An ABB System 800xA installation in Europe’s largest organically-fuelled electricity generator will help improve energy efficiency at the 38.5 megawatt (MW) plant. The organic power generating unit is owned by Energy Power Resources Limited in Thetford, U.K. EPR Thetford, at 38.5MW, is the largest chicken litter fuelled plant in the world and is Europe’s largest biomass fuelled electricity generator. The plant is located at the centre of England’s poultry producing region and consumes 420,000 tonnes of litter each year.
ABB is to provide an overview of the entire plant operation by transferring hard-wired data from existing panels into an 800xA control system, and installing a central control desk along with new operator work places.
ABB will integrate separate displays into a single large display, while its power generation information system enables a company wide reporting system for processes and production that can be easily expanded to serve all EPR’s power plants in future.
The upgrade is part of what ABB calls its ‘Evolution’ life cycle support strategy, which allows owners and operators on tight budgets to upgrade existing equipment over time. It is designed to allow continuous operation while upgrades are achieved through a series of small, cost-effective steps, to meet the needs of changing business environments.
EPR is at the forefront of the renewable energy market in the UK, with a relatively diverse portfolio of plants fuelled by organic materials, or biomass. But this initiative still owes much to the chicken.
Each chicken produces 1.13 kilograms of litter in its life, a mixture of manure and bedding materials like wood shavings. The litter can be used as fuel for an alternative source of energy, as here, or it can be applied directly to land as a fertiliser for crops like corn or soybeans.
The litter’s nutrient-rich elements can also be separated out to create more concentrated fertiliser pellets, which allow a slower release of nutrients into the soil and curb pollution from pathogens in the unrefined litter.
The installation for EPR is one of many ABB projects in the field of alternative energy, and the second Evolution-style project for EPR involving a biomass-fuelled power station. Interconnecting control systems based on ABB’s Extended Automation System 800xA, let the plant operators measure and optimise energy usage while documenting every aspect of production.
The System 800xA process portal extends the reach of traditional Distributed Control Systems to provide total plant management, including production management, safety, discrete and advanced control, information management, smart instrumentation, smart drives and motor control centres.
System 800xA
ABB’s award winning Industrial IT System 800xA helps achieve measurable productivity and profitability improvements. System 800xA extends the scope of traditional control systems to include all automation functions in a single operations and engineering environment. System 800xA delivers extended productivity gains by:
• Reducing the time to decision and action
• Engineering for maximum performance
• Reducing risk through high integrity automation
• Integrating information for improved visibility
• Improving batch production profitability, consistency, and traceability
• Optimising plant asset availability and performance
• Delivering Control and I/O to meet automation and safety needs
• Extending installed system capabilities through seamless evolution
