Modified High Back-Pressure Heating System Integrated with Raw Coal Pre-Drying in Combined Heat and Power Unit

A conceptual high-back pressure (HBP) heating system cooperating raw coal pre-drying for combined heat and power (CHP) was proposed to improve the performance of the HBP-CHP unit. In the new design, besides of heating the supply-water of the heating network, a portion of the exhaust steam from the turbine is employed to desiccate the raw coal prior to the coal pulverizer, which further recovers the waste heat of the exhaust steam and contributes to raising the overall efficiency of the unit. Thermodynamic and economic analyzes were conducted based on a typical 300 MW coal-fired HBP-CHP unit with the application of the modified configuration. The results showed that the power generation thermal efficiency promotion of the unit reaches 1.7% (absolute value) owing to suggested retrofitting, and meanwhile, the power generation standard coal consumption rate is diminished by 5.8 g/kWh. Due to the raw coal pre-drying, the energy loss of the exhaust flue gas of the boiler is reduced by 19.1% and the boiler efficiency increases from 92.7% to 95.4%. The impacts of the water content of the dried coal and the unit heating capacity on the energy-saving effect of the new concept were also examined.