National Research University Moscow Power Engineering Institute

Technology of Water and Fuel Department

Pavel Gotovtsev

14 Krasnokazarmennaya str. Moscow 111024 TWT Department tel.: +7-495-362-76-08, fax: +7-495-362-71-71 E-mail: gotovtsevpm@gmail.com

Water at thermal power plants

Requirements: Desalinated water for boilers feeding; River or sea water for condensers cooling; Soft water for district heating systems; other technical needs. Water treatment systems: Water desalination system; Water-steam cycle systems (dosing systems, condensate polishers); Cooling water treatment systems (correlated with water characteristics); Water softening system for district heating systems.

Waste water problems

water purification system that produce ultrapure water for the boilers feeding; this system also have two types of waste water: water with high mineralization and water with sludge after coagulation; cooling systems with wet cooling towers: in this system water cooled in the towers is used for steam turbines condensers cooling; the difficulties in this system related with blowdown that have from 2 to 5 times higher concentration of impurities in comparison with water source; water with oil; there are a lot of oil contained systems at power plants and in some cases this oil mixtures with water; rain water from power plant territory also can contain oil and some specific impurities related with technological processes, for example coal dust in the coal fired power plants; and many others

Water management
Initial steps: Determination of treated water demand; Determination of water availability and quality in water source; Determination of possibility of water discharges and requirements of waste water quality; In case of existing power plant: Determination of all waste water streams in power plant; Determination of impurities concentrations in the each waste water stream;

Water management
Chemistry control of all water streams in power plant Main on-line instrumentation (depending of waste water source): pH; Conductivity; Turbidity; Oil; Additional: Fe and Cu; Ammonia; TOC

Water intake

On-line chemistry control

pH turbidity
4 3

chemicals pH

Water treatment (make up)

Sludging

conductivity

Sludge dump

Cooling system

Waste water treatment system

Rain and melt water Permanent discharge

Steam cycle

Industrial heating system

Oil in water

turbidity

Drainage treatment

pH

9 10

Neutralizing site pH conductivity

5

conductivity

Example of on-line chemistry control at combine cycle power plant with cooling system with cooling towers

Discharge

Oil in water

turbidity
7 8 9 10

controller

users

Water reuse
Previous slide power plant. Reuse of rain water and water with oil. This system gives 55 m3/h periodical additional makeup in cooling system. But its means around 170 000 m3/year economy of water from source and the same number of decreasing of discharges.

Water reuse
The same power plant. Membrane water treatment.

Water with high mineralization

Treatment of RO concentrate or water after regeneration of ion-exchange filters is the main challenge in zero-liquid discharge projects

Cooling system with wet cooling towers blowdown

Main problems: High concentration of impurities in comparison with water in the water source; Corrosion, biocorrosion and scaling; Volume of blowdown in some cases exceed water requirements of power plant. Using blowdown as a water for water treatment system. + all or part of blowdown is reusing; - large impurities load on water treatment unit (rising of regeneration number or impurities concentrations in concentrate in case of RO system).

Some challenges in zero-liquid discharge power plants

1) Sediment and sludge problem. Utilization of all sludge and sediment is very expensive. There are exist technologies of partial re-use of salts with producing sulfuric acid or NaCl. 2) Mixing problem. We have to mix different types of treated water with water from water source.

In IGCC and combine cycle water consumption is very low, in several regions the rain and melt water sometimes will be around 20-50% of water that goes to the treatment. Those waters have very high differences of concentrations of impurities in very short time (during one rain or during snow melting periods).

How we cane increase of water reuse systems efficiency?

Water from flue gases technology this technology can decrease water consumption. New chemicals for example, we use polyacrylamide (PAA) based chemicals for flocculation, is there any new hydrophilic polymer that can improve efficiency of sedimentation and help with additional treatment of sludge (dewatering and utilization)? New floaters already have a very good efficiency. However it is possible to expect some increasing of efficiency due to new technologies of water-air mixing with low volume of air bubble.

Thank you any questions