Continous on-line diagnostic system for industrial boilers
Résumé
The operation of industrial boilers is already quite automated, assuring high efficiency and continuous service. The availability of these units is an area in which further progress may be made, mainly in terms of maintenance and safety. The technology of expert systems can help operating staff as far as these two points are concerned, by providing them with helpful and detailed information as soon as an anomaly appears. This technology is recognized as very powerful for maintenance purposes in a wide range of industrial applications. This paper describes an expert system developed by the Research Center of the French National Coal Board (Cerchar) , with application to coal and pulverized coal boilers. The development of the system began in 1987 and led to the implementation in 198 9 of an industrial prototype at the Cerchar coal research laboratories located in Mazingarbe (north of France) . It works on-line with a spreader stoker boiler rated at 15 tph (33,000 lb/hr), on which the results given here were obtained. An industrial prototype for pulverized-coal operation was installed on a 600 MW power plant in Lorraine, in the east of France.