Plant-wide control approach in a pilot CFB boiler

Plant-wide control in a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) power plant is considered. In particular, the self-optimizing control approach is used. The main contribution is applying the analysis in a pilot-sized CFB, which has not been reported before. This work focuses on conventional air-fired CFB combustion, for which a lot of experience on control design is already available. Therefore the results can be compared to practical knowledge from industrial practice. The work serves as an important step towards studying the control of oxy combustion in CFB, where the process is structurally similar but provides additional degrees of freedom for control design.