Cost Model of Industrial Fluidized Bed Boilers

Fluidized bed combustion in industrial applications offers many advantages from the resource utilization and the air quality points of view. A cash flow model is developed to predict the economic consequences of an investment in an industrial coal-fired atmospheric fluidized bed combustion boiler. The return on investment is calculated for boilers in the range of 50,000 to 500,000 lb hr. The investment costs range from $3.8 to $28.8 million, with calculated returns on investment from 8.4% to 14.2%. These returns are not adequate to justify the investment decision. A sensitivity analysis shows that the most influential variables are the costs of the fossil fuels-the net difference between the displaced natural gas and residual fuel oil vs. the coal used in the fluidized bed boiler.