For STEAG power plant Herne unit 4 STEAG Energy Services (SES) supplied a combustion optimization system for the reduction of imbalances in the com-bustion and CO emissions by adjusting the distribution of air and pulverized coal.

Services by SES: acquisition and evaluation of combustion-relevant measured values; implementation of neural networks for describing the process behavior; deduction of multi-variable controllers for secondary air, staging air, burner swirl, coal distribution between the mills, and classifier setting.

The benefits: automatic adjustment of the air distribution to the respective process situation;   reduction of the critical CO emissions by 75%; reduction of the O2 imbalances by 0.25 vol. % O2 and improvement of the local air/fuel-ratio.