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In a growing effort to provide reliability and resiliency in today’s municipal infrastructure operations, more cities are looking at incorporating CHP into their waste water treatment facilities. The drive to provide critical services to their customers during grid interruptions as well as efficiently utilize an “opportunity fuel” generated at the facility makes CHP an excellent fit. Because these facilities produce a potentially high sulfur content Bio-Gas, the CHP system requires special design considerations to facilitate the use of this high sulfur content fuel and still maintain the highest efficiency possible. The City of Calgary Bonnybrook Waste Water Treatment Plant has recently gone through the design phase for such a project. In municipal waste water treatment facilities such as Bonnybrook, it is common to produce a combustible gas that will contain potentially very high levels of sulfur. In this application, the sulfur content (in the form of H2S) during operation can be as high as 3,000 PPM. The system was designed to handle a content of up to 5,000 PPM. To assure the economics of incorporating CHP into such a facility, it is important to take advantage of this renewable fuel opportunity. This can only be done if every component of the CHP system, including the combustion gas turbine, the HRSG itself, as well as the economizer and stack, is considered. Assuring that each of these components is designed to handle this high sulfur content, while not limiting the life expectancy of the equipment, requires some unique engineering solutions and coordination between the various equipment manufacturers. Our presentation will discuss in detail the unique engineering solutions that were incorporated into the City of Calgary’s project to maximize CHP efficiency, guarantee fuel flexibility, and assure a lengthy life expectancy of the equipment. Solar Turbines will discuss the application from a gas turbine perspective and Cleaver-Brooks will discuss the design of the HRSG and unique arrangement of the economizer heating surface, which was utilized to make sure the above criteria was achieved.

Track 4B: District Energy, CHP & Microgrids

Speakers

Johnathan Coleman, Solar Turbines
Paul Brown, Cleaver-Brooks, Inc.