Exploring a Variant of PTC 4-2013 for Real-Time Performance Monitoring of Fossil Fuel Power Plants

This paper describes a real-time performance-monitoring method based on PTC 4-2013 that was developed for determining and reporting the annual heat rate for fossil fuel power plants. Unlike for the PTC 4 test, the coal composition is typically not known in real-time, so the procedure uses a modified output-loss approach applied to a control volume that closely conforms to the boiler. A calibration approach utilizes an ultimate analysis to describe the coal being burned during the calibration, while holding the plant load and other factors steady. This permits the calculation of correction factors used during real-time performance monitoring. Based on several assumptions that are justified within, a real-time estimate of coal composition is obtained. The losses are calculated in a similar manner to PTC 4-2013. However, the losses are expressed on a per-pound of as-fired coal basis, as opposed to a percentage of higher heating value of the coal, which is not known in real-time.