Highest efficient supply for coal-fired power plants

ABB’s support to power plant operators to handle their use of coal more efficiently and sustainably
Regardless of the increasing number of discussions on regulations of greenhouse emissions, coal will remain to be the most important source of fossil primary energy for the next decades on a global base. In order to face these future challenges, ABB provides technology support to power plant operators with trapezoidal stockpiles to handle their use of coal more efficiently and sustainably.
From mine to plantCoal handling systems are an integral part of a complete material flow and quality management system
While in recent years, the main focus was on optimisation of single parts like mine planning or advanced automation solutions now a seamless integration of all sub-systems and an overall optimisation from the mine to the power plant is requested.
The increased degree of efficiency of modern coal power plants requests an integrated coal handling management system to secure the coal supply in the requested quantity and quality.
In order to cover these requests, ABB has developed a modular system  The production management level includes the tools for managing the mine, haulage and trade process in regard of fulfilment of contracts (quantity and quality), production management, maintenance and asset management. This level provides also necessary interfaces to ERP systems like SAP and others.
The Stockyard Management System (SMS) which will be described more in detail later on enables a fully automated operation of the whole stockyard from a central control room and consists of the following modules:

Pile monitoring and visualisation
Material tracking
Quality management
Autonomous stacking/reclaiming.
The local automation level covers all basic control functions, mostly implemented on the stockyard equipment itself. It includes instrumentation, electrification and automation scope on a local PLC for operator controlled stockyard machines.
This system can be customised to the needs of determined projects like:

Stockyard systems for lignite power plants (connected with the mine by rail or an overland conveyor system)
Export or import coal terminals with ship and train loading and unloading
In plant coal handling systems.
Stockyard management descriptionIn order to achieve a fully automated operation from a central control room, the operator must know at every time how much coal with a certain quality is at what place, even it is in a surge bin, on a belt or on the stockpile.
These requirements can be met by an exact database of material quality information in the transportation and stockpile model which monitors online the material flow.
The necessary input for the model is delivered by laser scanners and positioning systems mounted on the stockyard machines which allow the autonomous operation of the machines as well.
The scanners can provide surface information from its environment which will be used to recalculate the model. This solution enables a nearly real time update of the pile surface even after material movements due to environmental influences like storm or heavy rain or due to the use of mobile machines as grader or bull dozer.
Furthermore, these devices support the interface to the BulkExpert System which enables a fully automated stacking and reclaiming. The coal can be stacked and reclaimed by various methods in order to provide an adequate treatment of the material and perform the mixing and blending process.
Pile monitoring and visualisationThe stockpile monitoring and visualisation module records material movements to and from a stockpile and calculate the material distribution on a stockpile accordingly. The module supplies information about the material on the stockpile and its shape as well as the different properties (quality) of the material. Material distribution on the stockpile will be calculated with a computational module-based on the information of the module material tracking, stacking and reclaiming technologies and the 3D-laser scanning results. The stockpile visualisation component offers a graphical presentation of the information stored in the stockyard management system in a modern browser technology. The visualisation shows an overview over all stock piles on the job site.

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