and lifetime costs of the plant while maintaining high availability and achieving a four-year target construction programme. In addition, however,

Main plant hardware contracts Main plant design contracts

Drax Completion

II
I

Start main foundations

Full commercial
load

80 montns

I
I II I

;I
27

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/
/ / / /

p ." ". ,

"."..". .

1 8

Table 1 superheater superheater reheater outlet outlet outlet feed unit size pressure tem perature tem perature temperature "C "C "C bar MW case 568 250 568 165 660 lower 568 275 568 main 180 900 568 568 290 2 50 advanced 900 148

power plant components, boilers, pipework and turbines, comprise principally carbon and low alloy steels Austenitic steels have a150 been used successfully by the CEGB in operational coal fired boilers These relate to steam conditions up to 165 bari568"C and similar materials have been used in other countries for fossil-fuelled plants The more olierous requirements of the 180 bari568"C and 250 bari568"C steam cycles can be met by using two ferritic steels, 9CrMoVNb and 1 ZCrMoV, for components such as superheater headers, main steam pipework and turbine steam chests Several development programmes are in hand to develop the necessary manufacturing technology and property databases for these materials The 12CrMoV steel has a well-established track record in plant overseas that has operated for periods beyond 20 years at steam temperatures up to 580C The 9CrMoVNb steel has, as yet, no plant operational experience, but offers the prospect of greater high temperature strength and hence economy of component design Experience of power-plant materials over many years has demonstrated the importance of close control of fabrication procedures, especially welding, and these factors are a central aspect of the above-mentioned development programmes which also assess the behaviour of transition joints between materials of differing chemical composition, e g 2 25CrMo to 12CrMoV The British turbine makers are offering 900MW turbine designs based on the established and proven 660MW plant, with enhancements for improved efficiency, reliability and maintainability, and reduced specific capital cost The steam chests and turbine casings are carefully designed for flexibility of operation and inspectabilityi maintainability, drawing on considerable operational experience in the UK and abroad The international trend in Europe, USA and Japan has been for larger unit sizes Increasing unit size and modern designs provide the cost effective solution for new power-station plant for fossil-fired stations just as in nuclear stations While the rate of ordering varies with time and country, this trend has proved to be effective In addition, to the benefit of the host nations, this also allows indigenous plant manufacturers to demonstrate their capability for export plant The 900MW H and IP turbine cylinder P designs are closely similar to those of the 660MW sets due to the use of modern robust hFilP blading developed in the last 15 years The two LP cylinders are larger on the 900MW sets because of the higher volumetric steam flows requiring longer exhaust blading, but continue to use conventional materials and monobloc rotor construction with no reduction in margins The advances and demonstrated achievements of the UK manufacturers in the design and manufacture of turbine blading and steam-flow path during the past 1 5 years are reflected in the 900MW turbines being POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

offered This will result in significant improvement in thermal efficiency for the new plant For the 900MW generator, all mechanical, electrical and electromagnetic parameters are within current experience and the generator will satisfy the same British Standard temperature rises as current designs. The design concept proposed for both condensing plant and feedheating plant is based on CEGB practices, but takes advantage of more economic and cost-effective international plant configurations and practices. The feedheating system comprises four stages of LP surface-type heaters, with the first two stages installed in the necks of the condensers, which is an arrangement first adopted in the UK a t Torness Power Station. The condensate flow then passes into a lowlevel deaerator from which the boiler feed pumps derive their suction, and then discharges through three stages of HP feed heating which contrasts with two stages on the latest 660MW plant The additional HP heater contributes approximately 0.5% improvement to the heat rate for the plant. The condensers are of conventional transverse underslung design similar to those operating

4 Proposed site plan for West Burton 5 Proposed site plan for Fawley B

149

6 Comparison of station cross-sectionsshowing deletion of mechanical annexe at Drax completion from the new stations

Drax Completion section

Mechanical annexe deleted in new design

Mill bay transferred in new design

Typical cross-section of new 2 x 900 M W coal-tired power station.

Stwm drum -

Turbine-generator

Mill bay

F.D. fan

Gas to
precipitators

successfully in the UK and abroad and lend themselves to complete factory manufacture and assembly. For the 900MW option the 100% feedpump duty, 24MW absorbed power for subcritical pressure, is considered too large a step in technology from the 17.5MW at Drax, the current limit of UK experience. The three feed pumps are therefore to be sized for 50% duty, to take maximum advantage from UK manufacturers' international experience to produce reliable plant at pump absorbed powers of about 14MW for the 900MW unit. The feed pumps incorporate the mechanical features which have contributed to availability in excess of 97% for individual pumpset in modern CEGB plant. In 3 X 50% configuration, plant availability in excess of 99.9% is expected and this compares favourably with the best achievements in international experience. Apart from one supercritical unit, all coalfired boilers in CEGB service operate at subcritical pressure and are of the drum type. Both natural and assisted circulation designs are used. The 660 MW Drax boilers have opposed front and rear wall firing and were the last coal-fired boilers installed by the CEGB; the first unit was ordered in 1966 and the first of the 150

500 MW corner-fired boilers was ordered in the late 1950s. Both the UK boilermakers have been successful in obtaining large coal-fired boiler orders overseas in the intervening period and the new designs incorporate many of the features developed for these overseas units. CEGB has been closely involved in a consultancy role in two of these projects in Hong Kong and India with each of the UK manufacturers. The specification for the new 900MW boilers includes two new requirements: an increase in operating pressure to around 180 bal; to exploit fully the potential of drumtype boilers, and limits to the emission of NOx. The increase in operating pressure has been fully examined with boilermakers over a number of years, and they were able to show that, using rifled bore furnace tubes, a satisfactory design could be developed. In 1985, the CEGB embarked on a programme of NOx reduction in its large boilers and the site trials in this programme form the basis of the boilermakers' proposals. In both these new respects and the general requirements, both UK boilermakers have made proposals for 900 MW boilers which are judged to have a secure basis for design development. Both employ furnaces of more POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

square plan than hitherto and, while this was to some extent influenced by the larger burners proposed, they have the advantage that the widths of the boilers and the structural steelwork required are similar to those of boilers already in service. While increasing unit size to 900 M W results in a largely pro rata increase in heating surface over smaller boilers, economies of scale can be achieved if the auxiliaries are increased in size rather than increased in numbers. For this reason, the design aim was to employ the largest size of auxiliaries for which there were secure designs; examination of the design and operating experience of air heaters, draught plant and milling plant of significantly greater size than hitherto employed in the UK satisfied the CEGB that these larger auxiliaries could be used without jeopardising the availability of the units. The proposed units therefore have two forced-draught fans, two induced-draught fans, two air heaters and either six or seven mills. The CEGB has employed superheater and reheater outlet temperatures of 568C for many years on its coal-fired boilers, and retaining this temperature meant that the austenitic steels, of which there was considerable manufacturing and operating experience, could be used in the new designs for the final portion of the superheaters and reheaters. In addition to the subcritical 900MW designs developed by the two boilermakers, both put forward designs for operation at supercritical pressure, but retaining the 568C outlet temperatures. Both boilermakers have access to this technology and acceptable designs were put forward. Increase of pressure but retention of the 568C outlet temperatures did not result in a large increase in cycle efficiency, and the increased cost of the supercritical pressure boilers and pipework offset most of this advantage and this, together with their relative novelty in the UK, led to the decision that consideration of a move to supercritical pressure should be deferred until the feasibility of increasing temperature as well as pressure, with its cycle efficiency advantages, had been examined. Although the lifetime costs of 900MW supercritical plant have been shown to be marginally lower than those for the 900MW subcritical plant, any significant loss of availability in the early years following commissioning would offset this marginal benefit. In addition to control of NOx emissions, reduced particulate emissions and 90% removal of sulphur dioxide from flue gas are required of the new stations. There has been a progressive raising of emission standards on precipitators and the new requirement represents a small increment in this process, so that established technology can be employed with confidence. F Iue-gas desuIphurisation ( F D) represents G an entirely new requirement in Britain. At present, designs are being developed for retrofit of the Drax 660MW units, based on POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988,

worldwide experience of limestone/gypsum plants fitted to units of similar size to Drax. The 900MW units will represent an extrapolation in size. There is very limited experience of twin towers of this size, and there is some further investigation to be made before their security is assured. Flue-gas-desulphurisation plant, apart from requiring movement of very large quantities of limestone into the station, and gypsum out, requires some 21 M W of auxiliary power for a 900 M W unit. This is a major loss in station output and is obviously one of the penalties incurred in the effort to improve environmental standards. The study of plant for new coal-fired stations concluded that the CEGB could order 900 M W subcritical units with confidence that this would be a secure progression from existing technology. Although there are clear benefits in moving to supercritical plant, both for the CEGB in improved thermal efficiency and for the UK manufacturers in developing leading-edge technology, the potential loss of availability caused by inadequately developed plant makes it inappropriate to move to supercritical units at present. The CEGB is still actively pursuing the development of supercritical plant and expects to be in a position to order such plant by the turn of the century. The 900MW subcritical units, however, offer good reliability and availability and are the best

Of station elevations between Drax completion (top) and a new inland coal-fired station

Mill &bunker bay Boiler

\Turbine

Control block hall

Mechanical annexe

I
Turbine house Mill &bunkerbay

Boiler house

Air heaters FGD reheater precips Central control block

FGD absorber

151

option for the next generation of British coalfired stations.

Station engineering The optimisation of a station design is a complex operation requiring careful management of the interfaces between plant areas to ensure that the major needs of each are met. Since the introduction of the 500MW unit stations, most projects have contained four units. However, for the 900MW unit development, the CEGB has concluded that a two-unit project has a number of advantages:
It can utilise smaller site areas allowing development on a number of Board sites which already have operating stations. The station layout gives a high degree of symmetry and consequential advantages in the location of station services and routing of pipework and cables. Access for erection and infeed of materials is very good over a long period of the construction programme. Strategic stockpiles for fuel and other consumables, including those for flue-gastreatment equipment, have much more flexibility in their disposition around the site. The proposals for the control and instrumentation (C&l)will take account of recent UK experience taking advantage of the rapid advances in technology, provided that they present no risk to the project timescale. It is expected that the trend towards the increasing use of microprocessors in instrument and control equipment will continue. A major part of the C&l design task will be to interface these systems so that the necessary information can be made available to the unit operators in a manner complying with good ergonomic practice, and also to separate management information system. For the 2 X 900MW coal-fired units some 190 MVA of auxiliary power is required for full output. To develop a fully integrated design for these systems involves extensive interfaces with some 60 main contracts covering all types of plant. It must be borne in mind that the electrical supplies are a vital service to all auxiliaries to ensure reliable generation from the power-station site. The largest single task in the electrical design is the collection of plant design data at all the interfaces with the cabling systems and the design of these systems, both power and C&l. Approximately 28000 cables and one million cable terminations need to be designed and installed, ranging in size from two-pair telephone-type control cables up to single-core power cables rated to carry continuously over 700A. This design task involves considerable engineering and drawing office resource over the design and construction period. In civil engineering the minimisation of construction time and cost is sought in a number of ways. In terms of plant foundations, the concept adopted is one of relatively uncomplicated pile caps a t a finished floor level wherever posjible. Removal of much of the

cooling water (CW)culverts and service tunnels from within the power-block foundation means that reinforcement details are simplified and concrete formwork is minimised. For the CW culverts, adoption of mild-steel liners with an in situ concrete surround shows benefits on cost. One 169m high by 235rn diameter (base) natural draught cooling tower will serve each unit. Reductions in tonnages for the steelwork superstructure will be achieved following a review of the design criteria and an increase in the permissible sway. Overall steel tonnages are further reduced by the use of grade 50 steel (as opposed to the usual grade 43). Typically 12 770 tonne/unit were required on Drax completion whereas only 9800 tonne will be required for each 900MW unit, showing very considerable savings. There are over 100 different FGD processes available around the world in various degrees of development, ranging from laboratory scale to fully proven commercial units. The CEGBs consideration has been focused on the limestone/gypsum and Wellman Lord regenerative processes. For each site, selection is made on the basis of comparison between the two, taking into account the environmental implications, capital and operating costs, product markets, disposal of surplus products, feedstocks, wastes and transport. The area of land required to accommodate the FGD plant is up to 6.2 hectares for limestone/gypsum and 5.5 hectares for a regenerative process. The mode of transport is chosen to minimise nuisance, both locally and regionally. In this respect, for coastal sites sea transport is considered where possible. A main objective in the optimisation of the internal layout of the main buildings was to eliminate the conventional mechanical annexe between the turbine and boiler house. The object was to look at any capital-cost savings and also to see if these changes assisted the short construction programme. Traditionally, the annexe has housed deaerating equipment, water-storage tanks and water services, a through passage for steam and feed pipes, miscellaneous mechanical engineering auxiliaries and, in some projects, high-voltage electrical switchgear and a control-room complex. The passive static head system requiring high-level deaerators was changed to a system using low-level deaerators. Reserve-feed and town-water storage tanks with a pumped discharge were located at ground level outside the main building. Further space saving is achieved by locating two low-pressure heaters within the condenser neck, which is now recognised international practice. The two-unit concept facilitates a central position for the control room, with relatively short and segregated control and instrumentation cabling routes. A layout which eliminates the use of many cable tunnels provides an economic civil-engineering design and helps to achieve the target construction programme. A significant item in the boiler-house layout is the location of the mills. These will be at the POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

152

front of the boiler, which greatly simplifies the flue ducting and reduces congestion in the furnace ash hopper area Inland sites will require one cooling tower for each 900MW unit Coastal or estuarine stations will of course take their cooling water directly from the sea At one coastal site in the South of England the CEGB also intends to provide a new jetty which will accommodate vessels up to 150000tonne

costs Costs of coal-fired power stations in the CEGB can now be well in excess of f 1 billion, depending on the number of units provided, location of the project and the broad scope of the work. There is now the requirement for the provision of flue-gas-desulphurisation equipment which can increase the capital cost of the project by over 15%.

The very high capital costs of such power stations demand a continuing effort to ensure that value for money is being obtained. The need to determine methods of reducing the costs as far as possible within the bounds of good design and safety is obvious. This was one of the primary objectives of the study carried out by the CEGB. The three plant specifications were analysed to give comparative costs based on the most recent experience of the CEGB at Drax. Comparing the various designs and'taking the 900 MW subcritical plant as datum, the 660MW plant shows a capital-cost increase of 13% (in f/kW) and the supercritical 900MW unit an increase of 9%. On lifetime costs the 660 MW plant showed an increase of 17%, and the supercritical a marginal reduction of 3% on the datum. It Was thouqht, however, that this last reduction could be optimistic in

~ and. , ~ , , ! $ ~ ~ ~ ~ ,
(too) DroDosed 9 0 6 M W d boilers

Primary SuDerheater

Reheater
1

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, drum '

Steam

Platen Superheater

Primary reheater

Final superheater

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Platen superheater

Front and rear wall PF burnerd oil burners

Combined forced draught and pimary an suction duct

Primary reheater

Main
outlets

Main steam outlets

Fmal superheater (5thstage)

drum Final superheater

3 stage superheater
Reheater inlet Econom,ser

Reheater Platen superheater Downcomer (natural circulation)

pF burners (cornerflred)

Front and rear wall PF burners1 oil burners

Distribution spheres

Forced draught fan

POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988

Table 2
placing of main plant design from start of contracts to start main foundations total main foundations to commissioning period 63 months 80 months 17 months

( 4 Considerable reduction in civil construction

quantities.

Drax completion (nominal design repeat) ,target programme achieved programme coal-fired reference design CEGB target programme

17 months

60 months

77 months

27 months

48 months

75 months

view of the risk of reduced availability and twoshift flexibility. These considerations were fundamental to the decision to go ahead with the 900MW subcritical plant for the new tranche of stations.

Project programme The programme aim is to derive an achievable target construction programme comparable with international achievements and supported by a design programme which consolidates the design before site work begins and hence gives minimum risk. The underlying concept is 'design time is cheap-construction time is expensive'. The original and achieved programmes for Drax completion are compared with that proposed for the reference design in Table 2. Although the design contract for Drax was placed only 17 months before the start of main foundations, the design overlapped the start of construction by approximately 31 months resulting in an effective design period of 35/36 months. The reference design has an effective design period of 30 months and the 48 month construction does not require overlapping of any significant design into the construction phase as experienced on Drax. The 27 month design programme allows the main plant supplier to extend the design process to its subcontractors, and this overcomes a handicap of some previous shortterm design programmes. On many of these, significant design work has extended into the construction programme, as experienced on some of the plant at Drax. The contract strategy will ensure that the design programme is effective by means of disciplined payments procedure based on results. In deriving the construction periods from start of main foundations to commissioning the first unit the following points are very relevant:
The bulk of the design will be significantly more secure at the start of construction than on any recent fossil-fired project. The main plant contractors' involvement in the development of the reference design gives them an 'awareness' of their commitment in greater depth than hitherto. On critical sections of work attention has been given already to construction access, movement of plant, men and materials. 1 54

The future The CEGB is confident that it has developed both a plant specification and a project strategy which will ensure not only that the new stations are built to programme and to budget but also that they will have low lifetime costs with good reliability. This is all part of an ongoing process. Although the next few coal-fired stations will have 900MW subcritical units the CEGB is actively pursuing supercritical technology for the stations to be commissioned in the early years of the next century. In the longer term the real price of fossil fuels must increase and silpercritical plant will be necessary to achieve the highest thermal efficiency and hence the lowest lifetime costs. There is already significant international experience of building and operating supercritical plant, with varying levels of success, and the CEGB intends to move into that club only from a consolidated base of known technology supported by a well managed research and development programme. That programme is already underway. In addition the CEGB is not ruling out the construction of smaller units of 250400MW to satisfy specific requirements of the National Grid in the future, and so it is keeping abreast of relevant developments in power plant of this scale. The progression to 900MW units is a step taken with caution. The CEGB has every reason to believe that the plant will be a secure extrapolation of existing technology and that the performance of the plant can be predicted reliably. There is no room for complacency, however. There are bound to be problems along the way. In particular the technology for control and instrumentation has moved on a generation since Drax was completed and, although the design will be completed at a very early stage in the construction, there is still a risk of commissioning problems arising from bugs in the systems. The future performance of these stations will show whether or not the confidence of the late 1980s was well placed. It is clear, however, that the nation faces a shortage of electricity generating capacity in the mid 1990s and this is to be averted by the dual policy of a small family of PWR stations and new coal-fired stations using the 900MW units. The industry is ready, able and well prepared to meet that challenge.
This article is based on a Divisional Lecture presented to the IEE a t Savoy Place on the 15th March 1988
0 IEE: 1988

Ronald Burbridge is Divisional Director, CEGB Generation Development and Construction Division, Barnwood, Gloucester GL4 7RS, UK. He is an IEE Fellow POWER ENGINEERING JOURNAL MAY 1988