How Dense Slurry Fly Ash Disposal helped Europe’s largest Brown Coal Power Station to reduce its Water Consumption by over 90

摘要

The Be?chatów power station in the Polish province of Lodz has a generating capacity of 5,420 MW,making it Europe’s largest brown coal power station and third largest coal power station in the world.Some 28 TWh of electrical energy,equivalent to around 20% of Poland’s entire power requirement,are produced every year.The vast amount of 420 tons of fly ash accumulated per hour is landfilled or used as backfilling material.The landfill site for the ash slurry is around 5 miles away from the power station itself.The former system with centrifugal pumps was overburdened with both the volume and the long pumping distance.The wear rate increased drastically.Failure of the pumps and thus the removal of the fly ash would have caused the power station to shut down.In 2013,a total of six high solids handling piston pumps,each driven by a 1,000 hp hydraulic unit,were installed for transporting the fly ash of the entire power station.Some 800 yd3 of fly ash slurry are pumped every hour.Because piston pumps are capable of conveying much dryer material,today’s water consumption is not even 10% compared to the previous solution with the old centrifugal pumps.As a result,the required water quantity is reduced by around 3,800 tons per hour and the power consumption is around 50% compared to the old pump technology.