DISTRICT HEATING INDUSTRY NEWS


View of the control room.


Heat exchanger for transferring ‘waste’ heat from the flue gas to the district heating network. Rauhalahti achieves 30- 50 MW additional thermal energy with no increase in fuel consumption.


idea of taking heat from the flue gas condenser circulation and transferring it to our district heating network. We added 20% or more, giving 30-50 MW of thermal production without using any more fuel. Our plant buildings are also heated by waste heat from the condenser condensate”.


Safety first project Site construction began in the Summer of 2014. Construction activities were basically paused during the Winter of 2014 and picked up again in the Spring of 2015. Some of the construction coincided with the period that the power plant was operating. “This was challenging, both for safety and operational reasons,” admitted Ylitalo, “but, we finished the project with no serious injuries and no lost-time accidents, which is a source of pride for us”. Mäkinen confirmed, “We had 300 extra people on-site during this project as we were refurbishing our turbine-generator


10 Autumn 2017 10


at the same time. Still, we were able to work safely and keep to our schedules”.


The modernised plant was


started up in September, 2015. After testing all the equipment and instruments, Rauhalahti went into full production. The plant was taken over by the customer in January, 2016, after a 28-day continuous run test where there was not a single interruption in production.


“Unfortunately for Andritz, this has been a very mild Winter, with the exception of a couple of weeks of very cold temperatures,” Rönkkä said. “That has meant that we could not run the final performance test at full load, but we have every indication that the


systems are performing perfectly. Our SO2 emissions are practically zero and the dust/particulates out of the stack are near zero as well.” Mäkinen concluded, “The co-operation with the Andritz team has been very good. They are technically competent and have good project organisation. For us, this was a huge project. It was good that both we and Andritz shared a common goal of showcasing some new and very promising power plant technology”.


More information from www.andritz.com


Seen in front of the flue gas condenser are Timo Mäkinen (left), Plant Manager, and Kalle Aro, Andritz Product Manager.


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