Opatovice power station

Lignite fired power station renews its flue gas desulphurization system and converts its existing chimney to a borosilicate lined wet stack.

The Opatovice Power Plant is located between the cities of Hradec Králové and Pardubice in the Czech Republic. The plant has 6 units with a combined generating capacity of 330 MWe and 650 MWt. Through its 310 km long district heating network, the Opatovice Power Plant provides heating and warm water to over 60.000 households in its region.

The power plant has operated with a flue gas desulphurization (FGD) system since 1998, but in 2012 the plant’s owner, EP Energy, decided to completely renew the FGD to prepare for meeting stricter SO₂ emission limits in years to come. The new FGD system also uses wet limestone technology and it has a 97.5% SO₂ removal efficiency.

The old FGD system, which had been running since 1998, had a rotary gas-to-gas reheater (“GGH”), which raised the temperature of the flue gas going into the chimney to 92°C.
With its new FGD system, the Opatovice Power Plant aimed for maximum efficiency and one important decision was to avoid any reheat and to change over to FGD wet stack operation.

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The existing chimney of the Opatovice Power Plant was a 135 m high, reinforced concrete chimney with a sectional ceramic brick flue. Ceramic brick flues are typically permeable to flue gas condensate and the owner concluded that the chimney, although in good condition, could not be used for FGD wet stack operation.

Building a new chimney especially for the FGD wet stack operation would be very expensive, and so it was decided to convert the existing chimney for the new operating conditions by installing a PennguardTM directly onto the surface of the ceramic brick flue.

All of the chimney modification works, including the installation of 3,446 m² of the PennguardTM lining system, were performed by Czech chimney construction specialists Omega Teplotechna in the months of June, July and August 2015.