Automatic Plant Startup and Shutdown Control System(APS) is one of latest development directions of thermal automation technology in power plants. It is necessary to optimize the control scheme of startup boiler which is an auxiliary equipment. Taking the startup boiler of a certain large generating unit as the research target, the major equipment of this boiler is introduced and the startup and shutdown process of this boiler is analyzed. And the essential technical issues, including the frame of automatic startup and shutdown control system and the design of functional group, are emphatically discussed. After that, a scheme of automatic startup and shutdown control for the boiler is put forward. The scheme has been successfully applied to a startup boiler in a 1 000 MW ultrasupercritical unit. The real application results indicate that this scheme not only regulates operation, but also reduces the human intervention level. Both automation level and safety operation level of power plants are improved. The control scheme also provides references for the startup and shutdown control of other types of industrial boilers.