Automated Materials Handling for Coal-fired Power Plants

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Stockyard Management

In order to achieve a fully automated operation from a central control room the operator must know at and 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 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 like bull dozers.

Gallery

Gallery with 7 images

Stockpile Visualisation

The stockpile monitoring and visualisation module records material movements to and from a stockpile and calculate the material distribution on a stockpile accordingly.

The stockpile visualisation 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. The stockyard can be displayed in 2D or in 3D view, see Fig. 3.

For a detailed analysis of the stockyard it is possible to zoom and turn the view. The view can be adjusted from different view points and separate piles can be selected. Stockpiles can be splitted into small individual virtual piles. These sections are shown with their borders in Fig. 4, overleaf. Fig. 5 shows the system's ability to display the properties, as well as slice or cut views of each pile area.

Material Tracking

The module "Material Tracking" supports the operator in monitoring the material flow of bulk material and supplies real time stockpile tracking by tonnage and quality. The main functions are:

• gathering information of material type, quality and its specifications at the inlet of the stockyard,

• monitoring of masses/volumes on the way to the stockpiles via belt conveyors,

• tracking of materials to the discharge point,

• dynamic display of belt load with colour coded material property information,

• balances of input, stored and output material mass/volume, and

• data exchange to overriding MES systems.

The "Material Tracking" module manages the distribution on the stockyard to enable an efficient usage of the complete area with determined coal quality in every stock pile (see Fig. 6).

Coal Quality

An integrated coal quality management system is in particular important in cases where power plants are supplied by different mines with variable coal parameters like:

• calorific value,

• density,

• ash content,

• moisture content, as well as

• content of sulfur, silicon, aluminum and potassium.

Modern generating units need a certain coal quality with tight variations in order to ensure an efficient burning process. Significant deviations can cause slagging processes to the point of unscheduled downtimes of the whole unit with remarkable loss of production.

The coal quality parameters can be detected either offline, by drill samples and laboratory analysis, or online, with radiometric methods. For the quantity measurement belt scales or belt volume scanners can be used.

Coal quality information (e.g. RFID, Bar Code, electronic transmission per file or freight papers) has to be handed over by the supplier or/and can be measured online right away at the loading point and often verified after the coal has been received at the discharge point.

The quality can be assured by blending the coal within the mining operation (combination of mining units, shifting heads and coal lines), on the stockyard during the stacking or reclaiming process or in the in plant storage and feeding system.

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