Measurement and control of NOx emissions using soft computing in a thermal power plant

Coal is the major fossil fuel in India and continues to play a pivotal role in the energy sector. In coal-fired thermal power plants the NOx emission reduction can be achieved through the help of expert system which consist of two stages. The first stage is based on a ANN (Artificial Neural Network) model with combustion parameters as inputs and nitrogen oxides as output of the model. The predicted values of the model for full load condition were verified with the actual values. In the second stage, FL (Fuzzy Logic) is used to incorporate the expert experience of human operator in computing and controlling the NOx. These values are then presented to operation Engineers as an Advisory function.