Retrofit of Analog Boiler Control Systems with Digital Control Systems in a Thermal Power Plant

This paper presents the case that the existing analog control systems were retrofitted with digital DCS(Distributed Control System)s for boiler unit in thermal power plant. Replacement of existing worn-out or obsolete analog control systems has been considered. Replacement of existing analog control systems with another analog control systems has lots of difficulties in maintaining the systems due to being out of stock. Due to those difficulties, existing analog control systems have been retrofitted with digital DCSs in many industrial sites. KEPRI(Korea Electric Power Research Institute) accomplished the project that retrofitted analog control systems with the developed DCSs for boiler unit in middle-scale coal-fired thermal power plant. The benefits of an upgrade to digital control include a increase of reliability due to system redundancy, ease of modifying the control logic and the parameters of function block, ease of maintenance due to available spare parts, improvement of information display, ease of modifying MMI(Man Machine Interface) displays, a increase in system availability, and improvement of control performance. This paper describes how to use the parameters of existing analog controllers, the implementation of digital PID controller, control system configuration for boiler unit in thermal power plant, some boiler control loops, control result during commissioning, and the comparison of boiler characteristic test data after retrofitting with the existing test data.