1 billion tons good quality coal deposits found in Badin (Sindh)

[niaz]

Dong Feng has made a number of thermal power plants in India. In West Bengal, a 300MW plant needs 148 Tons/Hour design coal. It makes the coal rate around 0.5 Tons/Mw. The GCV of design coal (grade E) is around 4100 Kcal and they don't allow the plants to be operated by coal below 3500Kcal GCV.
But Indian coals don't carry much useful calorific value and government run plants are not ready to purchase high grade Australian/Indonesian coals to reduce the generation cost. That's why state run plants are buying G grade coals whose heat value is around 2000 kcal.On average, to maintain a generation about 4800 Mwhr approximately 3500 tons per day of G grade coal is required.So if the coal found here is of even F grade I think this is a great news for Pakistan.

Hon Sir,
I have no basis to dispute your figures as these are based on a real plant operation. I can only describe how I estimate fuel requirement of a power plant.

Actual fuel requirement depends upon many factors. Most important being the plant heat rate and the heating value of fuel. Plant heat rate is the amount of heat required to generate 1 KWhr of electricity. For calculating rough estimates I use the following method.

A 500 MW plant will generate 12,000,000 KWhr of electricity in 24 hr operation.

I have come across heat rates anywhere between 2200 to 1850 Kcal per KWhr for coal fired power plants. Total heat required to produce 12,000,000 KWhr of power will be approximately 2,200 x 12,000,000 = 26,400,000,000 Kcal. At about 6,000 Kcal/kg it means that 4,400,000 Kg or 4,4000 tons of coal will be required per day. I rounded it off on the higher side to about 5000 tons per day (208 tons/hour). Based upon your post a 500 MW plant would require about 247 ton per hour but I am using a higher heat value coal.

Naturally in the absence of info about actual plant heat rate and the heat value of the fuel, accurate calculation is not possible. However, I admit that I am a chemical engineer and not a power engineer; therefore my estimates are subject to correction by hard core power professionals.

 

[scorpionx]

Hon Sir,
I have no basis to dispute your figures as these are based on a real plant operation. I can only describe how I estimate fuel requirement of a power plant.

Actual fuel requirement depends upon many factors. Most important being the plant heat rate and the heating value of fuel. Plant heat rate is the amount of heat required to generate 1 KWhr of electricity. For calculating rough estimates I use the following method.

A 500 MW plant will generate 12,000,000 KWhr of electricity in 24 hr operation.

I have come across heat rates anywhere between 2200 to 1850 Kcal per KWhr for coal fired power plants. Total heat required to produce 12,000,000 KWhr of power will be approximately 2,200 x 12,000,000 = 26,400,000,000 Kcal. At about 6,000 Kcal/kg it means that 4,400,000 Kg or 4,4000 tons of coal will be required per day. I rounded it off on the higher side to about 5000 tons per day (208 tons/hour). Based upon your post a 500 MW plant would require about 247 ton per hour but I am using a higher heat value coal.

Naturally in the absence of info about actual plant heat rate and the heat value of the fuel, accurate calculation is not possible. However, I admit that I am a chemical engineer and not a power engineer; therefore my estimates are subject to correction by hard core power professionals.

Sir, your calculation is absolutely correct. The design coal rate of 300 MW sub-critical units is around 0.5 tons/MW. So yes, with this calculation,however the value may vary a little in a super-critical boiler,the tonnage coal required per hour would be around 250 tons/ hr for a 500 MW plant.

The design heat rate of a 300 MW unit is 1894 kcal/hr at BRL. If we take the GCV of coal at design rate of 4100 kcal, coal required per hour will be around 232 tons/hr to generate 500 MW of power. This deviation between our previous calculated value of 250 tons/hr is due various other factors involved like you mentioned above in your post as the variation of actual heat rate,GCV and may be due to the difference between the design of both the boilers.

Regards.