Coal Pulverizer Monitoring and Analysis: A Case Study

This paper describes a case study of coal pulverizer monitoring and analysis. It represents the partial work of a project called “Mill Advisor” which investigated the common operational and maintenance problems of the coal pulverizer. Combining vibration monitoring and operational parameters such as flow rate, pressure drop and temperature measurement as well as grinding process modeling, this project intends to develop a system which closely monitors the operating condition of the pulverizer online, extracts the operational and maintenance knowledge, estimates the health condition of the equipment, and schedules maintenance based on the operation condition of the pulverizer and power generation demand. Specifically, this case study covers the following topics: 1)coal mill operational and maintenance problem identification; 2)sensing and data acquisition system design and implementation; 3)mill roller wear modeling and life span estimation; and 4)mill health indicator or availability proposition. On-site tests were conducted on a CE843RS pulverizer in a power plant.