Reliability Measures Improvement and Sensitivity Analysis of a Coal Handling Unit for Thermal Power Plant

Abstract

The present paper investigates the reliability and sensitivity analysis of a coal handling unit of a thermal power plant using a probabilistic approach. Coal handling unit is the main block of a thermal power plant and it is necessary for a good function of a power plant that its power supply, which is dealt in coal handling unit, must function continuously without any obstacle. The configuration of the coal handling system consists of two subsystems connected in series, also each subsystem have two units in parallel configuration. Failure and repair rate of both the subsystems are taken constant. With the help of Laplace transforms and differential equations, the transition state probabilities, availability, reliability, MTTF, sensitivity analysis and cost-effectiveness of the system have been evaluated.