The Taichung Power Plant is a coal-fired power plant based in Taiwan. With an installed capacity of 5,780 MW, it is the largest coal-fired power station in the world. The power plant consists of ten coal-fired units with nominal capacity of 550 MW each.
Because of safety concerns and several fire accidents, the management of Taichung Power Plant decided to equip its system of coal conveyor belts with a fire detection system to monitor the temperature along the belts and in case of fire, quickly send alarms to operators in order to minimize the damages. Monitoring coal conveyor belts provides an obvious challenge as there is a risk of the fire moving with the operation of the belt and therefore rapid detection and precise location of the fire source is extremely important.
LIOS DE.TECT fulfills all the requirements of this project:
- The system provides long range distributed fire detection
- Even though the fire source could be moving, the system can still provide quick fire detection
- The system can operate normally in the harsh conditions and is maintenance free
The supplied LIOS DE.TECT system for Taichung Power Plant covers the whole coal conveyor belt system. Altogether four conveyor belts are monitored, two from the harbor to the transfer tower, and two from the transfer tower to the generation units.
The fiber optic sensing cable is easy to install and has a long measurement range. As it is purely passive sensor, it doesn’t need any maintenance after installation and wouldn’t be affected by the harsh operating environment, which makes it very suitable for the conveyor belts monitoring.
The LIOS DE.TECT controller is installed in the control room in the transfer tower – in the middle of the whole conveyor system – so that it is more convenient and economic to measure both sides. Furthermore, as located in an endangered area, an extra cabinet which fulfills the standard of IP-66 is also installed.
The measurement data and derived alarm information are transmitted via TCP/IP via MODBUS protocol to the management system of the operator and the visualization unit in the control room.
The Taichung Power plant especially appreciates the highly endurable design of the DE.TECT evaluation unit which is ideal for deployments in harsh environments. It comes with a completely encapsulated housing and doesn’t contain any moving parts or fans at all.
