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350MW power plant with back corona problems

Sector: Industrial

Electrostatic Precipitator Operator on a 4 x 350MW power plant in Australia.

The problem

The customer was looking for a specialist supplier for ESP power supplies who was able to provide state of the art Automatic Voltage Controllers which could deal with the adverse conditions within their existing ESPs, improve particulate collection, and replace the current, obsolescent equipment.

The solution

Castlet tendered for and won the contract to replace the full complement of 96 AVCs, plus 16 PLCs to collate data from auxiliary equipment, 4 Graphics Computer Management Systems, and all associated communications links to the Plant’s data collection systems.

Back Ionisation or Back Corona

One of the strengths of the Castlet AVC, (MCSII), was its ability to control or even avoid Back Corona, using specialist Regupulse algorithms. However, variations within the plant process were such that the controllers required an even more dynamic response than that given by these already well-proven algorithms. Castlet’s experienced process and development engineers studied the problems and carried out trials on site.

The resulting modified system - all investigated, designed, installed and validated within just a matter of weeks - effectively reduced the average base line emissions by some 12%. This was seen to be a very significant improvement, considering the extreme conditions under which the ESP’s were already operating.