The result of the work was the comfort and safety of operation.
The oil-free ignition technology is cost-effective and safer from an environmental point of view. The combustion products of fuel oil contain extremely toxic substances that are released into the atmosphere and adversely affect humans and the environment (benzopyrene, vanadium compounds, nitrogen and carbon oxides). Pulverized coal fuel is used to kindle the boiler unit using oil-free ignition, which reduces the costs of energy enterprises and reduces the amount of hazardous emissions, because all flue gas filtration systems begin to function from the very beginning of kindling.
As part of the master's degree project activities, students of the Department of Thermal Power Plants of NSTU-NETI, working for KOTES Engineering, participated in making changes to the design of a burner device for safe kindling of pulverized coal boilers. The students worked on the task as part of the engineering track of the educational project "Master's Degree PRO+" of the program "Priority 2030".
"We focused on making this technology safe for the user, so that the station staff would feel comfortable being next to the burner at the time of the boiler kindling. We solved this problem in a constructive way: the burner device was made of a coaxial type (in simple words, a pipe in a pipe), that is, all heat—loaded parts of the burner, which negatively affected the comfort of operation, were hidden under a casing and insulation. A new electrode block with a junction box has also been developed, the design of which allows you to easily replace the electrodes, change the breakdown gap between them or even quickly replace the entire electrode block on a working burner. Thanks to the Automated process Control system team, the idea of controlling the oil—free ignition system from a mobile device was implemented," said Anton Pochtar, one of the developers, a graduate student of the Faculty of Energy at NSTU-NETI.
A team consisting of employees of KOTES Engineering and students of NSTU-NETI tested this technology at Novosibirsk CHP-3. In June 2024, the station was lifted from a cold state (there was a planned stop due to the repair of the chimney). The technology has shown reliability and operability at all stages and loads.
Now the development is at the stage of industrial implementation. A number of burner models and accessories for them are "sharpened" for a specific coal (complex or easy to ignite). Each type of coal has its own burner geometry. The developers plan to continue work at Novosibirsk CHPP-3, where one boiler is already equipped with this system, as well as to introduce it to other energy enterprises — heat and power plants in Russia and neighboring countries.