Previous Situation

At a sugar-energy company, the installed boilers — which together produce over 750 tons per hour of steam to supply both industrial processes and power generation turbines — showed combustion control imbalances. Operational analyses detected high excess air values in the combustion gases and, under certain load conditions, significant concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO). This situation reflected incomplete combustion and inefficient fuel use, with energy losses associated with unnecessary heating of excess air and a decreased amount of steam available for the turbines.

The Solution

ENEF implemented a new closed-loop combustion control system, incorporating high-precision O₂ and CO sensors strategically installed at the exhaust outlets of both bagasse boilers. This system allows automatic and continuous adjustment of the air-fuel ratio, optimizing combustion in real time according to load conditions and the quality of available bagasse.

Precise regulation of these parameters avoids energy losses associated with excess air and eliminates CO formation caused by oxygen-poor mixtures at certain points in the combustion chamber. Thanks to this optimization, the boilers’ thermal efficiency was increased by 1.5%, which for the same fuel consumption, allows generating a greater amount of steam available for process and power generation.

This efficiency increase directly translates into improved energy generation capacity in the turbines, as well as reduced emissions of pollutants, contributing to the plant’s environmental policies.

Results