A Coal Blending Optimization Model for Minimizing the Cost of Coal-Fired Power Enterprises

Abstract

High coal prices encourage coal-fired power enterprises to purchase lignite and low-quality bituminous coal with low price, high sulfur and ash content, resulting in serious deviation from the design value of the boiler, thus reducing the generation capacity of units and increasing the blocked capacity. In this paper, we propose a coal blending optimization model for minimizing cost of coal-fired power enterprises. Based on the prediction of coal price, this model minimizes the total cost including purchase cost and additional cost related to coal quality with meeting operational requirement of boilers. The numerical results verify the efficiency of the proposed model.