The Experimental Determination of Coal Mill Models

This paper describes the experimental measurement of coal-mill transfer functions at a 380 Mw steam turbine generator of TransAlta Utilities in Canada. Measurement equipment was used that estimated the parameters of the transfer functions from digitized transients obtained during on-site tests. These preliminary tests were part of a sequence of tests that were undertaken to evaluate the use of feedforward control to maintain the output temperature of the coal-air mixture at a fixed level. The measurement technique used to obtain the coal-mill transfer functions utilizes Least Squares Parameter Estimation (LSPE) concepts. The microprocessor-based system with the LSPE algorithm enabled the parameters to be obtained while the coal-mill was operating online. The transfer functions obtained during these field tests allowed feedforward controllers to be designed that gave improved performance of the coal-mill. The next section describes the coal-mill operation.