SAVEX – WRITE UP

SAVEX – A BRIEF WRITE UP

More than 50% of Life Cycle Cost of any equipment is directly associated to the fuel and energy
cost. To minimize this cost, one should know the source of these losses, and hence the system is
to be monitored continuously.

♦ Increasing Fuel Cost

♦ Monitoring of efficiency of direct fired steam boilers
♦ Record keeping of performance
Getting into the basics of combustion technology, the ideal amount of Air required to burn a
given quantity of fuel is referred to as the Stochiometric Air. This is calculated based on the fuel
composition. The level of mixing of Air and Fuel that is required for complete combustion is
never practically achieved. If we supply the Stochiometric quantity of air for combustion, we
would almost ensure that the combustion is incomplete. Hence the burners are designed with a
particular level of Excess Air that ensures proper combustion.

Normally, the boilers are designed with excess air levels of around 20% for oil & gas fired
unit at full load conditions. Excess air level at part load is further high

The extra air that is supplied carries with it some heat that is not recoverable. So higher the
excess air, higher are Dry Flue gas losses. This constitutes the highest loss among all the
losses.

Though, Boiler is designed for a particular level of Excess Air, when a unit is commissioned, it is
tuned to a particular load. Over a period of operation of the unit, there is a tendency for
deviations from the tuned values due to

1. Variations in the Fuel Quality like Density, Viscosity, Flash point etc.

2. Variations in the Fuel Pump Outlet Pressure, firing rate etc.

3. Normal wear & tear of Fuel System Components.

4. Vibrations.

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Conventionally, there is no feedback mechanism to regulate the combustion air inflow to account
for the variations and firing rates. Due to the above reasons, we end up with high fuel
consumption.

The severity of losses due to higher excess air can be well understood by the graph below. With
undesired higher excess air, one may end up burning extra fuel. Also the monitoring of oxygen
percentage is equally important at low load. Too low quantity of air supply will lead to unburnt /
incomplete combustion and subsequently soot formation in the boiler. Thus it is important to
optimize the airflow for the best combustion

With this background one can appreciate the importance of monitoring boiler performance
parameters related to ensuring good combustion.

The losses from the boiler are stack loss (Highest 8 to 10% in a well tuned burner), Moisture &
Hydrogen Loss (Depends on the fuel and Hydrogen & moisture content in it), Radiation Loss
(range 0.5 %), Unburnt loss (negligible in liquid & gaseous fuels), et. When total of all the
losses is subtracted from 100 we get the indirect efficiency. Typical boiler efficiency is in the
range of 88 to 90%. Thus all the losses put together will be in the range of 10 to 12% of which
the stack loss is around 8%. Thus stack loss is 67% of total losses put together and most
important one to monitor.

SAVEX measures and calculates necessary combustion parameters and boiler efficiency and
indicates it on the color touch screen HMI, the data is also transmitted to a PC and indicated on a
SCADA software with reporting facility. All reports are available for viewing, printing, storing
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and e mailing at touch of a button. The reports can be also saved in pdf format for storing & e
mailing.

OPERATING PRINCIPLE AND WORKING OF SAVEX

♦ The O2 Sensor will be sensing the Oxygen levels of the flue gas on a continuous basis and
will transmit the signal to the Electronic Unit. This also gets the input of stack temperature to
calculate the Dry flue gas losses in a separate field erected electronics box. The Oxygen % is
transmitted to SAVEX PLC in the form of 4-20 mA

♦ The PLC will compute the Efficiency of the direct fired steam boiler and display on a color
touch screen HMI. Trending can be seen through the software installed on a connected PC /
HMI. Necessary alarms are provided to prompt the operator to take necessary corrective
action. Reports can be used to analyse performance of the boiler over a period of time and
do manual setting of burner and take other preventive maintenance action.

SAVEX can be divided into three parts:

1. Field Instruments

2. Electronics

3. Software

1. FIELD INSTRUMENTS

Given below is the minimum field instruments required and are supplied with the
SAVEX package

a. Steam Flow measurement with Differential Pressure transmitter, steam

pressure & steam temperature.

b. Oxygen Monitoring.

c. Temperature of feed water, ambient and stack.

Additional instrument can also be added based on customers requirement.

2. ELECTRONICS

a. Oxygen is calculated in a separate field erected electronics box and

retransmitted to PLC through 4-20mA signal.

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b. PLC

i. Field instruments are connected to a PLC. The PLC configuration is 12

Digital Inputs (DI) / 8 Digital Outputs (DO).

ii. Analog card with 8 Analog Inputs (AI)

iii. Real Time Clock (RTC)

iv. Ethernet Card

v. Cables and adaptors

c. HMI (Human Machine Interface)

i. This is a 5.7” color touch screen HMI with serial printer port and a USB
port.

ii. Serial printer connectivity

iii. USB connectivity

iv. Pen drive connectivity on USB port for storage and retrieval of
data

3. SCADA SOFTWARE

a. This is a licensed software for data storage from PLC

b. Reporting Software capable of giving pre defined reports (Refer FAQ)

c. Trends can be analysed for all the important parameters

SPECIAL FEATURES OF SAVEX

♦ PLC based controller

♦ Calculation and display of flue gas CO2 and flue gas loss

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♦ Reliable and robust Zirconium Oxygen sensor for in situ flue gas analysis

♦ Large Data storage on Pen drive

♦ PC communication for data download, on line trending and unit programming

♦ High Speed Ethernet port for communication with PC

♦ Provision for alarms and alarm reports

♦ Continuous calculation and display of combustion efficiency of direct fired equipment by

indirect method and S:F ratio

BENEFITS OF SAVEX
♦ Potential savings in fuel because of the real-time O2 monitoring.
♦ Regular monitoring of the system efficiency
♦ The system can readily provide trending of the parameters of a unit.
♦ This can act as an electronic logbook for recording and retrieving the information on
operation of the unit

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