Modelling and simulation of a power plant lignite bunker filling process using hybrid interpreted Petri nets

Abstract

Abstract

The complexity of the continuous type processes involved in the power industry, typically involving a large number of parameters and equations, combined with the discrete type of the controls of the installation, necessitate the introduction of hybrid modelling procedures. Although hybrid Petri nets (HPN) have been introduced for this purpose, they still present limitations in modelling such complex situations. For this reason, they are properly combined with another type of Petri nets - the interpreted Petri nets - in order to take into account the external events also, resulting either from the environment or from the actions of the control system. The resulting combined theoretical analysis framework leads to the concept of hybrid interpreted Petri nets. This framework is then applied to model the lignite bunker filling process of an actual power plant, indicating an efficient and flexible behaviour, during both the normal, and the fault handling operation of the system.