The Value Proposition of Circulating

Fluidized Bed Technology for the Utility

Power Sector

Robert Giglio
Vice President of Strategy
Foster Wheeler Global Power Group

Written for PowerGen Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, March 17-19, 2014

© Foster Wheeler 2013. All rights reserved.

 The Value Proposition of Circulating
Fluidized Bed Technology for the Utility
Power Sector
Robert Giglio, VP of Strategy for Foster Wheeler’s Global Power Group

ABSTRACT
CFB combustion technology has been around for over 40 years, but over the last 4 years it
has been commercially demonstrated at the 500 MWe scale at the Lagisza plant located in
Bedzin, Poland. The CFB at the Lagisza plant has unique first-of-a-kind design features, like
vertical-tube supercritical steam technology and a low temperature flue gas heat extraction
allowing the plant to achieve a very high plant efficiency of over 43% (net LHV). Another
unusual feature for a coal power plant is that this plant meets all its air emission permit levels
without any post combustion De-NOx or De-SOx equipment like SCR or FGD.

CFB clean coal power technology is coming into the utility power sector just in time to help
deal with declining coal quality in internationally traded coals and to allow the large-scale use
of very economical, low -quality domestic fuels. Due to their very attractive price discounts,
growing supplies of low quality Indonesian coals are outpacing the supply of high quality
Australian, Russian, and US coals. In Germany and Turkey, the use of their domestic lignites
for power production provides a secure and very economical energy solution while creating
domestic jobs.

Conventional PC boilers will have trouble accepting these off-spec coals due to their narrow
fuel specs typically calling for heating values above 5500 kcal/kg. But, this is not an issue for
CFB technology due to its capability of burning both the worst and best coals with heating
values ranging from 3900 to 8000 Kcal/Kg.

This paper will provide an outlook for future coal supply, quality and price as well as a review
of the technical and economic benefits of CFB technology firing low quality fuels for utility
power generation.

Advanced CFBs for Utility Power Generation

When the Lagisza power plant, located in the Katowice area of southern Poland, began
commercial operation in June 2009, it marked a new era in the evolution of circulating
fluidized bed (CFB) technology. It is now celebrating its fourth year of successful commercial
operation.

Besides being the most advanced operating CFB steam generator in the world, the CFB at
the Lagisza plant has unique first-of-a-kind design features, like vertical-tube supercritical
steam technology and low temperature flue gas heat recovery system allowing the plant to
achieve a very high net plant efficiency of 43.3% (based on the fuel’s lower heating value).
The Lagisza CFB has many innovative design features, but the most profound feature is that
this plant meets all its air emission permit levels without any post combustion De-NOx or De-
SOx equipment like SCR or FGD.
 Figure 1. Lagisza CFB Power Plant located in Bedzin, Poland

Like the Lagisza plant owners (PKE), Korean Southern Power Company (KOSPO) also saw
the value of CFB technology when they chose it for their 2200 MWe Green Power Plant
project in Samcheok, Korea. The Samcheok plant which is now under construction will utilize
four larger 550 MWe CFBs featuring ultra-supercritical steam conditions (257 barg,
603/603°C). These CFBs will then be the most advanced units in the world when this plant
comes on line as expected in 2015.

Figure 2. 2200 MWe Green Power CFB Plant located in Samcheok, Korea

Both PKE and KOSPO first considered conventional pulverized coal (PC) technology for their
projects, but after studying the additional technical and economic benefits that the CFB
brought to their projects, they ultimately chose CFB technology. There were many benefits
from the CFB to sway their decision but two benefits that played a strong role in their
decision were:

• The CFB’s ability to reliably burn both low rank and high quality coals as well as
biomass and waste coal slurries (Lagisza only) dramatically improved the potential
for large fuel cost savings and high fuel procurement security.
• The CFB’s ability to achieve air emission goals without FGD or SCR technology
saved large amounts of capital, operating cost and water.
CFB’s Benefits are Rooted in its Unique Combustion Process
The CFB’s advantages of high reliability, low maintenance, wide fuel range, smaller and less
costly boilers are rooted in its unique flameless, low-temperature combustion process. As
shown in Figure 3, unlike conventional pulverized coal (PC) or oil/gas boilers, the fuel’s ash
does not melt or soften in a CFB which allows the CFB to avoid many of the fouling and
corrosion problems encountered in conventional boilers with an open flame.

Figure 3. Comparison of Conventional vs. CFB Boiler technology

Supercritical Boiler Design Considerations

For once-through supercritical boiler designs, the low, even combustion temperature and
heat flux throughout the CFB’s furnace minimizes the risk of uneven tube-to-tube
temperature variations allowing the furnace walls to be constructed with cost effective and
easy to maintain smooth vertical tubes.
For additional protection, Foster Wheeler’s (FW)’s once-through CFBs utilize a patented low-
steam-mass-flux design providing a natural self-cooling charactersitic which uses bouyancy
forces to increase a tube’s water/steam flow proportionally with the amount of heat it
recieves.This further minimizes tube-to-tube temperature variations and ensures low
mecahnical stresses across the furnace extending furnace life.
To cope with the very uneven temperature and heat absorbtion in the furnace, most
conventional PC and oil/gas once-through boilers incline and wrap the furnace wall tubes
around the lower section of the furnace to even out tube-to-tube heat absorption and
temperatures.
While this solves the heat imbalance problem, the spiral design has several disadvantages
compared to FW’s CFB vertical tube design. The spiral design requires a heavier more
complicated boiler and boiler support system while making furnace tube repairs more
difficult. Further, it has a high steam pressure loss due to its longer steam path and provides
a natural location for slag build-up on the ledge formed at the spiral to vertical tube header
interface.
.
Figure 4. Comparison of spiral vs. vertical tube once-through furnace design

Furnace Size vs. Fuel Quality

Since the fuel’s ash doesn’t soften or melt in a CFB, the size of the furnace doesn’t grow as
much as conventional boilers when firing lower quality fuels. As can be seen in Figure 5, in
order to control fouling, slagging and corrosion, the furnace height of a PC doubles and its
footprint increases by over 60% when firing a low quality fuel like high sodium lignite,
whereas, the CFB boiler height increases by only 8% and its footprint increases by only 20%.
This results in a smaller and lower cost CFB boiler as compared to the PC boiler.

Figure 5. Impact on furnace size as fuel quality degrades – PC vs. CFB

Further, unlike a PC, a CFB doesn’t need soot blowers to control the build-up of deposits and
slag in the furnace since the ash doesn’t soften and the circulating solids themselves remove
deposits and minimize their build-up on the furnace walls, panels and coils.

Superheater and Reheater Design Considerations

Another very important feature of the CFB involves the final superheat and reheat steam
coils. These coils operate at the highest metal temperatures in the boiler making them the
most vulnerable to corrosion and fouling attack. This vulnerability increases significantly for
supercritical boilers with high steam temperatures.
As shown in Figure 6, in a conventional PC or oil/gas boiler these coils are hung from the
furnace ceiling and are directly exposed to the slagging ash and corrosive gases (sodium
and potassium chlorides) in the hot furnace flue gas. To cope with this undesirable situation,
boiler designers use expensive alloys and recommend a high level of cleaning and
maintenance for these coils.
As shown in Figure 6, this design weakness is avoided in FW’s CFBs by submerging these
coils in hot solids fluidized by clean air in heat exchangers called INTREX®es protecting them
from the corrosive flue gas. The bubbling solids efficiently conduct their heat to the steam
contained in the coils and since the solids never melt or soften, fouling and corrosion of these
coils are minimal. Further, due to the high heat transfer rate of the solids (via conduction heat
transfer), the coil size is many times smaller than those in a conventional boilers.

Figure 6.Boiler design feature comparison: PC vs. CFB Boiler

Fuel Delievery System

One last important design issue involves the fuel delivery system to the boiler. A PC boiler
requires the fuel to be finely ground and pneumatically transported and distributed to many
burners. For low quality, high ash fuels, like brown coals and lignite, the maintenance and
power consumption of the fuel pulverizers increase dramatically while the reliability of the
entire fuel delivery system declines. For a CFB, pulverizers are not needed, the fuel is only
coarsly crushed and fed to the CFB directly from the fuel silos via a simple gravity feed
system.
Overall Plant Reliability
Based on these process and design differences, plants with FW CFBs have demonstrated
plant availabilities well above conventional PC boilers. Figure 7 shows the results from a
recent study comparing PC plant availability to Foster Wheeler CFBs. The availability shown
in the chart represents the total time (as a % of total 8760 hours in a year) that the plant is
operationally available accounting for both planned and unplanned downtime.
As shown by Figure 7, the plants with FW CFBs had about a 5% higher availability than the
PC plants and that this higher availability difference was maintained for even brown coals
and lignites. For a 1000 MWe coal power plant, this 5% difference in plant availability can
translate into a $160 million increase in power plant net income on a 10 year net present
value basis as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 7. Results from Reliability study of PC vs. CFB Power Plants. *Availability means total time
plant is available to run accounting for both planned and unplanned downtime. The FW CFB plant
availability values were based on client supplied data reported over the 2000-2008 period for CFB
plants mainly located in Europe. The PC values are based on client supplied data over 2002-2011
period for PC units that are mainly located in Europe and reported in VGB’s PowerTech Report,
TW103Ve, published in 2012.

Increase in Net Income for a 1000 MWe (Net)

Supercritical Coal Power Plant

Annual Increase (M$/yr)

200
10 Year NPV Increase (10% DR) (M$) $160
150
$96
100

50 $32 $26
$15
$5.2
0
1% 3% 5%
Increase in Annual Plant Utilization Factor

Figure 8. Impact of plant utilization factor on annual plant net income for a 1000 MWe
supercritical steam power plants operating at a utilization factor of 90%, receiving a
100$/MWe electricity tariff based on buying coal at 100 $/tonne.
Environmental Performance and Equipment Need: PC vs. CFB
From an environmental aspect, the low temperature CFB combustion process (850°C for
CFB vs.1500°C for PC/Oil/Gas) minimizes NOx formation and allows limestone to be fed
directly into the furnace to capture SOx as the fuel burns. In most cases an SCR or a FGD is
not needed, dramatically reducing the plant installed and operating cost, as well as, water
consumption while improving plant reliability and efficiency. For a 1000 MWe power plant,
the saving alone for the SCR and FGD capital cost would be in the range of 250-300 M$.

A Permanent Change to the Global Coal Market

Since 2005, Indonesian coal exports have grown faster than all other countries combined,
nearly quadrupling to 400 million metric tons in 2013 (see figure 9). Future projections show
Indonesia reaching nearly 500 million metric tons of annual exports by 2030, which is
expected to be about twice that of Australia, the world’s second largest coal exporter.

Figure 9. Global coal exports. Source: Historical data and FW projections

Today about 50% of Indonesian coal exports are low quality high moisture sub-bituminous
coal with gross-as-received (GAR) higher heating values ranging between 3900-4200
kcal/kg, well below the 6000 kcal/kg benchmark used in the international coal market for the
last 50 years.
Over the last 3 years, the quality of Indonesia’s export coal has been declining, and this trend
is expected to continue well into the future. Today about 60% of Indonesia’s coal mines hold
low rank subbituminous coals with the remaining 40% holding bituminous coals estimated to
have heating values under 5200 kcal/kg. Figure 10 shows the historic trend and forecast of
a steady decline in the heating value of Indonesia’s export coals reflecting the impact of
mining this lower quality coal.
 Figure 10. Average Gross Heating Value of Indonesian coal exports. Source: Marketing,
Sales and Logistics Analyst, Banpu PCL

The primary driver for the ballooning share of Indonesian coal in the international coal market
is simple economics. Figure 11 shows the current and forecasted price discount between
Indonesia’s sub-bituminous 4200 kcal/kg Ecocoal and a 6000 kcal/kg Australian thermal
coal, both on a net as received basis (NAR), which shows a 48% or 55 $/metric ton average
discount for the lower quality Indonesia coal over the 2012 to 2020 period. Accounting for the
difference in heating value which amounts to 30%, on an comparative energy basis, this
translates to a very attractive net 18% discount for the Ecocoal, which goes right to the
bottom line of a power plant’s balance sheet.

Coal Price Forecast, CIF South Korean Coast

120
110 Australian Thermal
100
USD per Metric Ton

90
80 Average 48% (55 $/tonne) Discount
70
60 Indonesia Ecocoal
50
40
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Figure 11. Price comparison between Indonesian Ecocoal and Australian thermal
coal delivered to the coast of South Korea. Prices shown are Nominal. Source: FW forecast.

Since fuel cost makes up about 85%-90% of the total operating cost of a large power plant,
the economic benefits of using low quality fuels are tough to ignore. We can see this in
several domestic markets, where low quality coals and lignites play a major role in power
production. For example, 77% of Germany’s solid fuel power is produced from lignite with
only 23% produced from hard coal. In the US, 54% of its solid fuel power comes from low
quality sub-bituminous coals. Use of low rank coals and lignites for power production are
growing in Turkey, India, China, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, and Mozambique driven
by the very low cost of these fuels relative to premium coals.
Until recently, low quality coals and lignites have been confined to domestic markets and
have not been part of the international coal market. This is because their economic benefit
quickly erodes by their higher transportation cost due to their lower energy content. But
today, we are seeing more low quality coals and even lignites coming into the global coal
market driven by steep price discounts against a tight market for premium coals. For
example, from 2001 to 2010 Korean imports of Indonesia coals (mostly sub-bituminous)
increased 7 fold by 38 million tonnes vs. Korea’s Australian coal imports which grew only 13
million tonnes.
This trend is not expected to change anytime soon. Instead it looks to be a permanent shift
toward a more flexible coal price vs. quality market, where buyers and sellers will trade price
for coal quality, very similar to many other commodity and finished good markets.

The Impact of a Changing Coal Market on Coal Boiler Technology

This price vs. quality shift in the global coal market will likely be viewed as good news to
some and bad news to others depending on their power plant technology position. PC power
plants with tight coal specifications (think supercritical) will have a limited ability to use the
discounted coals. These plants will have a choice to stay within the tightening premium coal
market or venture into the broader coal market and trade lower plant output, reduced
reliability and higher maintenance cost for fuel cost discounts.
On the other hand, this would be good news for power generators utilizing CFB technology.
Due to the CFB’s fuel flexibility, plant owners could access the full range of discount coals
(even for ultra-supercritical designs), buying fuels for maximum economic benefit while
avoiding the high priced premium coals. Further, the risk of declining coal quality on plant
output, reliability, and maintenance is minimized with the CFB, and the risk of future carbon
regulation is lessened due to the CFB’s ability to utilize biomass and other carbon neutral
fuels.
For new power plants, this trend clearly increases the value of fuel flexible coal plants like
CFB technology and will likely accelerate the adoption of CFB technology in large coal fired
utility plants. The timing seems right, since as discussed above, CFB technology has just
proven its ability to serve the utility power sector.
This is not to say that new PC boiler power plants can’t be designed to burn these low rank
fuels, because they can. The point for consideration is that once a PC is designed for a
specific low rank fuel, it is difficult to burn other fuels without negatively impacting plant
performance, reliability and maintenance.

The Economic Benefit of CFB Technology at the Utility Scale

To quantify the benefits of CFB technology at a large utility plant scale, FW conducted a
study comparing both the technical and economic performance of two supercritical 1100
MWe (gross) power plants: one using conventional PC technology and the other using CFB
technology.

The study involved the development of full power plant financial models, heat and material
balances, as well as conceptual plant designs for plant layout, sizing and cost estimate
purposes. For comparison purposes, a broad range of performance metrics including: plant
capital and operating cost, plant height and foot print, reliability, air emissions, solid and
liquid input and waste stream were evaluated.

The PC plant was configured with a single 1100 MWe ultra-supercritical boiler providing its
steam to a single 1100 MWe steam turbine generator. The plant fires an Australian
bituminous thermal coal with a NAR heating value of 5500 kcal/kg and a 0.35% sulfur
content priced at $95 per metric ton. An SCR was installed in the boiler to control stack NOx
emissions to 50 ppmv (6% O2 dry) and a wet limestone FGD was installed behind the boiler
to control stack SOx to 50 ppmv (6% O2 dry).

The CFB plant was configured with two 550 MWe ultra-supercritical boilers providing their
steam to a single 1100 MWe steam turbine generator. The CFB plant fires an Indonesian
sub-bituminous thermal coal (Ecocoal) with a NAR heating value of 4200 kcal/kg and a
0.27% sulfur content priced at $55 per metric ton. An SCR was installed in the boiler to
control NOx emissions to 50 ppmv (6% O2 dry), but no separate FGD was installed behind
the CFB boiler since the boiler itself uses limestone to control stack SOx to 50 ppmv (6% O2
dry).

Comparing capital cost, Table 1 show the comparison of the boiler and pollution control
equipment capital cost on a design and supply basis (excluding erection). The results
showed that even though the two CFB boilers burning a low rank coal were about 11%
higher in cost than a single large PC boiler burning a high quality coal, the larger 37%
savings for meeting emissions without needing an FGD for the CFBs resulted in a net $93
million savings in capital for the CFB plant configuration.

Table 1. Capital cost comparison between 1100 MWe supercritical PC and CFB power plant
showing a $93 million capital saving for the CFB plant. Note 1: Absolute design and supply
boiler cost depends on scope. Source: FW Study.

Comparing operating cost, Table 2 shows that by using the discounted Indonesian coal, the
CFB plant saves $66 million annually in fuel cost and when adding in the differences in other
operating cost like limestone, ash disposal, gypsum sales, maintenance, etc., the $66 million
grows to $69 million in total plant operating cost savings for the CFB plant, which works out
to be worth $424 million in net present value over a 10 year period.

A full financial proforma model for both the PC and CFB plant configurations was developed
to calculate the levelized electricity production cost for each plant configuration. In addition to
the plant total capital and operating cost, the proforma analysis takes into account plant
utilization, financing conditions and terms.

Figure 12 shows the comparative results from the proforma analysis and the components
that make up the electricity production cost. As shown, the smaller capital and fuel cost
components for the CFB plant results in a net savings of $10 per megawatt hour of electricity
produced. This translates into $82 million dollars annually based on 90% plant utilization and
is worth $503 million in net present value over a 10 year period as shown in Table 3.
Finally, Table 4 show the comparison for other plant parameters and performance metrics,
highlighting that both the CFB and PC plants meet the same stack emission limits, but since
the CFB plant does not have a separate wet FGD for SOx control, it saves about 2 million
cubic meter of water annually as compared to the PC plant.

Table 2. Operating cost comparison between 1100 MWe supercritical PC and CFB power
plant showing $424 million NPV for CFB plant. Source: FW Study

Figure 12. Levelized electricity production cost comparison between 1100 MWe supercritical
PC and CFB power plant showing 10 $/MWh cost benefit for CFB plant. Source: FW study.
Table 3. Annual and NPV electricity production cost comparison between 1100 MWe
supercritical PC and CFB power plant showing about $82 million per year ($503 million NPV)
saving in electricity production cost for CFB plant. Source: FW Study

Table 4. Emissions, plant efficiency, fuel, limestone, ash and FGD water flow comparison
between 1100 MWe supercritical PC and CFB power plant. Source: FW Study
Conclusions and Observations

Four years of successful operation of the large supercritical once-through CFB boiler at the
Lagisza power plant in Poland has proven CFB technology for utility power generation.
KOSPO has reinforced this conclusion by selecting FW CFB technology for their 2200 MWe
Green Power Project in Samcheok Korea.

Because of its unique flameless, low temperature combustion process, CFB technology offer
many benefits to utility power generation. Its fuel flexibility, reliability and ability to meet strict
environmental performance with minimal post combustion pollution control equipment are
high value benefits for utilities.

Additionally, the CFB’s load following flexibility (CFB has same load ramp rates as a PC with
better turndown) is another important value for today’s grids containing a high level of
intermittent renewable power. As an example, the Lagisza unit cycles daily from 40% - 100%
MCR to meet the requirements of the Polish National Grid.

The CFB benefits become more compelling when considering low quality fuels. The
technology is able to provide smaller, less costly boilers as fuel quality declines while
achieving plant availabilities well beyond conventional PC boiler technology.

The global coal market is moving away from its traditionally rigid single specification coal
market toward a more flexible price-for-coal-quality market. The convergence of the coal
market shift with the CFB’s entry into utility power application, is expected to accelerate the
adoption of CFB technology in the large utility power sector.

Due to the large economic benefit, the use of domestic brown coal and lignite for utility power
generation is growing in Germany, Turkey, and Indonesia which have abundant supplies of
very economical low quality coal and lignites. It is also expected that CFB will be utilized
more in these markets as well.

A technical and economic study conducted by FW showed that a large utility CFB power
plant has a compelling economic advantage over a traditional PC power plant due mainly to
the fact that the CFB plant did not require post combustion FGD equipment and could utilize
a low quality Indonesian coal. The results showed that a 1100 MWe CFB power plant would
cost $93 million less to build and would produce a net saving in electricity production cost of
about $82 million annually, worth $503 million on a 10 year net present value basis. In
today’s price sensitive global utility market these are serious numbers for consideration.