Coal-fired power plant boilers consist of several complex subsystems that all need to work together to ensure plant availability, efficiency and safety, while limiting emissions. Analysing this multi-objective problem requires a thermofluid process model that can simulate the water/steam cycle and the coal/air/flue gas cycle for steady-state and dynamic operational scenarios, in an integrated manner. The furnace flue gas side can be modelled using a suitable zero-dimensional model in a quasi-steady manner, but this will only provide an overall heat transfer rate and a single gas temperature. When more detail is required, CFD is the tool of choice. However, the solution times can be prohibitive. A need therefore exists for a computationally efficient model that captures the three-dimensional radiation effects, flue gas exit temperature profile, carbon burnout and O2 and CO2 concentrations, while integrated with the steam side process model for dynamic simulations. A thermofluid network-based methodology is proposed that combines the zonal method to model the radiation heat transfer in three dimensions with a one-dimensional burnout model for the heat generation, together with characteristic flow maps for the mass transfer. Direct exchange areas are calculated using a discrete numerical integration approximation together with a suitable smoothing technique. Models of Leckner and Yin are applied to determine the gas and particle radiation properties, respectively. For the heat sources the burnout model developed by the British Coal Utilisation Research Association is employed and the advection terms of the mass flow are accounted for by superimposing a mass flow map that is generated via an isothermal CFD solution. The model was first validated by comparing it with empirical data and other numerical models applied to the IFRF single-burner furnace. The full scale furnace model was then calibrated and validated via detailed CFD results for a wall-fired furnace operating at full load. The model was shown to scale well to other load conditions and real plant measurements. Consistent results were obtained for sensitivity studies involving coal quality, particle size distribution, furnace fouling and burner operating modes. The ability to do co-simulation with a steam-side process model in Flownex® was successfully demonstrated for steady-state and dynamic simulations.

Milling is a widely used cutting process, most commonly applied to machining external surfaces of workpieces. When machining operations are required within hard to reach areas of components, or deep within the bore of components, alternative methods of metal removal are generally employed. Typically when milling at extended reaches, difficulties may increase exponentially when trying to achieve distances several meters into a component. Essentially every topic of the milling process becomes difficult and more convoluted. Firstly to generate a stable cutting condition, and ultimately for an operator to be able to understand the cutting conditions, when all normal senses to interpret the machining stability are removed. The aim for the research is, to enable the operation of high slenderness ratio internal milling operations to become a viable technology, by detailing the measures required, to obtain a stable cutting condition. The process needs to be monitored for degradation of the tooling due to wear, and to prevent catastrophic machine damage from tool breakage or machine component failure. This research addresses the lack of knowledge available for milling with extended reaches, and the knowledge gained to overcome the real difficulties that exist for this process. Initial experiments are conducted on a prototype machine to gain experience of the internal machining operation and the many issues that it faced. Establishing requirements of the process via investigation of the tooling and necessary auxiliary equipment, it becomes possible to consider countermeasures to address the errors generated by torsional twisting of the milling arm. A system for applying a counter torque to reduce torsional deflection errors has been employed to successfully reduce the unavoidable issue over such long distances. For the process to become manageable for an industrial operator without a high level of specialist knowledge, the application of tool condition monitoring (TCM) and process condition monitoring (PCM) had to be applied. This addresses a void in available literature and research with respect to internal machining, and enables the process to become practical for an industrial environment. For this reason the research project will concentrate on the application of TCM and PCM onto the machining system. The completion of the research resulted in the process becoming satisfyingly stable, and with a resulting accuracy that satisfies the requirements of the component. Performance of the final system rivalled or achieved better results than had been experienced by the project sponsor.