Surrogate modeling approach to standardize a steam generator operation – a case study of the PECEM power plant

Resumo

Coal-fired power plants provides about 40% of electricity worldwide and should be in line with the strin-
gent environmental control requirements and continuous efficiency enhancement. Actions towards high-quality

operation can be supported by the fine modeling of plant systems in order to aid field operation. The present work

proposes the standardization of operation through surrogate models to represent the assembly of the steam gener-
ator and its mills, based on the system simulation by the EBSILON commercial software. A methodology for the

construction of a surrogate model to a coal-fired power plant in operation is proposed and applied to the case study
of the PECEM power plant. Design of Experiments (DoE) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) are used to
identify the model main controllable parameters and interactions to then rank them by order of importance. The
surrogate model based on the commercial software is built to simulate the system efficiency with seven controllable
input parameters: primary airflow, pulverized coal outlet temperature, stoichiometry, excess O2, secondary, and
primary air crossover duct pressure, ranked by descendent significance. The maximum relative deviation of that
surrogate model compared to the software simulation is 0.0172. The best operating ranges by each controllable
parameter are proposed.