A novel lignite pre-drying system with low-grade heat integration for modern lignite power plants

The lignite pre-drying process plays an important role in modern lignite power plants and the fluidized bed dryer with internal heat utilization is a promising drying method which has both high efficiency and cost-effectiveness. After conducting an in-depth analysis of a typical lignite pre-drying power plant, this work proposed a novel lignite pre-drying system with low-grade heat integration. Through system integration, the low-temperature evaporation of the lignite was recovered to heat the combustion air, while the residual heat from the flue gases was used to heat the feed or condensed water, thereby saving a portion of heat from the steam bleeds of the high and intermediate pressure turbines. The results for a 1,000 MW lignite-fired power plant showed that, the proposed pre-drying system could yield an increase in net plant efficiency of approximately 3.6 % points and a reduction in the cost of electricity of $1.83/(MW h). The thermodynamic and economic performances were each superior to those of the existing pre-drying system, convincingly demonstrating that the research of this paper may provide a promising integrated lignite pre-drying method for the next-generation of lignite-fired power plants.