Improved coal grinding and fuel flow control in thermal power plants

A novel controller for coal circulation and pulverized coal flow in a coal mill is
proposed. The design is based on optimal control theory for bilinear systems with additional integral action. The states are estimated from the grinding power consumption and the amount of coal accumulated in the mill by employing a special variant of a Luenberger observer. The controller uses the rotating classifier to improve the dynamical performance of the overall system. The proposed controller is compared with a PID-type controller with available pulverized coal flow measurements under nominal conditions as well as when parameter uncertainties and noise are present. The proposed controller lowers the grinding power consumption while in most cases exhibiting superior performance in comparison with the PID controller.