Bioenergy Insight July-August 2017

JULY/AUGUST 2017 Volume 8 • Issue 4

Beetlejuice

Converting dead trees into energy

I need a HERU

New UK-based technology is tackling waste

Regional focus: Bioenergy in Scandinavia

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contents Bioenergy

Contents Issue 4 • Volume 8

2 Comment

July/August 2017 Woodcote Media Limited Marshall House 124 Middleton Road, Morden, Surrey SM4 6RW, UK www.bioenergy-news.com MANAGING DIRECTOR Peter Patterson Tel: +44 (0)208 648 7082 peter@woodcotemedia.com EDITOR Liz Gyekye Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4183 liz@woodcotemedia.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Daryl Worthington Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4146 daryl@woodcotemedia.com INTERNATIONAL SALES MANAGER George Doyle Tel: +44 (0) 203 551 5752 george@bioenergy-news.com NORTH AMERICA SALES REPRESENTATIVE Matt Weidner +1 610 486 6525 mtw@weidcom.com PRODUCTION Alison Balmer Tel: +44 (0)1673 876143 alisonbalmer@btconnect.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES £160/$270/€225 for 6 issues per year.

Contact: Lisa Lee Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4160 Fax: +44 (0)20 8687 4130 marketing@woodcotemedia.com

3 News 16 Plant update 18 Incident report 20 Big interview 24 Sustainable maize farming

Undersowing trial promotes sustainable maize

26 Regional focus: Scandinavia 28 Preparing Sweden for a fossil-free future

BECCS is the future of the bioenergy sector in Sweden

30 Power to the masses

Biomass power has plenty to offer

32 The Siberian wood pellet experience 34 Wood pellet and power cogeneration

In Italy, a new project has shown the feasibility of combining different types of biomass and bioenergy facilities

36 Wood chippers back from the brink

A company in eastern Finland was close to closing, until a new forestry grinder solved their brush issues

38 A cheer for green beer

Alaskan brewer uses horn to clear boiler ash build up

40 Pellet potential

How a material handling specialist helped implement a wood pellet plant

Follow us on Twitter: @BioenergyInfo

42 Tightening your (conveyor) belt

Join the discussion on the Bioenergy Insight LinkedIn page

46 What’s in a wood?

No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form by any mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or other means without the prior written consent of the publisher. Whilst the information and articles in Bioenergy Insight are published in good faith and every effort is made to check accuracy, readers should verify facts and statements direct with official sources before acting on them as the publisher can accept no responsibility in this respect.

Any opinions expressed in this magazine should not be construed as those of the publisher.

ISSN 2046-2476

Bioenergy Insight

48 Making a profit as a willow grower

It seems unlikely, but it is possible to make money from willow

50 The beetles and the biofuels

Converting dead trees into fuels and chemicals

52 I need a HERU

A new technology is set to provide a solution to domestic waste management

JULY/AUGUST 2017 Volume 8 • Issue 4

Beetlejuice

Converting dead trees into energy

I need a HERU

New UK-based technology is tackling waste

54 Fossil fuels out, biomethane in?

In a post-fossil fuel world, what role will biomethane play?

Regional focus: Bioenergy in xxxxxx

July/August 2017 • 1

Bioenergy comment

An Inconvenient Sequel

T

Liz Gyekye Editor

his is the title to the sequel of environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, produced by former US Vice President Al Gore in 2006.

A decade after the original became an unprecedented box-office hit, won an Academy Award and brought the climate crisis into the heart of popular culture, this follow-up aims to show just how close we are to a real energy revolution.

I must admit that I can’t remember the first film, but this new one follows Gore as he continues his fight, inviting the audience to travel the world with the tireless campaigner as he meets experts, visits parts of the globe affected by climate change, delivers his rousing, ever-evolving lecture and influences international policies.

I think that climate change

and artificial intelligence are some of the most pressing issues the world faces. Yet, President Donald Trump dismissed this issue when he took the US out of the Paris climate accord.

Trump claimed he wanted to abandon Paris because it would kill jobs in US coal country and in American factories. While that argument is hogwash, the real political message Trump wanted to deliver to his base — that he will stand up to those “hypocritical Chinese” who are building more coal plants even as they talk about leading on emissions cuts, as well as to Europeans who pontificate about global warming from posh places kept safe by American military — was made quite sharply.

In political terms, it does not really matter if anything he says is true, it plays well among the home audience.

However, in economic terms, I think Trump is making a wrong choice if he thinks a nationalist energy strategy based on the dirtiest fossil fuels will make the US stronger or safer.

For starters, the majority of coal jobs in the US were lost not since the Obama administration but between the 1950s and 1970s, as the industry shifted to more advanced mining techniques.

Just as factory jobs have been automated, so has humancentric coal work given way to huge mechanised stripmining operations. It’s a shame politics gets put in the way of serious issues.

You can e-mail at liz@ woodcotemedia.com or tweet at @bioenergyinfo I hope you enjoy this bumper issue.

Best wishes, Liz

Get your weekly fix of bioenergy news every Tuesday and sign up to our newsletter at www.bioenergy-news.com.

Don’t waste the waste!

Evonik knows how to turn organic waste into biofuel simply and efficiently. www.sepuran.com

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19.04.17 18:14

Bioenergy Insight

xxxxxx Bioenergy

biomass news Goldman Sachs is set to expand into Japan’s biomass industry The Goldman Sachs Group, a global investment banking giant, is set to expand into Japan’s biomass industry.

Japan Renewable Energy, a renewable energy company established by Goldman Sachs, intends to build new biomass plants at ten or more locations by 2020.

It is projected that the total power generation capacity of the new facilities will reach 70,000kw.

The cost of the investment has not been disclosed by the company.

A spokesman from Goldman Sachs told Bioenergy Insight that Japan Renewable Energy was also involved in solar and wind power generation. The company

is expanding into biomass “not because of the declining profit margin in solar power, but diversification of power sources”, according to the spokesman.

Construction on the first of the biomass plants started in December 2016 in the city of Kamisu, Ibraki Prefecture, on the site of a former factory. With construction set to finish in April 2019, the 24,400kw facility is expected to generate 200 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year by burning wood chips.

Elsewhere, in early June, the banking group announced that it had signed a US-based long-term power purchase agreement with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, which will add new renewable energy

capacity to the electricity grid.

The agreement will enable the investment and development of a new 68MW wind project in Pennsylvania and is anticipated to facilitate up to 150 construction jobs and result in the reduction of more than 200,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum once operational.

“We are committed to being a leader in the development of renewable energy,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs. “By enabling this new wind project to come online, the agreement will help grow the renewable grid and contribute to the momentum behind a lower carbon economy.” l

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July/August 2017 • 5

biomass news

Bioenergy biggest renewable source, says WBA The World Bioenergy Association (WBA) has launched its WBA Global Bioenergy Statistics report for 2017. The report claims that across the world, bioenergy remains the biggest source of renewable energy.

A number of key findings are unearthed by the report. Most significantly, the global supply of biomass increased to 59.2EJ in 2014, a 2.6% rise on the previous year. In total, it accounted for 10.3% of the global energy supply. Biomass also accounted for three quarters of the total renewable energy supply.

The report states that renewables consumption is greatest in the electricity sector, accounting for 23% of global electricity production. Biomass is the third largest renewable electricity generating source with generation of 493TWh, but solar and wind are the fastest growing

sources of electricity.

Biomass dominates the derived heat and direct heat sectors. In both, the biomass contribution to the renewables sector is over 95%. According to the report, “Heat sector is the single most important future development sector for biomass”.

In the transport sector, renewables only make up 2.8% of the energy supply, which according to the report is a result of the rapid growth of biofuels.

In terms of feedstocks, the WBA report notes that the forestry sector makes up 87% of the biomass supply. Agriculture contributes 10% to biomass via the use of animal by products, agricultural by products and energy crops. The wasteenergy sector accounts for the remaining 3%, according to the WBA report.

The bioenergy sector employed 2.8 million people in 2014, the new report highlighted.

The new statistics report is the fourth in a series from WBA focusing on development of bioenergy on a global level. l

New life for biodigester facility San Francisco-based firm Generate Capital has purchased the Fremont Community Digester facility for $4.4 million (€4 million), and plans to reopen the biomass plant later in 2017, according to MiBiz. The Fremont Community Digester, located in Newaygo County, Michigan, was forced to close two years ago. Former owner NOVI Energy lost the plant to receivership after failing to cover its upfront costs, the MiBiz article stated.

Opened in 2012, the Fremont Community Digester was the first large scale facility in Michigan to turn organic waste from companies into renewable energy. The facility cost $22 million to build, and was praised as being “state-of-the-art”.

In 2013, NOVI Energy formed a company to sell a brand of fertiliser made from the waste of organic materials used to fuel the digester.

Generate Capital specialises in equity and debt facilities to help fund “sustainable infrastructure” companies. Founder and president Jigar Shah told MiBiz that although his company were in the early stages of a stakeholder engagement process, they hope to reopen the plant by the end of the year. l

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biomass news

Woodland Biomass Power fined $4.22m for disposal of hazardous waste A US-based biomass company has been ordered to pay a $4.22 million (€3.83m) settlement related to its disposal of hazardous waste at its power facility in Woodland, California.

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The settlement includes $2.12 million in civil penalties, $850,000 to reimburse for the costs of investigation, and more than $1.25 million to remediate the one site where testing has indicated hazardous materials are present.

Woodland Biomass Power operates a biomass facility in Woodland that burns wood fuel to produce electricity, and, in the process, generates ash.

For years, Woodland Biomass Power claimed its ash was non-hazardous.

This claim, however, was supported with faulty methods, and at times, falsified summaries of the test results for its ash, Yolo County District Attorney said in a statement.

It added: “The company’s own test results have shown that much of its ash had elevated levels of dioxins and constituted hazardous waste because of high levels of pH and high concentrations of contaminants like

A California-based biomass company has been fined $4.22 million

arsenic, lead, and copper. Woodland Biomass Power also provided these falsified records to various governmental entities, individuals, and companies.”

According to the station, Woodland Biomass Power co-operated in the investigation and has since reevaluated its plant operations and implemented numerous improvements to its ash-management practices. l

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Vega to build biochar manufacturing plant in Alaska Vega Biofuels has announced that it will build a new biochar manufacturing plant in Anchorage, Alaska. The new facility will produce biochar. This will be used for soil enhancement for the agricultural industry to help increase crop yields for legal cannabis growers.

It was recently announced that Vega had entered into a reseller agreement with an Anchorage cannabis start-up to market Vega’s biochar throughout the state of Alaska. Vega now plans to build a manufacturing plant in Anchorage that will produce the torrefied biochar.

Cutting-edge torrefaction technology will be used at the new facility, the specialised machine constructed in Virginia before being shipped directly to Alaska.

A highly absorbent, specially designed charcoal-type product, biochar is primarily used as a soil enhancement for the agricultural industry to significantly increase crop yields. It is made from timber waste using torrefaction technology and Vega’s patent pending torrefaction machine. The introduction of biochar into soil is different to applying fertiliser. Most of the benefit is achieved through microbes and fungi colonising a massive surface area and integrating into the biochar and the surrounding soil, dramatically increasing the soil’s ability to nurture plant growth and provide increased crop yield.

Cannabis growers currently using biochar as a soil enhancement are reporting dramatic increases in plant production.

“The cost of shipping the product from the east coast to Alaska is a major issue that we’ve been working on the past few weeks,” said Michael K. Molen, chairman and CEO of Vega Biofuels. l

Bioenergy Insight

biogas news AD opportunities and challenges set out at ADBA show Anaerobic digestion (AD) experts have gathered at the Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association (ADBA) conference to outline the future challenges and opportunities the sector faces.

The conference took place in Birmingham, UK, during early July.

UK-based ADBA announced the launch of its best practice scheme at the show. The new scheme aims improve the environmental, operational and safety performance of the AD industry.

Speaking at the sidelines of the conference to Bioenergy Insight, ADBA chief executive Charlotte Morton said: “We are just at the start of a huge industry and it’s really great news that we are able to launch the best practice scheme today. We can raise the game to match the level of our ambition, in terms of performance.”

At her keynote speech, Morton also outlined some of the industry’s successes.

She said that there were 558 operations AD plants in the UK, with a generating capacity of 731MWe. She also said that there were 50 AD plants across the world.

Morton also mentioned the improvements in biogas upgrading capacity and falling technology costs which have led to higher levels of biomethane production around the world, with biomethane-based fuel “being 40% cheaper than diesel”.

However, Morton also mentioned the challenges the sector faced. She said that the industry still needed legislation on the

Bioenergy Insight

Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) in order to ensure viable financial incentives for biogas operators to build plants.

She also mentioned the challenge of Brexit. She said: “We have no idea what our

relationship with Europe will look like. Will we leave the customs union or single market?”

Elsewhere, a new report released at the show maintained that AD plants

across the UK now have enough capacity to power over a million homes. Operational performance in the industry continues to improve, with load factors rising to 73% in 2016, up from 69% the previous year. l

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July/August 2017 • 9

biogas news

Animal waste biogas plant for Gaziantep, Turkey A new biogas power plant is to be built in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality will use the new facility to produce electricity

for the city’s rail system, claims Turkish news site Milliyet, who cited Gaziantep’s mayor, Fatima Sahin.

According to Renewables Now, the electricity produced by the facility is estimated to satisfy 60% of the electricity needs of the municipality’s

rail system. Construction of the biogas power plant, which will cost TRY 13 million (€3.3 million), is already in progress and expected to be completed in August 2018.

Following a trial period of between one and two months, the new facility will

Gaziantep is a province in south-central Turkey

start producing electricity.

Biogas will be produced from animal waste, solving two problems in one. Animal waste, in particular from poultry, is proving a problem for local farmers. As such, the new plant will offer a manure “recycling service.” The plant will also produce liquid fertiliser as a by-product of its process, which will be offered to the local farmers.

A tender was held to select the developer of the project, although the name of the successful applicant has not been disclosed. Gaziantep municipality spent more than a year researching the project, and signing agreements with local farmers to secure a feedstock supply for the new biogas plant.

The new biogas facility forms part of an initiative to take advantage of the region’s renewable energy potential. This initiative has also seen Gaziantep venture into solar and wind sources. l

Xergi set to build their biggest biogas plant yet at milk powder factory Danish biogas plant specialists Xergi are set to build their largest biogas plant yet, supplying Danish dairy company Arla Foods with green energy for the production of milk powder in Videbaek in western Denmark.

Once completed, the new plant will supply Arla Food’s milk powder production with green energy in the form of biogas, which is converted to electricity and heat. According to Xergi, the project is on

10 • July/August 2017

schedule and the plant will be up and running by August 2018.

The plant will include five biogas digesters with a capacity of 9,500 cubic metres. It will be able to handle around 600,000 tonnes of biomass a year and produce 16.5 million cubic metres of biomethane.

“The plant will be built in accordance with our design principles which over the years have ensured stable and high gas production at a number of large biogas plants delivered in countries such as the UK, France, the US and Denmark. The plant will be equipped with a number of new technical solutions developed by Xergi. The

solutions improve the gas yield from organic residues from the food industry, agriculture and households.

The Nature Energy Videbaek plant will therefore — internationally — become an important reference plant in the transition to green energy,” said Jørgen Ballermann, CEO of Xergi.

40,000 tonnes of Perlac 14, a by-product from the Arla plant, will be digested each year in the biogas facility, helping the company produce its own green energy. The rest of the plant’s capacity will primarily be filled by biomass from agriculture in the form of manure and deep litter. A smaller quantity of

residual products from other food industries will also end up in the biogas plant. The residual biomass can be used as fertiliser by local farmers.

“When manure and deep litter are treated in the biogas plant the nutrients are made easily available for the crops.

This means that farmers can utilise the fertilisation value of their manure better and at the same time new nutrients recycled from industry are continuously being supplied to agriculture. In this way agriculture receives greener and more environmentallyfriendly fertiliser while Arla Foods receives a green energy supply,” said Jørgen Ballermann. l

Bioenergy Insight

biogas news

Indian Biogas Association calls for end to tax on biogas The Indian Biogas Association (IBA) has launched a campaign calling for the government to remove taxes on biogas products in the country.

A nationwide association of biogas operators, manufacturers and plant planners, IBA has just launched an online petition calling on the government to exempt biogas from Goods and Services Tax (GST).

“According to the Government of India, all Biogas (biogas plant, piped biogas and bio-CNG) and its products are considered to attract 12% GST. Earlier, no

CST (Central Sales Tax) was applicable and many states including Rajasthan and Gujarat exempted it from VAT also. Then why 12% GST?” the IBA writes in the petition.

IBA stresses that biogas presents a solution to India’s reliance on imported fossil fuels, one which would ease the economic burden on the country while also improving its environmental performance. The petition stresses that the biogas industry could offer a host of benefits to India.

“We all know that biogas is a form of energy, which not only gives energy, but also has got biofertiliser associated with it. Once streamlined, it can contribute to Swachh Bharat, renewable energy, organic farming,

decentralised energy generation, upliftment for women, employment generation, rural and social upliftment and many more benefits. These points are an essential part of forming a healthy eco-system based on a circular economy.”

As well as calling for supporters to sign its petition hosted on thepetitionsite. com, IBA also asks them to send letters to decision makers such as the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, showing support for biogas’ exemption from GST. l

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July/August 2017 • 11

wood pellet news Wood-to-energy facility acquired by NWH Group Dalkeith, Midlothianbased industrial services company NWH Group has acquired the business and assets of DJ Laing Recycling Solutions’ wood processing division.

The six-acre Petterden, Scotland site processes recycled wood into biomass for energy plants. It will be able to supply 60,000 tonnes of biomass per year. As part of the acquisition ten staff will transfer to NWH Group, while £1.8 million (€2.04m) will be added in turnover to the company. NWH expects to

expand the site’s output of fuel for sustainable energy while also recruiting more employees to support the growth.

Mark Williams, managing director at NWH Group, said: “This acquisition represents the addition of a new product to our portfolio, and ensures we have the in-house expertise to further process our wood waste into a product which can be taken to a sustainable end use. It means that we are in better control of wood commodity prices, stabilising the market for our customers, and ensuring that the wood is being recycled responsibly.”

David Laing, managing director at D J Laing, said: “I have always had a special interest in waste recycling and

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enjoyed our company’s role in pioneering wood recycling in Scotland. I’d like to thank the Petterden team for all their hard work and commitment throughout the past 25 years.

I look forward to seeing the team and the business continue to progress with NWH.”

Ever since it first entered the industry in 1992, D J Laing has been at the forefront of wood recycling in Scotland. Based in Carnoustie and currently employing 100 staff and local subcontractors, the company successfully recycles up to 95% of its incoming wood waste. l

South Korean wood pellet demand set to grow, but will longterm agreements?

Demand for industrial wood pellets in South Korea is set to grow “significantly” over the next fifty years, according to a new white paper from FutureMetrics.

Despite this continued growth, South Korean utilities are likely to stick to short-term tendering strategies for securing wood pellet fuel for the foreseeable future, even though the lack of long-term agreements presents challenges on the supply side.

Authored by William Strauss, the white paper explains the growth in demand for industrial wood pellets in South Korea and why it is expected to continue.

Strauss describes how South Korea’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requires the country’s 13 largest power companies to steadily increase their renewable energy mix over the period 2012 — 2024.

“Some of that renewable power is being generated from new wind and solar installations.

However, the growth in the South Korean demand for

electricity and the relatively low cost to modify a PC power plant to use pellets has resulted in a rapid increase in wood pellet co-firing” writes Strauss.

“South Korean utilities that convert plants for full-firing wood pellets will be very profitable.”

As demand for wood pellets in South Korea continues to increase, Strauss suggests “it is difficult to conceive of how pellet production capacity matching the expected South Korean demand can be deployed without longterm agreements.”

He speculates that a change in policy regarding long-term agreements could be on the cards.

“Perhaps there will be change in policy in South Korea.

That is a distinct possibility.

Without a policy change, there is currently no long-term guarantee to the revenue per MWh from the South Korean RPS. All other nations that have a developed pellet co-firing or full-firing power markets have policies that support and de-risk long-term pellet supply agreements.” l

Bioenergy Insight

wood pellet news

Enviva’s Cottondale plant incurs minor damage due to fire Pellet producer Enviva has stated that its Florida-based Cottondale plant incurred minor damage due to a fire at the facility on 10 June, 2017.

However, the company has also stated that operations have now resumed.

In a press statement, Enviva said the fire occurred on a conveyor belt on the morning of 10 June, causing minor damages.

After a thorough inspection, the company said the plant returned to safe operations, at full capacity, by mid-afternoon.

An Enviva spokesman said: “Two employees were evaluated for smoke inhalation and have returned to work.

“There was no further disruption to operations and production capacity has not been impacted.

The damaged conveyor belt has been repaired. We appreciate the efforts by the local fire departments and first responders who quickly controlled the incident and ensured the health of employees.”

Enviva’s Cottondale facility began production in April, 2008, and was acquired by Enviva Partners as part of the acquisition of Green Circle Bioenergy in January, 2015. The plant has a production capacity of 700k tonnes per year, manufactured from a mix of untreated raw wood, waste wood and residuals. Pellets produced at the Cottondale facility carry ENplus quality certification that indicates they are suitable for use by both industrial and residential customers.

The facility employs more than 100 people including technicians, engineers and operators. Pellets produced at this facility are exported from Port Panama City, Florida, for international customers. l

Bioenergy Insight

July/August 2017 • 13

xx Bioenergy

technology news

Dong Energy links up with UK power giants The UK-based Carbon Trust has launched a new collaborative initiative, the Energy Systems Innovation Platform (ESIP),

to bring together prominent energy companies Centrica, Dong Energy, SSE, Scottish Power, Statoil and Wood Group,

to solve key issues currently preventing a more effective transition to a low cost and low-carbon energy system.

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14 • July/August 2017

Collectively, ESIP partners represent almost 50% of the electricity supply market in the UK and hold significant renewable energy and conventional generation portfolios. ESIP has also received initial support from the Scottish Government and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

In a statement, the ESIP said: “This collaboration will enable partners to develop solutions to overcome barriers currently deterring investment in flexibility solutions such as energy storage.

“Solutions will be based on rigorous and transparent analysis and relate to issues such as regulation, lack of transparency in decision making and longterm business models necessary to encourage the right investments now to potentially save billions of pounds a year for consumers by 2030.”

Each partner brings perspectives and experience from across the UK energy system and through ESIP will take an impartial and technology neutral perspective on opportunities for energy storage to provide increasingly needed flexibility services to the UK’s electricity system.

Last year, the Carbon Trust led a study with industry and government partners, that identified that the UK could be saving up to £2.4bn (€2.72bn) every year by 2030 if flexibility solutions such as energy storage were integrated into the UK electricity system to help balance the grid, improve the utilisation of renewable energy assets and reduce or defer the need for costly grid reinforcements. l

Bioenergy Insight

technology Bioenergy A Spanish company has unveiled an innovation that converts biomass heaters into micro-cogeneration systems

Electricity generation from fire

B

iomass heating systems like stoves, inserts or fireplaces usually include electrical equipment such as fans or pumps, which require external energy input to work. This means that not all energy coming from biomass heating equipment comes directly from renewable sources such as wood.

Could we generate electricity directly from fire?

Spain-based company Nabla Thermoelectrics has recently found the answer to this question — its new product called bioThERS (biomass Thermoelectric Energy Recovery System). It is able to transform heat into electricity to power all types of electronic equipment included in stoves and inserts, such as fans, water recirculation pumps, and lighting.

The goal is to get stoves to operate fully autnomously and sustainably, using only the energy obtained from burning biomass to operate. The idea is to transform conventional wood heating systems into a micro-cogeneration system (combined heat and power).

Its operation is simple, once installed on the bottom of the combustion chamber bioThERS generates electricity when pellet or wood is burned. During this phase, a temperature difference is created between the hot face, in contact with fire, and the cold side of the system, in contact with a heat sink cooled by ambient

Bioenergy Insight

Power generation from fire with thermoelectric generator

Thermoelectric module made of multiple pairs o N-type and P-type semiconductors

The first thermoelectric generator for biomass heating systems, bioThERS

bioThERS applied to different biomass heating systems

Thermoelectric module made of multiple pairs of N-type and P-type semiconductors

air. This temperature difference enables thermoelectric modules to generate electric power.

A thermoelectric module consists of two dissimilar thermoelectric materials joining in their ends — n-type (negatively charged) and p-type (positively charged) semiconductors.

A direct electric current

will flow in the circuit when there is a temperature difference between the two materials. Generally, the current magnitude has a proportional relationship with the temperature difference (i.e., the more the temperature difference, the higher the current).

Nabla Thermoelectrics is a new company funded by

oil and gas specialist Repsol and formed by three young entreprenuers from Spainbased University of Girona.

The company was created with the aim of bringing new thermoelectric developments to the market, allowing the biomass sector to meet the challenges of today’s society — increasing energy efficiency, reducing CO2 emissions and saving fuel.

Several companies are already incorporating this technology into their products. This innovation will be presented at forthcoming bioenergy exhibitions,including the ExpoBiomasa Fair in Valladolid, Spain. l For more information:

This article was written by Albert and Eduard Massaguer, cofounders of Nabla Thermoelectrics.

Visit: www.nablatherm.com

July/August 2017 • 15

Bioenergy plant update

Plant update –Scandinavia Xergi Location Alternative fuel Feedstock

Videbaek, Western Denmark Biogas Perlac 14 from nearby milk powder production plant, manure and deep litter Construction / Danish biogas plant specialist Xergi expansion / is set to build its largest biogas acquisition plant yet, supplying Danish dairy company Arla Foods with green energy for the production of milk powder in Videbaek in western Denmark. Once completed, the new plant will supply Arla Food’s milk powder production with green energy in the form of biogas, which is converted to electricity and heat. According to Xergi, the project is on schedule and the plant will be up and running by August 2018 Project start date May 2017 Completion date August 2018 (projected) Dong Energy Location Alternative fuel Capacity Construction / expansion / acquisition

Denmark, Norway and west Shetland Biomass N/A Denmark-based utility energy firm Dong Energy has made a commitment to renewables and agreed to divest its entire oil and gas business to Ineos in a deal worth up to $1.3bn (€1.16bn). Earlier in 2017, the company said it would stop using coal by 2023. Dong Energy has decided that by 2023, coal will no longer be used as fuel at the company’s power stations. The decision is a result of the company’s vision to lead the way in the transformation to a sustainable energy system and to create a leading green energy company. Since 2006, Dong Energy has reduced its coal consumption by 73%, and the company has now decided to entirely phase out the use of coal.

By 2023, the use of coal as fuel at Dong Energy’s power stations will have stopped completely. The power stations will be replacing coal with sustainable biomass Project start date June 2017 Completion date 2023

16 • July/August 2017

Local Residue Energy (Loreen) Project Location Alternative fuel Capacity Feedstock

Sweden Biomass N/A Residues from agriculture and wood-based manufacturing Construction / A Sweden-based combined heat expansion / and power (CHP) consortium acquisition has said that it is pushing ahead with its project and has secured €2.9m worth of funding. The project consortium is formed of Meva Energy, the developer of small, circular energy systems with a minimum of distribution and parasitic losses, the research institute of Sweden (RISE) and a leading international furniture manufacturer. The initial feasibility studies showed that Meva Energy’s gasification processes will be able to produce heat and power in the range below the commercial viability of existing steam-turbine technology — typically less than 10MWe Project start date 2016 Completion date N/A Investment €2.9 million

Norske Skog Location Alternative fuel Capacity Feedstock Construction / expansion / acquisition

Designer/builder Completion date

Halden, Norway Biogas 490 Nm3/h of biomethane Sewage sludge from paper production A paper mill in Norway has installed a biogas upgrading system to process gas from its sewage treatment plant Norske Skog’s Saugbrugs plant in Halden, Norway, has a history dating back to 1575. The mill has three supercalendered magazine paper production machines with a combined 500,000 tons annual capacity. The plant’s new biogas upgrade system has been provided and installed by Pentair Haffmans Pentair Haffmans April 2017

Bioenergy Insight

plant update Bioenergy Meliadine Gold Mine Location Alternative fuel Capacity Feedstock Construction / expansion / acquisition

Helsinki, Finland Combined heat and power 28 MW Light fuel or natural gas Finnish technology group Wärtsilä will supply a 28MW combined heat and power (CHP) plant to the Meliadine Gold Mine project in Canada, owned by Agnico Eagle Mines. The order includes five Wärtsilä 34DF dual-fuel engines running on light fuel oil (LFO) or natural gas. Wärtsilä’s scope includes the power generation and CHP equipment supply, plant commissioning and training. The plant is expected to be operational during the first quarter of 2019. The order is included in Wärtsilä’s order book for the fourth quarter of 2016.

The power plant will provide baseload power for this new mine and mining facilities located in the Nunavut Territory, in the north of Canada. In addition to supplying electricity for the equipment and operations, the plant will also capture heat from the engines and engine exhaust and deliver that heat to the underground mine and buildings. This will achieve an extremely high level of overall efficiency Designer/builder Wärtsilä Project start date N/A Completion date First quarter 2019 (projected) Investment N/A

E.ON Biofor Sverige Location Alternative fuel Capacity Construction / expansion / acquisition

North west of Stockholm Biogas 6,800,000m3 of biomethane Swedish utility E.ON Biofor Sverige has signed a contract with waste-to-energy technology firm, Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI), to build Scandinavia’s first large Kompogas dry anaerobic digestion plant. According to HZI it will generate enough biogas every year to replace nearly seven million litres of fossil fuels, thus contributing to Sweden’s strategy of decarbonising its economy Designer/builder Hitachi Zosen Inova Project start date Construction begins September 2017 Completion date First feed into the anaerobic digester scheduled for August 2018

Swedish subsidiary of E.ON Location Alternative fuel Capacity Feedstock Construction / expansion / acquisition

Stockholm, Sweden Energy from waste 100MWh Municipal and industrial waste German energy-from-waste equipment manufacturer Steinmüller Babcock Environment has secured a contract to build the boiler and furnace unit for a new energy-from-waste plant in northwest Stockholm, Sweden. The company secured the deal from the Swedish subsidiary of the German utility E.ON, to supply the singleline energy-from-waste plant. According to Steinmüller, with a performance of 100 MWth, the plant will supply 80% of the annual heating needs of E.ON’s district heating network in Högbytorp.

Commissioning is planned for the end of 2019 Designer/builder Steinmüller Babcock Environment Project start date March 2017 Completion date Commissioning planned for late 2019 Investment N/A

Fortum Location Alternative fuel Capacity Construction / expansion / acquisition

Järvenpää, Finland Biomass 1MWh Finnish energy firm Fortum has installed a lithium-ion battery, which is believed to be the biggest in the Nordic countries, at its biomass power plant in Järvenpää for storage use. The investment was part of Fortum’s Finland-based ‘Batcave project’ and cost around €1.6 million. Fortum will also receive a 30% energy investment subsidy from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment for the project.

The battery’s nominal output is 2MW, its energy capacity 1MWh and it consists of approximately 6600 lithium-ion cells. It has been supplied by French battery company Saft Designer/builder Saft Completion date March 2017

Gemidan Ecogi Location Alternative fuel Capacity Feedstock Construction / expansion / acquisition

Bioenergy Insight

Southern Zealand, Denmark Biogas 24,000 tonnes a year Domestic food waste and garden waste Gemidan Ecogi has been awarded a contract by the Danish government to establish an anaerobic digestion facility

*This list is based on information made available to Bioenergy Insight at the time of printing. If you would like to update the list with additional plants for future issues, email liz@woodcotemedia.com

July/August 2017 • 17

incident report Bioenergy A summary of the recent major explosions, fires and leaks in the bioenergy industry Date

Location

Company

Incident information

12/06/17 Madurai, India

Grace Line Bio Energy

A gas cylinder exploded at a project to generate biogas from waste, killing one person and injuring three others.

Initial investigation suggests human error caused the disaster after one of the victims lit a match stick next to the cylinder.

The Grace Line Bio Energy project aims to produce 400 cubic metres of biogas from solid and liquid waste, generating 62.5kVA of electricity.

10/06/17

Enviva

Pellet producer Enviva has stated that its Florida-based Cottondale plant incurred minor damage due to a fire at the facility on 10 June, 2017.

Operations had resumed at the plant by 13 June.

Two employees were evacuated for smoke inhalation, but have now returned to work.

Biomass UK No.2

A fire risk report commissioned by Barry Town Council has raised concerns about the Biomass UK No.2 development on Barry dockland.

The report classified the site as “high risk,” and particularly highlights issues concerning a lack of information, and insufficient detail.

Cottondale, Florida, US

10/06/17 Barry, Wales

06/06/17

Ceredigion, Wales

N/A

Officers from Natural Resources Wales are investigating a river pollution incident in Ceredigion, which they believe was caused by leaked effluent from an anaerobic digestion plant.

NRW officers are working with the anaerobic site’s operators to clear the effluent and minimise the pollution.

1/06/17

Maine, USA

Stored Solar

Figures from the Maine Public Utilities Commission show the Stored Solar Jonesboro biomass plant has now been offline for more than two months.

Stored Solar claims the plant remains offline due to a shortage of wood and a leaking boiler at the facility. The plant first went offline in the last week of March.

29/05/2017

Glenrothes, Scotland

Sainc Energy

Following a wave of public objection, the planning application for a 19.8MW biomass plant that would have been situated on land owned

by Fife Council has been rejected. More than a hundred local residents attended a public meeting to voice their objections to the proposed plant, and a campaign group was set-up to lodge objections.

23/05/17

Spokane, US

City of Spokane

The city of Spokane plans to appeal a $60,000 (€53,543) fine it received for alleged training and safety failures that resulted in two employees being burnt at its waste-to-energy plant in October 2016.

In April 2017, Spokane was cited for ten violations of state law after two of its employees had received severe steam burns.

27/04/17

Minnesota, US

Benson Power

Employees at Benson Power in western Minnesota were told that the biomass plant could close, according to media reports.

The plant, which burns turkey litter to generate bioenergy power, processes 500,000 tonnes of biomass annually. The potential closure is supposedly due to biomass being less profitable than other renewables, according to an article on MPR News.

17/04/17

Cornwall, UK

N/A

A five metre-by-five metre building used to house a biomass boiler burnt down in Launceston. Fire crews had to wear breathing apparatus to tackle the blaze. No one was hurt in the incident.

18 • July/August 2017

Bioenergy Insight

biogas storage Bioenergy Concrete tank designs are increasingly being sought after to help AD operators maintain safe storage solutions

Concrete in action

F

or a popular longestablished farm business near Reading, UK, JP Concrete has created phase one of an all-encompassing storage and safety solution to ensure the smooth and efficient operation of a new anaerobic digestion (AD) plant.

Located at Hill Farm, renowned meat and vegetable suppliers Butlers Services, needed to create concrete bunding around its three digestate tanks, as well as a silage clamp and a retaining

tanks in the event of a failure, but also to act as a retaining wall for the earth bank supporting the road.

The total length of wall required was more than 300m in total, the wide range of criteria which the walls had to meet, meant a variety of JP Concrete’s pre-cast modular retaining wall panels had to be used to meet the numerous angle-forming corners needed to cope with the various stepped units for the ramp.

Supplied in two-metre lengths, which saved

JP Concrete’s precast silage clamp walls at the AD plant in Reading

We knew that having three digesters on our farm’s layout would present a huge challenge wall to create a ramp into the bund. With the location of the bund in very close proximity to the main access road to the farm, the wall on one elevation had to be suitable not only for the containment of the fluid inside the digester

significantly on installation time, the panels were made in self-compacting C60/75 strength concrete, which also benefits from a superior interlocking system and unformed colour for a better, aesthetically pleasing finish.

New silage clamp walls for Butler Service’s AD plant

Bioenergy Insight

New bund-ramp walls from JP Concrete at Hill Farm

JP Concrete also provided all design calculations and drafting services, as well as carrying out the installation and sealing of the units.

Russell Butler from Butler Services says: “From the planning process to technical documentation including full design for the walls and foundation, JP Concrete have gone out of their way to help us bring this new renewable energy facility into our business portfolio.

“We knew that having three digesters (to supply clean electricity to 2,000 homes) on our farm’s layout would present a huge challenge, but they have worked

alongside us every step of the way to ensure that we will have a highly robust, safe and efficient AD plant.”

JP Concrete will shortly be returning to Hill Farm to complete the second phase of the project — closing the last part of the bund wall, which has been left open for vehicular access. l

For more information:

This article was written by Chris French, a writer specialising in environmental topics.

Visit: www.jpconcrete.co.uk

July/August 2017 • 19

Bioenergy big interview

Coal-to-biomass: The wrong conversion?

Biomass subsidies are not fit for purpose, according to some environmental groups

T

By Liz Gyekye

he Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) sees coal-to-biomass conversions as the wrong path to take for the world’s coal phase out journey. Here, Liz Gyekye interviews senior advocate Sasha Stashwick about the organisation’s views.

What does your campaign focus on?

The campaign that I work on is focused both on climate change and renewable energy. It also focuses on land and wildlife issues, which touches on both concerns.

Right now the wood pellet manufacturing industry is turning the Southeast of the US into its ‘ground zero’. This place is not only home to some of the most biodiverse, ecologically valuable forests in North America, but also the world. It is also a place with little regulation of forestry practices.

What is happening at the moment?

Right now, the Southeastern US is the number one exporter of wood pellets in the world.

In 2014, we surpassed Canada as the top exporter of wood pellets in the world. So, we don’t actually burn wood pellets for electricity in the US. Overwhelmingly, the pellets are exported to Europe. That’s why the NRDC has been coming to Europe every year, because the policy signals and demand are coming out of Europe, in particular the UK.

20 • July/August 2017

The UK is the largest purchaser by far of US wood pellets. Power generation company Drax is being heavily subsidised by the UK taxpayer to convert its boilers from coal to burning wood. The science is telling us that when you do that you are increasing carbon pollution.

You also increase pollution of particular matter and a certain type of air pollution.

In addition to that, the harvesting practices being used by industry and extra demand for wood that the industry is creating is leading to unsustainable results in these forests. These are very, very valuable forests.

The industry is using whole trees, large-diameter wood and hardwoods. Sometimes, the wood is coming out of wetland forests.

In 2013, the Wall Street Journal did the first investigation into clearcutting of wetland forests and they reported that 100-year old wetland trees were being

NRDC senior advocate Sasha Stashwick

cut down to source Enviva.

Subsequent to the WSJ report, NRDC did its own investigation with our team on the ground. They fly drones and airplanes over the clear cuts to show you what is happening and the investigators will follow the trucks to show the chain of custody. We did the same thing in 2015 and 2016.

It is not a one off, this is happening routinely.

The industry is saying that it is sourcing just the waste and residues from the forest.

However, the demand is so massive that a lot of whole trees and large-diameter ground wood is being shipped, turned into pellets and burned in an inefficient process.

The industry argues that they are sustainably sourcing wood and sustainably managing forests.

What do you say to this? Isn’t it like mowing your lawn?

It’s not like mowing your lawn. Your lawn has nowhere near the ecological value of a wetland forest. In many instances, these forests are being clear cut and there is no requirement to replant.

When you mow your lawn you are not getting credit for zero-carbon electricity. This is a trick of accounting where they are being subsidised because “ostensibly” they are generating low-carbon electricity when, in fact, when you burn trees they are not very energy dense. It’s a very inefficient fuel. It’s much less energy dense than coal.

Essentially, you burn a lot more trees to generate the

same amount of electricity.

So, when you are producing that power at Drax, you are actually increasing carbon pollution. You are putting a lot more carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

Even if you replant the tree, the trees grow back but over many, many decades. In the meantime, you have increased your carbon emissions. They are being subsidised to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds every year under the false premise that this is a zero-carbon fuel. It’s actually not good for the climate and is creating pressure on the forests.

Yes, but what would you say to those who say that the Southeastern US states are managing their forests sustainably?

This is the biggest red herring.

This is the misconception we hear a lot. People assume that the US is an advanced economy and developed country and we must have laws governing our forestry industry. We have very good laws for our public forests, but for our private forests there are hardly any regulations or any laws. In the southeast, 95% of the forests are privately owned.

There are very complex issues with land ownership in the south and opposition to federal intrusion into states’ rights. This is due to a variety of reasons that goes back to before the Civil War. There is a very long history of opposing regulation coming from central government. Federal

Bioenergy Insight

big interview Bioenergy Drax’s response IN RESPONSE, to Stashwick’s claims

made in this article, Andy Koss, Drax Power CEO, told Bioenergy Insight: “We upgraded half of the power station to use sustainable biomass instead of coal making Drax the UK’s largest single site renewable power generator.

Last year we produced 16% of the UK’s renewable electricity, enough to power four million households.

“Our emissions are closely monitored by the Environment Agency and are well within statutory limits. The biomass generating units deliver carbon savings

regulations do not extend to private forest land in the US. At the state level, there are no regulations on the books of the states in the south of the US. If you want to clear some trees, you don’t need to answer to anybody and you don’t need a permit. You can do whatever you want with your land. The south is kind of the Wild West of forestry.

The region has small private landowners that have small holdings of forest. It may be an individual that needs to sell their trees to pay for university for their kids or help their kids with marriage costs. Someone comes knocking on their door and says we want to buy your trees and they then sell it to them. That’s how a lot of the deals get done.

Even if you have the most sustainably-managed forest and you harvested the most perfect tree, in the most sustainable way, if you then take that tree and burn it for electricity it’s one of the lowest value uses of wood. It’s one of the most inefficient things you can do with that resource, distorts the market for wood and it increases climate pollution.

All that carbon goes into the atmosphere and nobody is accounting for that right now.

So, if Drax didn’t use wood pellets, what would you prefer them to use if not coal?

We are very supportive of

Bioenergy Insight

of 80% compared to when they used coal — this is independently audited.

“In addition, we’re cost effective, producing 16% of the power for 10% of the government support paid to renewable electricity generators.

“Our biomass comes from working forests where biodiversity is protected, productivity is maintained, and growth exceeds what is harvested. We require all our suppliers to meet tough screening and sustainability standards set by the UK government and independently audited.

“The majority of the wood we use

the UK’s commitment to coal phase out. The UK is one of the largest economies in the world to commit to coal phase out. The UK has a statutory commitment to reduce its climate emissions — that’s terrific. We wouldn’t want to see anybody backing away from robust targets and committed actions.

However, unfortunately, the coal is being replaced by fuel that is even worse for the environment. What we would like to see is investment in energy efficiency and solar and wind. We commissioned an analysis from Vivid Economics, last year, that actually looked at the cost of coal phase out and compared the economics of coal phase out with biomass, and solar and wind.

The prices of solar and wind are coming down more rapidly than anybody could have foreseen. They continue to beat government projections on how costs are declining. Whereas, biomass is a mature technology and the costs are not going to come down. It has to be subsidised in perpetuity. The subsidies are much better invested in solar and offshore and on-shore wind.

The analysis demonstrated that solar and wind can meet the UK’s demand for electricity and at a cheaper price.

We are doing another analysis later this year.

comes from the expansive working forests of the US South. Since the 1950s, forest stocks in this area have increased by more than 100%.

“The primary product from these forests is high grade timber used to supply other industries — including construction and furniture making. We take the low-grade material including tree tops, limbs, sawmill residues, misshapen and diseased trees not suitable for other use, as well as thinnings — small trees removed to maximise the growth of the forest.”

We published the original last autumn, however, the costs of wind and solar have dramatically decreased again in this short space of time.

So, we have rehired Vivid Economics again to rerun the analysis for us. I think this will produce a stronger result.

Looking at bioenergy as whole, do you think bioenergy has a part to play in the low-carbon economy?

There are low-carbon sources of biomass and high-carbon sources of biomass. Currently, the policy in Britain is all biomass is the same or considered carbon-neutral automatically. Nobody has to account for the emissions when they burn it. We think that’s wrong and the science tells us that it is wrong.

You have to differentiate between low and high carbonsources otherwise you will never be pushing investment towards the good stuff and avoiding the bad stuff. So, true waste and residues (i.e. mill residues at paper mills, for example) when burned in efficient combined heat and power plants are a good use of biomass when they are displacing fossil fuels.

Taking whole trees and other large-diameter wood and burning them in very inefficient old coal plants for electricity is one of the most inefficient things you could do with biomass.

We would like a limited

supply of true waste residues to go to a much higher value use. When you are creating such a large demand for wood in the energy sector, it has a distorting impact on the market. Hence, you are raising prices for traditional wood panel product industries. So, you will find wood panel producers or the paper industry being concerned over subsidies for the bioenergy industry. These sectors are now basically competing for wood and raising their prices. There is a big market distortion problem as well.

What would happen if the forest owners stopped supplying biomass to power plants? Would they not end up supplying them to other industries instead?

The concern is that this is an additional, rapid-growing, massive demand for wood.

So, either one of two things could happen. In the managed forests, it could mean that the wood will go to the wood panel industry or the paper industry. When you have this massive source of demand, you are displacing that supply.

It has to go somewhere. New forests have to be cleared or the rotations of forests are shortened and all of that reduces the carbon cycling throughout the forest. At the same time, in the wetland forest there are very free perfect trees for soft timber.

In previous times, the forester

July/August 2017 • 21

Bioenergy big interview would take out the perfect trees to sell for timber and stuff like that. Now, there is enough of a price signal and enough demand from the energy industry to just clear cut that forest. So, if tomorrow this was shut down I think those forests would still be left standing. You would not have harvesting from this natural forest or you could have very selective harvesting from these natural forests, but not with large clear cuts.

What did you think of the Chatham House report on biomass?

I think this was one of the most credible reports published in the last few years. We have been sounding the alarm around the ecological impact of this type of biomass for the last four or five years now. To have a credible, independent report to come out and validate those concerns was great.

One of the key messages in that report is that you cannot consider all biomass carbon-neutral. You have to differentiate between high carbon and low-carbon sources. Subsidies should only be going to true low-carbon sources of biomass, otherwise what’s the point of subsidising a fuel that is worse for the climate, pollution and forests than fossil fuels? I heard it got really great coverage here in the UK, which is great. To cut down forests and burn them for electricity is not a twenty-first century solution.

Forests are one of our best

sources to tackle climate change and we want them to be growing and expanding because they absorb carbon.

It’s just a terrible idea to cut forests down and burn them for electricity.

On the other hand, it could appear quite complex.

The industry is well served

integration) solar and wind into the electricity grid, the analysis by Vivid Economics shows that these sources of energy are still more cost effective than biomass. This industry claim has already been debunked, but it’s on its way to be putting laid to rest once and for all. We need to

Forests are one of our best sources to tackle climate change and we want them to be growing and expanding because they absorb carbon.

It’s just a terrible idea to cut forests down and burn them for electricity by hiding behind different definitions and hiding behind the idea that all the science is not resolved or it’s quite complex. It’s hard for the everyday Londoner or British citizen to understand and say ‘is this green or is this bad?’ Something like the Chatham House report cuts through that and sends a clear message that there is a problem. Subsidies are flowing to a polluting and destructive industry under the name of green energy.

What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?

This is the industry’s top rebuttal to the idea that solar and wind are the answer.

Even accounting for the costs of integrating (system

convince people that they are able to keep the lights on. The starting point of discussion is ‘can solar and wind meet the energy demands of the UK and keep the lights on?’

What would your vision be for a decarbonised world?

The more bioenergy you put on the grid, the more carbon emissions you have. This will make it hard to meet your carbon targets. Our strategy would be to make sure there are no further conversions to biomass in the UK and elsewhere throughout the EU. We want investment to flow to truly clean energy technology.

You are not saying that all bioenergy is bad, are you?

No. We are not saying all bioenergy is bad. The industry

is already saying we just use waste residues. So, it should not be a problem to change the regulation.

At this scale, powering a Drax-size plant with wood requires a massive amount of pellets and a high demand of pellets. It is unlikely that you could meet that demand with truly low-carbon fuel.

That’s why the industry plays games with the definitions and categories, because they know that they need to harvest a lot of wood to get their subsidies. Subsidies should only be going to efficient combined heat and power applications of biomass. This is what the European Commission’s Renewable Energy Directive plan has stated.

The UK government has cut back on subsidies to most green technologies?

What do you say to this?

I am not an expert on UK politics. I know that the commitment to coal phase out remains in place. We are interested that coal phase out is done right and a key part of a strong coal phase out, is coal phase out without bioenergy.

So, we want to make sure governments do not view coal power plant conversions to biomass as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

The commitment to coal phase out remains, Paris COP21 remains and the Climate Change Act remains.

Drax are increasing pollution of particulate matter. l

Enviva’s response AN ENVIVA, spokeswoman said: “Wood bioenergy improves the environment when forest stock and carbon sinks remain stable1. In Enviva’s operational areas, forest area has increased by over 300,000 acres and forest inventory has grown by more than 10%, since our first facility opened in 2011.

“We know this because we track and trace the specific origin of our wood, ensuring that all raw material is sourced from healthy, working forests that will regenerate successfully after harvest. At the time of harvest, these forests have an average age of 35 years.”

Enviva is proud to deliver durable, sustainable environmental benefits.

22 • July/August 2017

1 Wang, Weiwei, Dwivedi, Puneet, Abt, Robert, and Khanna, Madhu. (2015). Carbon savings with transatlantic trade in pellets: accounting for market-driven effects.

Environmental Research Letters. November 2015.

1 IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report.

Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 p. 62 1 Matthews et al. (2013). Cumulative carbon as a policy framework for achieving climate stabilisation.

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July/August 2017 • 23

Bioenergy biomass focus

Undersowing trial promotes sustainable maize farming

Sustainable maize farming

M

aize is a very useful crop. It feeds livestock, and it is a key energy source for anaerobic digestion (AD). Securing a reliable feedstock supply is vital to the profitability of any AD plant. Most farmers will have had a straightforward harvest, but maize has the tendency to leave the ground totally bare. There is more than meets the eye when it comes to farming maize, because it is the soil that suffers.

The main issues revolve around nutrient levels and soil structure. Nobody wants soil running into watercourses or local lanes,

Maize has a tendency to leave a farming ground totally bare

or soil that is lacking in nutrients. Recent estimates

by Cranfield Soil scientists show soil degradation costing the UK £900m (€1.1m) to

£1.4m per year. In fact, soil regulations are changing to address this issue. With food security concerns in mind, there is mounting pressure

to adopt sustainable farming practices. To this end, Countryside Stewardship schemes and regulations have altered so that three new Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) have replaced Soil Protection Reviews (SPR’s).

This is to ensure more proactive soil management, maintain minimum soil cover over winter, and reduce soil loss from erosion.

This poor environmental profile developing around maize calls for a solution.

Undersowing maize with other grasses has been presented as a way to make maize farming more sustainable. The idea is that certain cover crops

Trial facts

Post-harvest treatment – Cover crop

• The trial took place on Hilley Farm, North Shropshire.

• Full field length strips were undersown using six treatments.

- ChloroFiltre SCM (Hybrid ryegrass 50% + Hairy Vetch 50%) - Aberniche (Hybrid festulolium ryegrass) Low seed rate - Aberniche + Clover + Vetch - Tall Fescue - Perennial ryegrass - Aberniche (Hybrid festulolium ryegrass) Normal seed rate - No under-sowing with scuffling of the surface and without [rain pan quickly developing on bare compacted soil]

• Chlorofiltre SCM [Hybrid ryegrass 50% + Hairy vetch 50%] Seedrate: @ 25kg/ha • Black oats cv.E04 seedrate: @30kg/ha • Hybrid rye cv. SU Drive seedrate: 30kg/ha - The seeding was done with an Einbock grass harrow with seed box about a month post-establishment.

- All treatments showed good establishment.

- The strong sward growth promised additional grazing for the hill sheep that come to the farm over winter in other areas it also used for early spring grazing for dairy cows.

- In addition good weather this year allowed for the planting of post-harvest cover crops allowing comparison between the two establishment timings.

24 • July/August 2017

Bioenergy Insight

biomass focus Bioenergy

can be sown with maize to maintain soil structure and valuable nutrients. At Hilley Farm in Shropshire, UK, a trial has taken place to measure the outcome of undersowing.

A number of organisations have come together for the occasion, namely Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Agrovista UK, Hilley Farm (Pentre), and E4environment, the Environment Agency, and Meres and Mosses Landscape Partnership.

Maximising soil to seed contact Barry Jones, of Hilley Farm, was eager to find a solution to reduce the negative outcomes of maize farming. He says: “As a practise to improve soil in terms of fibre content and

Undersowing maize with other grasses has been presented as a way to make maize farming more sustainable friability, maize undersowing is of great benefit.

“The important thing is to apply it post weed control and to do it in a way to maximise soil to seed contact. We used a seed drill and tine harrow combination in between the rows of maize. Once set up it worked a treat.”

The trial itself was designed by technical manager Antony Wade of Agrovista. As part of the Hilley Farm trial, a number of undersowing and cover-crop options were

Maize undersowing was trialled in Shropshire to reduce the negative outcomes of maize farming

Bioenergy Insight

tested. Representatives from the supporting organisations gathered to see for themselves how undersowing could be a game changer.

In summary, the six under-sown treatments all germinated successfully and formed substantial swards helped by the showery weather post drilling.

Hilley Farm decided they represented grazing quality potential. The three postharvest applications were disappointing and it was felt

a risky approach. Germination in the post-harvest treatments was poor and sward development inadequate.

Wade says: “The trial showed the fantastic potential of this low cost establishment technique in providing a green cover post-harvest of the maize crop that stabilises the soil mitigating against erosion whilst improving the structure of the soil so that it is more resilient to subsequent field work and benefits following crops.

“Perennial ryegrass gave the best ground cover and surface rooting with tall fescue offering deeper structural rooting. Undersowing is a win-win for maize growers, they keep their soil and nutrients in the field whilst getting additional grazing and improving their soil.”

Pete Lambert, river projects manager at Shropshire Wildlife Trust is hopeful for the future of maize undersowing. He concludes: “We hope the trial will spark local debate in Shropshire’s maize growing community and where there is recognised value in the treatments then we hope enhanced cultivations will keep soil where it needs to be, in the field, growing food.” l For more information:

This article was written by Hannah Coles of E4environment.

Visit: www.e4environment.co.uk The full report can be found at https://www.shropshirewildlifetrust. org.uk/farms-and-farming

As part of the Hilley Farm trial, a number of undersowing and cover-crop options were tested

July/August 2017 • 25

Bioenergy regional focus

Since 1990, when Sweden introduced its carbon tax, until 2014, the country has reduced carbon emissions by 25%

How bioenergy helped Sweden move from energy dependence to energy independence

Sweden’s journey to becoming a bioenergy leader

S

weden doesn’t have any of its own sources of fossil energy. To understand how it developed into a worldleading nation in terms of exploiting renewable energy, we must make a brief return to the end of the twentieth century. Then, the country’s energy use was entirely dependent on imported oil. As oil prices rose, the economy was hit hard and welfare was threatened.

At the same time, the book ‘A Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson had launched a global environmental movement that was growing rapidly.

Politically, there was a consensus on both the Right and the Left about the need to change Sweden’s energy use. The country had to utilise more of its domestic energy carriers, with plenty of water and biomass available.

26 • July/August 2017

Politicians chose the ‘polluter pays principle’ which meant that instead of distributing grants to renewables, fossil-derived energy was taxed highly. To protect the environment, Sweden decided on increased taxes on sulphur emissions and in 1990 implemented the introduction of a carbon dioxide tax.

Sweden’s carbon tax is €115 per tonne of CO2, which is four times higher than in any other country and 25 times higher than the price of emissions in “cap and trade”.

The conversion naturally caused strong reactions from companies affected by the heavily increased costs, but Sweden’s politicians remained in favour of the decisions, which meant the whole country had to break away from its oil dependency in order to secure its prosperity and reduce its climate impact.

Today, 54% of Sweden’s

energy comes from renewable energy sources. Bioenergy accounts for one third of all energy used, including lighting, industrial production and transport. Remarkably, 24% of energy use in Sweden’s transport sector is based on alternative fuels.

Success stories The main reasons for Sweden’s success were that there was political unity, and also that the timing was right. Taxing fossil energy use created longterm competitive advantages for all forms of renewable energy. Renewables developed a healthy competition as a result of this measure. On the social side, taxation meant that money flowed into the state, instead of cash flowing through different stimulus packages out of society.

Thus, combined heat and power (CHP) plants could be

built based on bioenergybased district heating. A total of 276 of the country’s municipalities have at least one district heating system.

Even Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, is now almost 100% heated by bioenergy district heating. There are large CHP boilers located in the centre of the city without causing harmful emissions or disturbing problems around fuel management. Many of Stockholm’s residents do not even know that they get their energy from biomass.

Sweden’s pellet production accelerated when oil prices made it profitable to use bioenergy instead of oil.

Sweden, despite having only 10 million inhabitants, is today one of the world’s largest wood pellet users.

The country uses 1.6 million tonnes distributed equally on CHP, industrial and domestic, importing pellets primarily

Bioenergy Insight

regional focus Bioenergy from Estonia and Russia, and exporting to Denmark.

As a result, Sweden is today largely independent of imports from other countries for its energy supply. Energy is mainly produced locally, and the energy supply generates jobs and contributes a lot of money to the local economy instead of exporting it to other regions and countries. Even solar and wind energy were developed, while bioethanol, biodiesel and biogas also had competitive advantages in the transport sector.

Simple roadmap Firstly, avoid all unnecessary energy use and save energy.

It’s been shown that energy consumption in an older building can be reduced by 30-40% with fairly simple measures. By insulating better, changing windows and improving energy recovery, Sweden has created 13,000 job opportunities while reducing energy usage radically.

By revising energy use and switching fossil fuels for cheaper renewable energy, users’ buying power increases and more money circulates around the local economy. The number of jobs created by the conversion is estimated to correspond to 55,000 job opportunities in manufacturing, installation companies and fuel deliveries.

Sweden has also come a long way in terms of recycling.

The circular economy means a focus on using sustainable resources that can be reused again and again, recycling as much as possible of the raw materials used. The recycling industry in Sweden employs 18,600 people.

Forest carbon storage Although bioenergy is Sweden’s largest and most important energy carrier, forests are not cut just to burn. All bioenergy used originates from the residues generated in the forestry and sawmill

Bioenergy Insight

industry. About half of a tree cut in the forest becomes feedstock in the form of branches and peaks, and sawdust. By utilising and upgrading these by-products to energy feedstocks, we can increase the industry’s profitability while replacing fossil energy use with biomass.

Sweden looks differently on the forest’s climate and coal balance than what is sometimes presented in the international debate. It is true that combustion of biomass generates carbon dioxide emissions, but it’s impossible to produce more carbon dioxide through burning a tree than the amount that photosynthesis took out of the atmosphere during the tree’s growth. This means that the carbon returned to the atmosphere will only be equivalent to what the plant has been taking from the atmosphere for just a few decades of its lifecycle. When fossil energy is burnt, carbon dioxide is released which has been locked in the ground for many millions of years.

This naturally contributes to the rise in atmospheric content of carbon dioxide.

Of course, it is true that forests lock in carbon dioxide, but as long as on the surface more forest isn’t harvested than grown, balance is in place. In the Nordic countries, about 80% of the growth is harvested, which means that the forests, despite the withdrawal, bind significantly more carbon dioxide than is released through burning the by-products.

The forest has many values also for recreation and tourism. Conservationprotected natural forests need to be saved, and biodiversity and outdoor life protected, but that’s another debate. In Sweden, there is an awareness that it’s possible to increase forest carbon storage by increasing growth. This means that active forestry with thinning, nutrient recycling and harvesting increases

both growth and yield for the forest owner. An old tree in an unaffected forest grows slower than trees growing in a wellkept forest. Here, it is a shared responsibility to manage the natural capital we have for future generations. Through its forestry, Sweden has doubled its forest area since the end of the 19th Century.

Conclusions • All kinds of waste are a resource • Always stick to the “polluter pays principle” • Knowledge and cooperation are key-factors • Long-term energy policy is necessary • Important to communicate crossdisciplinary and cross-sector • Need of ambassadors and success stories

Since 1990, when Sweden introduced its carbon tax, until 2014, the country has reduced carbon emissions by 25%, mainly by increasing the use of bioenergy by 113%.

With more money remaining in the local economy, during the same period GDP increased by 43%. There is no doubt that the country and its people have become richer by changing the energy system.

Sweden has shown that it is possible to make a difference, and if it’s possible there, many other countries should be able to do the same thing. If only the will and political courage exists. l

For more information:

This article was written by BengtErik Lofgren, CEO and founder of ÄFAB and coordinator of the Swedish Pellet Association.

Visit: www.pelletsforbundet.se Visit: www.afabinfo.com

July/August 2017 • 27

Bioenergy technology BECCS is the future of the bioenergy sector in Sweden

Preparing Sweden for a fossil-free future

S

weden is one of the most ambitious countries in the world when it comes to climate change mitigation. The government aims at making Sweden the first climate neutral welfare country at the latest by 2045. Between 1990 and 2014 the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the country decreased by almost 25%, mainly thanks to the efforts of the energy sector. This sector, which used to be responsible for more than 40% of the country’s GHG emissions in 1990, now emits only 30% of Sweden’s GHGs. This very impressive decrease was due to a large extent to the switch from fossil fuel to biomass for district heating. By investing in renewable energy, Sweden is on track to keep reducing the emissions of this sector.

The transportation sector is now the largest greenhouse gas emitter of the country but reduced its emissions by only 10% over the past 25 years.

Biofuels and electrification might help reduce these emissions down to zero as Sweden committed to a fossil fuel independent vehicle fleet by 2030. Achieving climate neutrality may be even more challenging for agriculture or industry which has increased its emissions since 1990.

However, achieving climate neutrality as a country does not necessarily mean that every sector has to reach the zero emission level.

Indeed, negative emission technologies offer the

28 • July/August 2017

Renewables account for over half of Sweden’s energy

possibility to offset the irreducible emissions of other sectors but also of other countries or to cancel historical emissions. The most mature negative emission technology is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS, also sometimes referred to as BioCCS).

The concept of BECCS is relatively simple: while growing, biomass absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis; when the biomass is converted into electricity, fuel, heat or paper, this CO2 is re-emitted to the atmosphere. This is why bioenergy is usually considered carbon neutral.

Instead of re-emitting this biogenic CO2, factories can

be equipped to capture the CO2 which is then pressurised, transported and injected in a safe geological formation where the CO2 slowly mineralises. Over the whole process CO2 is effectively removed from the atmosphere, a net negative emission is achieved.

Technology-ready Sweden BECCS is already an existing and working technology: a bioethanol facility in Decatur, Illinois, is already injecting 1Mt CO2 underground every year and the waste-to-power facility of Klemetsrud, Oslo, is actively planning to start CO2 capture and storage in the coming years. Other projects

are also at early stages in the US and in Europe.

A recent study submitted to the Environmental Research Letters and conducted by Stockholm-based company Biorecro and the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, has shown that Sweden has very impressive potential for BECCS. Indeed, implementing BECCS on the large CO2 emitters which already make use of bioenergy and are close enough to the sea to allow shipping of the CO2, could lead to 17Mt of negative emissions annually at a cost competitive with Sweden’s current carbon tax, corresponding to an offset of one third of Sweden’s greenhouse gases emissions.

Bioenergy Insight

technology Bioenergy Taking BECCS into account makes Sweden’s climate change mitigation ambition much more realistic.

Of course the question of the cost of such a large scale deployment is crucial. The same study actually shows that the costs of capture, transport and storage of the CO2 is around €80/t CO2 for the paper industry and may be as low as €75/t CO2 for the power sector.

This is much lower than the Swedish carbon tax: €120/t CO2. The cost saving for Swedish society in relation to the current marginal abatement cost would be €600 million per year. Scaling effects and progress in the technology could increase the negative emissions to 23Mt CO2/y and the cost savings to at least €1.5 billion.

The reason most industries, especially in the bioenergy sector, are reluctant to engage in carbon capture and storage is often that they see CO2 transport by pipeline or boats and geological storage as too far from their field of expertise and fear not being able to deal with the associated costs. In order to avoid this barrier, the Norwegian authorities have decided to implement CO2 transport and storage and to assume all related responsibilities. This

means that starting a BECCS project in Scandinavia will soon be much simpler and economically more viable.

Carbon offsets Finally, for the bioenergy sector, negative emissions could provide extra revenue when traded as carbon offsets to other industries and sectors with higher abatement costs.

Many industries are not engaging needed greenhouse gas emission reductions because the costs are too high with respects to the benefits they can currently expect from the European

daily basis to reduce their carbon footprint, but some emissions are extremely difficult to avoid. These irreducible emissions can, however, be compensated by paying a third party willing to make an action beneficial for the climate in the same proportions. For instance, several airlines, train companies or travel agencies, offer to their customers the possibility to compensate the emissions generated by their travel by buying carbon offsets corresponding to trees being planted or cookstoves being replaced in a developing country.

improvement of cookstoves are seeing their additionality seriously questioned by the European Commission. A new generation of carbon offsets that one can actually measure with instruments, like negative emissions with BECCS, is needed.

Unlike emission reduction mechanisms, negative emissions allow to transfer the cost of implementation to sectors exposed to much higher carbon prices. This gives a very interesting advantage to BECCS with respect to other climate change mitigation instruments.

Time to act

Sweden is aiming to become one of the first fossil fuel-free welfare states of the world Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS). Indeed, the current price of one metric tonne of CO2 in this system is below €5. This is a clear barrier to the development of bioenergy in Europe. However, other sectors of the economy, that are not under the EUETS rules, are subjected to much higher carbon prices, some of them voluntarily.

Indeed, more and more citizens, companies and local government are acting on a

Besides those pioneers with high ambition for climate change mitigation, there is an increased interest for carbon offsets from the companies that are preparing strategies to avoid being hit too hard by future carbon taxation, on the rise in many countries.

The demand is increasing very fast but the current offer is way too small. Moreover, the first generation of carbon offsets: tree planting, renewable energy projects or

All in all, carbon offsets realised with negative emissions through BECCS is a powerful tool for the bioenergy sector to contribute even more to climate change mitigation and to help explore considerable market opportunities.

In Sweden, most of the framework is in place and the potential is considerable, it is time for the bioenergy industry to take action. l

For more information:

This article was written by Timur Delahaye, research manager at Biorecro. Visit: www.biorecro.com

The carbon offset market HAGAINITIATIVE, WE Mean

Business Coalition, Science Based Target, etc. The number of initiatives led by corporations to collectively reduce their carbon footprint is increasing by the day since COP21. Thousands of companies across the EU will very soon start looking for carbon offsets to compensate the emissions they have not been able to avoid. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recently launched a Carbon Offsetting

Bioenergy Insight

and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), which aims to offset emissions from the aviation sector and make the industry carbon-neutral from 2020 onwards. For this, it is estimated that they will need to offset between 288 and 376MtCO2e/yr by 2030. The current global market of carbon offsets, which mainly constitutes of offsets corresponding to reforestation and improved cookstoves is only 84MtCO2e,

with an annual value of €254 million (Ecosystems marketplace: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2016). This will not be enough to satisfy the increasing demand.

Even worse, a recent study prepared for European Commission’s DirectorateGeneral for Climate Action (Clima) shows that 85% of the projects are very likely to overestimate their emission reductions and additionality. This

means that most existing offsets may face the risk of not being valid under CORSIA. Only BECCS has the potential to produce enough negative emissions for these thousands of companies, with the trust that is required.

Indeed, offsets based on BECCS are much more reliable and controllable as the amount of CO2 that is injected underground can be measured and gauged whereas other offsetting schemes rely on models.

July/August 2017 • 29

Bioenergy biomass focus Biomass power has plenty to offer

Power to the masses

A

t first sight, development of the biomass power sector may appear to have been relatively quiet in recent years, tempered by policy-makers preference for alternative renewable and low-carbon technologies, and weighed down by negative reporting by NGO’s and the press over sustainability impacts associated with importation and use of forest products for energy.

The latter having spilledover from earlier campaigns against biofuel deployment.

However, closer inspection reveals that the biomass sector has continued to show quiet and steady growth in the UK despite such hurdles, though these could hamper future sector development.

The recent newswire focus on the demise of coal-fuelled power in the UK highlights the contribution that wind now makes to power generation, but this brings with it the problems of intermittency and traders frantically trying to read the meteorological runes to predict future power prices, such has been the impact of intermittent renewables.

However, look closer at UK generation figures and there is a steady output of power from biomass providing around 2GW of stable baseload supply capacity, day-in, day-out, supplying around 5-8% of UK hourly demand.

Biomass to drive this generation is supplied under some of the toughest and most rigorously applied independent sustainability standards for renewable energy generation in the EU, and probably wider global renewable economy.

30 • July/August 2017

The Renewables Obligation (RO), the main policy mechanism used to support deployment and generation of large-scale biomass power in the UK, requires biomass power generators to provide Ofgem (the scheme administrators) with annual profiling and monthly sustainability data for the biomass they use to generate power. The latter reported on a “per consignment” basis.

Reporting includes information on country of origin, type and form of biomass and in many cases this extends to types of tree species exploited and basic information on how these were managed. Supply chain greenhouse gas emissions are also required to be reported using approved methods of analysis, with supply chains expected to meet or exceed a saving of at least 60% to receive support. The RO scheme essentially drew to

a close in March this year, to be replaced by the Contracts for Difference mechanism.

The data collected through such schemes will inform EU negotiations around the next generation of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), currently in draft form, through better understanding of the kinds of feedstocks being used in the UK as well as providing a better understanding of what data can effectively be collected and secured along supply chains.

Future trends Ofgem released the sustainability reporting data for the RO reporting period in March. Through analysis of this data, NNFCC has gained insight into the trends in biomass use in large-scale applications responsible for most of the solid biomass use in the UK.

In the 2015/16 reporting period, 10.34 million tonnes of solid biomass were used in large-scale power generation, comprising 8.9 million tonnes of wood and 1.4 million tonnes of non-wood materials. The latter includes agricultural straw, waste materials (livestock bedding, sewage sludge, by-product waste streams), energy crop and crop processing residues (e.g. oat and peanut husk, olive pits). These figures reflect an ongoing significant increase in wood biomass use in recent years, driven by approval for support for coal-conversion schemes, and a resurgence in use of non-wood sources driven by commissioning of new dedicated biomass projects.

The majority of the wood resource (5.7 million tonnes) was derived from harvest residues; tops, branches, diseased wood and small roundwood, and a further

There are a number of large-scale biomass conversions currently in development in the UK

Bioenergy Insight

biomass focus Bioenergy 0.4 million tonnes from wood processing by-products.

Most of the wood is used in pellet form, used in either converted coal-fired plants or co-fired with coal.

In contrast, the recent emergence of a number of dedicated biomass plants of around 40MWe has created demand for agricultural straw and a market for miscanthus energy crops, utilising around 0.8 million tonnes, soon to rise to just over one million tonnes when the latest plant comes on-stream.

Import and export The majority of the increase in wood use has been supported by import, while the majority of the nonwood resource is sourced domestically. It may be surprising to learn that the UK supplied the largest share of biomass used in the UK (37%), closely followed by the US. The US along with Canada supplied 46% of the biomass consumed in the UK. Eastern and Southern Europe provide the bulk of the rest.

In terms of sustainability, shipping of biomass adds little to its carbon footprint. All of the biomass reported to Ofgem in 2015/16 achieved a GHG saving of 60% or more.

Most delivered greater than a 75% GHG saving against the UK grid average.

The EU is currently consulting on proposals for post 2020 reform of the Renewable Energy Directive which is currently in draft form. It proposes higher minimum GHG savings for new biomass power against a tighter EU grid reference value of 183 gCO2/MJ. Stations starting operation after January 2021 will need to achieve an 80% GHG saving and those starting after 1 January, 2026, an 85% saving.

Current conversion technologies and feedstocks in the main have the potential to achieve these levels of saving, but not all. The

Bioenergy Insight

targets reflect the wider EU aim to drive the sector towards more efficient heat and power co-generation.

However, different Member States differ in their ability to deliver on combined heat and power (CHP). The UK does not have significant heat networks, though examples are emerging, and large decentralised biomass power plants tend to be remote from large heat users. So, this requirement, if adopted as currently laid down, will challenge future large-scale development.

There are a number

concerns around technology costs, impacts of biomass use for energy on other sectors and the ongoing debates around sustainable biomass sourcing. Yet, on the other hand, there is general consensus amongst strategic experts in the sector, including the Committee on Climate Change who are the government’s own advisors, that meeting future climate change commitments will require the development of biomass carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies and infrastructure. This call has not yet been heeded by a

The biomass sector provides opportunities to counter job losses in declining fossil fuel sectors of large-scale biomass conversions currently in development in the UK, supported by earlier CfD policy decisions, these will further increase biomass consumption in the next few years. This follows approval for Lynemouth, MGT Power and a further unit conversion at Drax Power. Given appropriate support, plants like Drax would consider further conversion. However, the government appetite for supporting further coal conversion has diminished.

Despite mention within the new CfD mechanism, no auction for biomass conversions has been held and there is little likelihood of this happening in the near future.

Similarly, for dedicated biomass plants, support under the CfD mechanism will only be provided for biomass CHP plants. Both of these actions will temper future biomass deployment.

Sustainable biomass sourcing Much of this faltering support for biomass centres on policy

succession of administrations, lulled by early successes and the impacts of economic downturn in reducing carbon emissions. Decarbonising further and faster will require more radical and likely much more costly actions.

In terms of technology costs, biomass is unfavourably treated. As an intermittent technology it incurs additional infrastructure and/or direct costs in system balancing of generation and demand, in bringing on new gas power or maintaining existing aging infrastructure in reserve, and increasingly in developing storage technologies.These additional costs are rarely accounted for currently in policy costings. The biomass energy industry argues that a more level playing field would exist if such costs were more equitably accounted for in policy development.

Sustainability of forest and other forms of biomass will undoubtedly continue to be a point of contention and debate despite best industry efforts. The biomass industry must

continue to work to show best practice in feedstock sourcing and compliance, using independently verified sustainability audits and sriving to counter inaccuracies in reporting and interpretation of biomass use and management for energy markets. This will become an increasingly important requirement if RED II is adopted in its present form and greenhouse gas requirements are tightened for new plants.

The irony is that efficient, large-scale biomass combustion plants are exactly what is required if we are looking to sequester large volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere using CCS technologies. Efficiency demands that these would be linked to healthy forests providing at least balance if not net growth to sustain production.

In the wider context, wood and biomass use sustains rural economies and the biomass sector provides opportunities to counter job losses in declining fossil fuel sectors. Shipping, road and rail hauliers have all benefited from biomass development and new infrastructure demands for biomass storage and onward transport have reinvigorated investment at UK ports. The developed expertise and infrastructure will have benefits beyond the bioenergy sector as other sectors of the bioeconomy emerge and look for reliable sources of feedstock. l

For more information:

This article was written by David Turley, director and lead consultant for Bio-based Feedstocks at NNFCC. Visit: http://www.nnfcc.co.uk

July/August 2017 • 31

Bioenergy wood pellets In 2015, Siberian Wood Pellets, a member of the National Timber Association — Russian Forest, launched the largest wood-pellet production facility in Siberia at two sawmills in Ust-Kut town and Novaya Igirma settlement, with a total capacity of 180,000 tonnes per year

The Siberian wood pellet experience

S

iberian Wood Pellets decided to invest in its new project in 2014, when two large sawmills in the Irkutsk region: LDK Igirma (Novaya Igirma settlement, three lines at five tonnes per hour) and TSLK (Ust-Kut town, two lines at five tonnes per hour), both of which are members of the National Timber Association — Russian Forest (NTA), reached full capacity and the amount of unsaleable products in the form of chips, sawdust and flakes increased day by day. The growth of byproducts led to environmental degradation in the production area, and increased the risk of fires. It became evident that the NTA needed to find a solution to the problem and effectively dispose of the lumbering residuals.

The amount of processed lumbering waste is one million m3 of bulk sawdust per year. Moreover, the release of a new product is providing additional profit.

The plants themselves are no less important for the region: Siberian Wood Pellets created new additional jobs, increased tax revenues to the regional budget and solved the problem of waste disposal.

The successful launch of the plants played a big role in increasing the investment attractiveness of the Irkutsk region. Investments in the construction of the two plants

32 • July/August 2017

Presses from Dutch manufacturing company CPM

Big bag or bulk bag with wood pellets

amounted to roughly RUB 1.5 billion (€23.5 million).

The project’s general contractor and equipment supplier was Hekotek, a large machine-building enterprise that designs and manufactures process equipment for the wood-processing industry.

With a proven equipment manufacturer selected, the risks that could arise during installation, commissioning and the certification of finished products were minimised. The plant is equipped with presses by the Dutch manufacturing company CPM. Wood residuals primarily get sent to automatic drying lines based

Bioenergy Insight

wood pellets Bioenergy

Silo (two tonnes)

Big bags into rail car

on Hekotek drum dryers, where the raw materials are dried before entering CPM presses on conveyors.

Strong demand Due to the favourable geographic location of the plants (the Irkutsk region is in the middle of Russia), wood pellets are sold to European countries as well as on the Asian market, in Japan and South Korea. The analysis of the wood-pellet market confirmed stable high growth in demand for pellets in 2009–2016. The increase in global consumption of wood pellets in this period was about 1.6 million tonnes per year (28 million tonnes produced in 2016). It is expected that world demand for wood pellets will increase many times over in the midterm against the background of a number of targeted state programmes aimed at increasing the use of energy from renewable sources.

Today, however, Siberian manufacturers selling their products first have to focus on Europe as a more mature, capacious and attractive market. The Russian market has little demand for pellets.

The main reasons preventing the promotion of products on the domestic market can be narrowed down to imperfect legislation, high competition from fossil fuels, and high logistics

Bioenergy Insight

The successful launch of the plants played a big role in increasing the investment attractiveness of the Irkutsk region

costs. However, taking into account the vast territorial dispersion of settlements in Russia and the large number of boiler houses that need to be modernised and converted from coal and fuel oil to biofuels, the market outlook is very optimistic.

Wood pellets produced

by Siberian Wood Pellets are of high and constant bulk density, regular, even consistent shape, and high heating value.

The wood mainly used for pellets is Angara pine and Siberian larch. Raw material composition: at TSLK — 90% pine and 10% — larch, at LDK Igirma — 70% pine and 30% — larch.

In February 2017, within the framework of the Russian Investment Forum, Siberian Wood Pellets’ plant won the Development Award 2017 (a major event supported by the Russian government), having been nominated ‘The Best Project in the Field of Ecology and Green Technologies’. High product quality and compliance with the principles of rational, sustainable wood utilisation

are confirmed by international certificates: SPB, ENPlus, FSC. Both Siberian Wood Pellets plants provide two means of packing: one-tonne bulk bags or in bulk; and three types of transport: hopper railcar, container, and covered railcar.

Actual shipment is carried out in big bags to covered railcars. The final consumers

of pellets made by Siberian Wood Pellets are large energy corporations in Europe, South Korea and Japan.

The successful project has been optimistically welcomed by other member companies of the NTA. Now, a project is underway to implement the construction of a pellet production plant at the Priangarue TM sawmill (in the Krasnoyarsk region). l

For more information:

This article was written by Igor Novoselov, head of the informationanalytical department at Russian Timber Group. Visit: www.rusles.ru

Fact Box • OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT statistics have been tracking the production of wood pellets since 2009. According to the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), in the past eight years the production of wood pellets in Russia has grown 2.5 times to one million tonnes in 2016. It should be noted that Rosstat’s statistics cover only large and medium-sized enterprises, while small enterprises are not considered in the reporting statistics. Nevertheless, it can be estimated that in 2016, the production of wood pellets amounted to 1.0 to 1.3 million tonnes. 90–95% of these products were sold for export.

• THE FIRST pellet-production enterprise in Siberia was

launched more than ten years ago. In 2006, Wood Working Company Enisey (in the Krasnoyarsk region) established a pellet production plant with a capacity of 65 thousand tonnes per year (expanded in 2009) at its sawmill. This example was then followed by a number of other large sawmills.

July/August 2017 • 33

Bioenergy pellet mills In Italy, a new project has shown the feasibility of combining different types of biomass and bioenergy facilities

Wood pellet and power cogeneration

I

n the beautiful area of Ledro Lake in Trentino Alto Adige (Italy), near the more famous Garda Lake, an innovative project has been created, installed and started-up from the wood waste of a major sawmill (packaging products manufacturer) situated in the valley of the lake.

The project has been developed in two stages. The first saw the implementation of an organic rankine cycle (ORC) cogeneration power plant with a capacity of 300kW using wet woodchips supplied by the neighbouring sawmill. The second stage is the usage of hot water coming from the ORC power plant.

Here, we have a separation into two solutions: • A district heating line that will warm public and private utilities in the nearby town of Tiarno di Sopra (TN) • A 1,500kW/T woodchip drying plant together with a 3-4 tonne/h pellet plant of A1 class pellets, sourced from the high quality spruce wood chips and sawdust supplied by the nearby sawmill.

Both plants are installed in the same building, within close proximity to the sawmill, cutting down on the number of trucks that were bringing away the woodchips and sawdust from the sawmill every day to feed another cogeneration and pellet plant.

The ‘kilometre zero’ idea, which will transfer the wood

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Nova Pellet (part of Arco International, based in Pontevico, Brescia in the north of Italy), is a leading Italian builder of pellet mills and plants. They won the tender, and successfully planned and installed the 1.5mwt dryer and the 3-4 tonne/h pellet plant.

A complicated challenge

Belt dryer with heat exchanger

waste from a major local industrial facility to warm the town and transform it into pellets for sale, is the leading innovation of this project.

The project has been led by a semi-public company that specialises in energy production and distribution in South Trentino in the north of Italy (Alto Garda Servizi SpA) and possess the skills to implement district heating technology. The utility company decided to create a new company called Ledro Energi for this project and the management of the ORC and pellet plant.

All the machinery installed and started-up in both plants is made from Italian technology. The Italian suppliers had to participate in the public tender and won with the best priced procedure which also conformed to the very strict technical specification, an integral part of the tender.

Following the start-up of the ORC technology and the creation of the underground pipeline for district heating, the drying and pelleting plant has become the final step to close the cycle. With the pellet plant the whole project becomes economically and ecologically sustainable.

In terms of technology, Nova Pellet had to overcome a range of new and complicated tasks to meet the technical specifications required by the customer.

The most difficult and innovative concept was the connection between the ORC plant with its waste hot water, and the drying plant.

The drying system has been projected and installed to work fully automatically 24/7 using the variable hot water power (maximum

NovaPellet crew

Bioenergy Insight

pellet mills Bioenergy

Automatic packaging line for small pellet bags

1.5MWt) at the maximum consumption possible.

The fixed parameters of input and output temperature are also met by the dryer to avoid any waste of hot water, saving energy and fuel in the ORC plant. The installation of humidity sensors and complicated software that controls hundreds of parameters simultaneously has successfully regulated the capacity of the belt dryer installed and the output humidity necessary to make pellets.

The perfection of the dryer working mode was the most important process of the whole project, because a wrong working mode would have created production problems both for the ORC and the pellet plant. Nova Pellet guaranteed a solution that is stable and works automatically with the belt dryer under maximum control.

The drying plant has been completed with high volume concrete bunkers with a hydraulic mobile floor extractor that permits automatic working, even on weekends when there is no supervision. A screener removes residual oversize chips and a conveying line completes the

Bioenergy Insight

Hammermill and conveyor line

transportation of material between the main machines with a sophisticated fire safety system. Finally, a dust filter for the output air of the drying system achieves the very low emission rates that are required by the Trentino Alto Adige region.

The plant continues with a refining stage and a pellet plant capacity of 3-4 tonnes per hour. From the dry material bunker, a series of conveyors feed the hammer mill (Nova Pellet mod. N-RP04 kW 132) and its metal detector. The prepared sawdust is stored in a pneumatic silo filter Mc

Wet spruce sawdust bunker

30 with double extractor to feed the two pellet mills.

The EN-PLUS A1 spruce wood pellet is created by the high efficiency n°2 vertical pellet mill from Nova Pellet, model N-PLUS kW 160.

The pellet mills are controlled by fully automatic software together with the innovative Energy Saving Drive system, a new software application that permits the low power consumption per kg of pellet produced. The pellets continue along the cooling and screening line and into the bunkers that store them for packaging.

The packaging can be in big

bags of one tonne each, or in small bags of 15kg each with the fully automatic line complete with bagging machine and palletising robot.

A powerful suction pneumatic line collects the residual dust and brings it back to the cycle, while a complete fire safety system protects the filters and silo. The drying and pellet plant are also controlled by supervisor software installed in the main control office where directors and operators are updated instantly on the working process of the plants.

This project demonstrates the feasibility of creating symbiosis and synergy between different types of bioenergy and biomass plants. Only sharing and exchanging media like water/ air/power between different bioenergy technology lets them become more sustainable in an ecological and economical perspective.

Italian technology can work together to establish a benchmark solution that many other European or international companies can follow and implement. l

For more information:

This article was written by Luca Pozzali, sales manager at Nova Pellet.

Visit: www.novapellet.it

Pellet in big bag and small bags

July/August 2017 • 35

Bioenergy chippers A company in eastern Finland was close to closing, until a new forestry grinder solved their brush issues

Wood chippers back from the brink

J

uha Vaahterinen’s grandfather founded Kuljetusliike Vaahterinen (KV) in 1952, and the company developed into one of Finland’s first bioenergy businesses in the mid-80s. The company grinds and chips in forests throughout eastern Finland and sells off the end product. Processing the material they encountered in the forest became a daunting task with the equipment they had six years ago, however. Brush caused problems for their chippers and the company had no method of processing big logs efficiently. KV almost closed the bioenergy business in 2011, when their machines couldn’t handle the job.

“I almost finished the bioenergy business because we had so many problems with other chippers,” Vaahterinen says. “We had too many problems with the brush. Every day, all we did was fix the wood chippers.

We only lost money.”

His fleet of equipment needed a dedicated brush grinder.

Vaahterinen connected with the Scandinavian sales manager of Continental Biomass Industries, Ulf Österroos, in 2011 and solved the problem with a CBI 5800 — a forestry mulcher engineered for contractors that need easier transportation and high-volume throughput.

Designed to be one of the leading options in land

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ChipMax 484VR is designed for the rigorous demands of today’s forestry applications

‘I almost finished the bioenergy business because we had so many problems with other chippers’ Juha Vaahterinen from Kuljetusliike Vaahterinen

clearing equipment, the 5800 is intended for wood processors who expect to grind brush, pallets, mulch, yard waste, or logs on a daily basis. For a company like KV that also depends on remote production of compost, they couldn’t have asked for a better forestry mulcher.

“We had too many problems in the brush, so I almost

stopped,” Vaahterinen says.

“But then I met Ulf Österroos and I bought a CBI 5800 and the problem was gone.”

Adding a custom-built commercial wood chipper The company used the CBI 5800 as a complete solution for processing brush and stumps. When their smaller

chippers weren’t adequate for chipping larger materials into high-quality chips, Vaahterinen turned to CBI again and added a truck-mounted ChipMax 484VR to the fleet.

Vaahterinen’s rig takes a whole tree chipper and mounts it on the back of a truck to meet the mobility needs of his forestry application. Powered by a CAT C18, 765HP engine and featuring two rotor options, the ChipMax makes highquality fuel chips (custom sized from 12-25mm), “microchips” (2-12mm); or logs (up to 24”) in diameter.

These wood microchips produce a consistent fibre length that dramatically

Bioenergy Insight

chippers Bioenergy reduces the overall cost of producing pellets. The premium microchips also improve the function of small boilers, making them a highly marketable end-product.

CBI purpose-builds commercial wood chippers for clients who produce microchips for manufacturing wood pellets, wood chips for boiler fuel, and wood chips for the pulp and paper industry.

From concept to completion, the ChipMax 484VR was designed exactly for rugged forestry applications like Vaahterinen’s.

Reliable and durable “The ChipMax 484VR is an excellent heavy-duty machine,” Vaahterinen explains. “You can run that machine day after day after day and it works. I have been doing this work about 16 years and before the ChipMax I had

five or six chippers. Every chipper works good when you have clean stuff and small wood, but we have big logs.

The ChipMax is very big and very strong. When you buy it, it makes you money.”

Meeting tough demands Mounted on the back of a truck, with a 290-degree rotating discharge chute, the ChipMax 484VR is designed for the rigorous demands of today’s forestry applications.

The chipper’s mobility, coupled with a hydraulically operated discharge chute, facilitates easy top loading of trailers. A hydrostatic driven blower gives it a strong chip discharge that blasts trailers full of high-quality wood chips. The blower automatically increases power when needed, saving wear and excess power consumption.

The 484VR’s ability to

ChipMax 484VR

chip bigger logs opened up the market for Vaahterinen’s business.

“The chippers I had before the ChipMax were so little that we couldn’t chip the big logs,” Vaahterinen says. “When I bought the ChipMax we could, so my business has grown every

year, year after year.”

Vaahterinen remains optimistic about the future and hopes to continue growing his family’s business. l For more information:

This article was written by Joe Gallagher, marketing coordinator for Terex CBI Ecotec.

Visit: www.cbi-inc.com

This silage clamp stays sealed once and for all!

Clear separation of waste water and rainwater

The new Flex-Silo from Schmack Biogas – for 100 % prevention of water pollution In contrast to conventional silage clamps, the Flex-Silo is jointless and therefore completely sealed. This means groundwater is reliably protected. The special feature: waste water and rainwater are collected separately, so there is no chance of contamination. The simple, modular construction method makes flexible, economical solutions for any area possible. www.schmack-biogas.co.uk Schmack Biogas UK Ltd. · Phone +44 (0)870 807 30 58 · info@schmack-biogas.com

Bioenergy Insight

July/August 2017 • 37

Bioenergy bioenergy handling systems Alaskan brewer uses horn to clear boiler ash build up

A cheer for green beer

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n innovative brewery in Alaska has installed a sonic horn to help improve ash flow and prevent clogging in the exhaust stream of a boiler system that uses spent grain from the brewing process as fuel. Ash accumulation issues had been forcing the company to shut down its equipment to cool and manually clean the swirlers and collectors of its ash handler on a weekly basis. The process required an outage of three to four days, including as much as twelve hours of maintenance time with bottle brushes and bead blasting.

Instead of shutting down the equipment after just 25 hours of operation, company officials now report that the system can complete an entire brewing cycle, with little or no performance loss in 94 hours of boiler run time. The acoustic cleaner from Martin Engineering (Neponset, Illinois) is viewed as a key element in developing an ash handling process that meets the firm’s goals for both efficiency and environmental stewardship.

Alaskan Brewing Company is the first brewery opened in Juneau since prohibition times, and from its beginning in 1986, owners Marcy and Geoff Larson sought to establish a process for making high quality craft-brewed beer, one that was both costefficient and environmentally responsible. Maintenance supervisor Suki Patterson says: “Brewing in Alaska is a challenge, because everything other than labour and water has to be imported, so we’re always looking for ways to be creative in obtaining and using our resources.”

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Ash accumulation issues had been forcing a weekly shutdown for manual cleaning

While other brewers sometimes add spent grain as supplemental fuel in their processes, the system at the Alaskan Brewing Company is thought to be the only one in the US to use it as the sole source of boiler fuel, with any excess shipped out as cattle feed. “During our production cycle, we would have to burn hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel per day to fire the boiler,” Patterson explains. “With this system, we can use by-products from the brewing process, but that presents some unique issues.

Conventional hog fuel boilers typically burn feedstocks that produce about 0.5% ash, while the spent grain that we use produces more than 5%.”

Process equipment

The acoustic cleaner helped the brewery meet the firm’s goals for efficiency and environmental stewardship

The company’s equipment includes a Model N65 Firebox Boiler assembly,

Bioenergy Insight

bioenergy handling systems Bioenergy manufactured for King Coal Furnace (Bismark, North Dakota) by Hurst Boiler & Welding Company (Coolidge, Georgia). The high-pressure firebox boiler with left side breeching operates at 125 PSI during the brewing process, producing 6,600 pounds of steam per hour from a furnace volume of 519 cubic feet.

To manage the ash and minimise emissions, a Multiclone Dust Collector from the Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group imparts a whirling motion to the ash-laden exhaust gas as it enters the multiple-tube cyclonic collector. This action generates centrifugal force that concentrates particles of entrained dust at the interior walls of the collecting tubes. The particles then fall and are discharged from the bottom of the tube, with clean gas exiting through the outlet at the collecting tube’s vertical centerline.

“Unlike other fuels typically used in the brewing process,

dried grain also produces an extremely fine ash that readily absorbs moisture from the atmosphere,” Patterson continues. “It tends to develop a gummy texture, so it can collect on the interior surfaces and become difficult to remove.”

Patterson researched the issue online, finding information on how brewers and other industries were successfully managing fine ash, aerosols and smoke particles. She contacted Martin Engineering to discuss potential solutions, and developed detailed engineering drawings of the system to help explain the situation and outline the operating conditions.

Because Martin Engineering lacked any data on its sonic horns in this specific application, the company offered to ship an appropriately-sized model to the brewery on a trial basis, with the understanding that the product could be returned

The Alaskan Brewing Company is one of the only brewers in the US to use spent grain as the sole source of boiler fuel

Bioenergy Insight

without charge if it was unsuccessful. The company also worked with Patterson and her crew to determine the optimum location and provide instruction on its installation at the intake of the 6-inch cyclone separator.

Acoustic cleaning technology “Acoustic cleaning is a proven technology that can raise throughput and reduce blockages in a very wide range of materials, preventing dry particulate build-up to increase system efficiency and service life, while reducing downtime and maintenance,” says Rich Shields, regional manager for Martin Engineering.

The Martin Sonic Horn is an acoustic cleaner that has been widely used in the process industries. In addition to its low cost of ownership, acoustic cleaning helps avoid structural fatigue or damage. Especially effective around tubes and behind

obstacles, sonic energy debonds particulates with a 360-degree sweep, cleaning inaccessible surfaces.

The horns work by producing a low-frequency, high-pressure sound wave, which is created when compressed air flexes a titanium diaphragm in the sound generator. This sound wave is then magnified as it is emitted through the cleaner’s bell. The pressure causes dry particulate deposits to resonate and become fluidised, allowing them to be removed by constant gas flow or gravity. l

For more information:

This article was written by a Mike Masterson, product specialist at Martin Engineering.

Visit: www.martin-eng.com

The high-pressure firebox boiler operates at 125 PSI, producing 6600 pounds of steam per hour

July/August 2017 • 39

Bioenergy conveyors

Pellet potential

I

How a material handling specialist helped implement a wood pellet plant

n 2016, Tramco, a company with 50 years’ experience in the material handling industry, was involved with several projects relating to the biomass sector. This included a project contracted by pellet producing company Colombo Energy out of Greenwood, South Carolina, a fully owned subsidiary of The Navigator Co. The company believed that South Carolina could handle a wood pellet plant due to its heavily forested surroundings and a climate ideal for this type of vegetation. In addition, Colombo only considered areas with rail access, which also supported the decision to settle in Greenwood.

The plant broke ground in April 2015 and Prodesa was brought in as one of the three main EPC contractors while Bruks Rockwood was to supply

40 • July/August 2017

the wood yard, receiving, chipping and reclaim systems, and TSI supplied the dryer island. The world class Colombo site is a wood pellet manufacturing plant as well as the third largest wood pellet mill in the US. The plant finished construction and produced its first wood fibre pellets in September 2016.

The Colombo plant has manufacturing capacity to produce 460,000 tonnes of pellets annually and the site is expected to generate annual sales of approximately $80 million (â‚Ź72 million) while employing approximately 70 people. With the new pellet plant, Colombo Energy is attempting to target both industrial and residential markets in the US and Europe and expects this venture to provide a renewable and sustainable source of energy for many

nearby electricity consumers for quite a few years.

The site features several Tramco pieces, including two bucket elevators, four Bulk-Flo chain conveyors, five Model RB chain conveyors,

and 19 Model G conveyors.

In addition, the site includes three Airlanco AVR receivers, one Cyclone and a Westfield portable auger. Overall, the several models of conveyors on this site were implemented

With its new pellet plant, Colombo Energy is attempting to target both industrial and residential markets in the US and Europe

Bioenergy Insight

conveyors Bioenergy History WITH 50 years in the

material handling industry, Tramco employs a unique combination of design, engineering, proper component selection, manufacturing and service to ensure Tramco material handling equipment is the first choice for consulting and supply in bulk material handling situations.

to handle woodchips, wood fibre and wood pellets.

Meeting demanding requirements The Tramco bucket elevators featured on the site are specially designed for the bulk handling of free-flowing fine and loose materials. They are built to meet the demanding requirements of the tough and rugged materials that flow through the site every day.

The purpose of the Bulk-Flo chain conveyors is that they are specially designed to work in processing applications handling materials that are wet and sticky, variable in size and durability, or abrasive and corrosive. The Bulk-Flo application assures years of dependable service under the most severe conditions. With capacities up to 10,000CF/ HR the Model RB is specifically designed for the handling of soft stock or materials easily broken in the material handling process, such as

Tramco delivers product for various industries such as chemical, coal, food, grain, mining, plastic, pulp, rubber and paper, or solid waste and recycling.

Using Tramco equipment guarantees expertise, knowledge, manufacturing know-how and the comfort that comes with every Tramco installation.

pellets, seed and feed. The Tramco Model G conveyor was implemented to cope with the most wearing materials the plant handles.

The Airlanco Cyclone is used to handle air/dust at the wood chip and pellet storage location of the plant and the Westfield portable grain auger is used for reclaiming and reprocessing wood fibre and pellets back into production.

Tramco has been involved

Pellet specialist Colombo Energy is based in Greenwood, South Carolina, US

The Colombo plant has manufacturing capacity to produce 460,000 tonnes of pellets annually with new technological developments in the wood fibre industry, including a project done using the Tramco Bulkflo line. A single conveyor was implemented in place of a more traditional conveyor for bucket elevator to conveyor

operation. The simplified design allowed more efficient handling of woodchips and wood fibre. The Tramco Bulkflo conveyors moved woodchips to hammermills.

The wood fibre was then moved from the hammermills to the storage bins and

finally to the pellet mills.

Aside from Colombo Energy, AGI and Tramco have had activity this year with several other businesses, including Georgia Biomass, ICM, Drax, Bruks and Green Plains. l

For more information:

This article was written by Katie Peterson, marketing coordinator at AGI (Ag Growth International) and Britton Harper, biomass and ethanol sales manager at Tramco.

Visit: www.aggrowth.com

Background AGI IS a leading manufacturer of seed, fertiliser, grain, feed and food handling, blending, storage and conditioning equipment. In addition to grain handling, AGI participates extensively in processing industries, Bioenergy Insight

such as milling, oil seeds, ethanol, biomass and industrial applications and applies many traditional grain handling techniques to this industry. AGI’s company approach is driven by strong global agricultural fundamentals, with

brands which are amongst the most recognised in global agriculture in both commercial and farming sectors. AGI’s vast and growing product catalogue includes augers, belt conveyors, grain storage bins, grain handling accessories,

grain aeration equipment, grain drying systems, and fertiliser handling and storage systems.

AGI has manufacturing facilities in Canada, the United States, Brazil and Italy, and distributes its products globally.

July/August 2017 • 41

Bioenergy conveyers Choosing the right conveyor can save a fortune

Tightening your (conveyor) belt

B

iomass Engineering and Equipment (BE&E) of Columbus, Indiana, US, has provided material handling solutions for two advanced waste-to-energy gasification plants in Tennessee for Aries Clean Energy (formerly PHG Energy). The Smart Conveyor and Smart Container products from BE&E have proven to be the right choice

for the reliability and efficiency called for by these plants.

In October 2013, a waste-toenergy gasification plant was commissioned in Covington, Tennessee. One of the main goals of the project was to help the community divert thousands of tonnes of wood waste and sludge from the landfill each year and greatly reduce the annual cost for tipping fees at the landfill.

BE&E Smart Conveyors can accomplish what others can’t with high angle of inclination like this 75 degree incline at Lebanon plant

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The city was awarded a $250,000 (€222,000) Clean Energy Grant from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

In October 2016, a similar waste-to-energy gasification plant was commissioned in Lebanon, Tennessee.

The system in Lebanon utilises a 64-ton (58 tonne) per day gasifier. Wood and tyres are cut to between 1” and 3” (2.5cm – 7.5cm) in size and wood chips are mixed with sludge from the water treatment process before gasification. Syngas is produced from the gasification process which is combusted in the industrial thermal oxidiser. Thermal energy is transferred to heat water which drives three organic rankine cycle (ORC) generators that produce 420kW of electricity. The electricity produced powers the water treatment facility saving the city thousands of dollars in utility costs each year.

The site of the project is next to Lebanon’s wastewater treatment facility. Wood is sourced and prepped locally.

It is estimated that more than 8,000 tons (7,257 tonnes) of wood waste and sludge is now being diverted annually from the landfill. More than 400 tons (363 tonnes) of tyres will also be gasified each year.

This is an example of a great project that saves the city thousands of dollars annually in landfill fees and utility payments. Other projected benefits include the reduction of carbon emissions by 2,500 tons (2,268

tonnes) per year, while 8% of the input material results in biochar which is recyclable.

Material handling The key to a good bioenergy project is a material handling system that performs. For the Covington facility, wood chipping and screening start the process. The chips are then conveyed into a covered storage container that is fed with a levelling conveyor. The push/pull wedge floor system then feeds a metering bin which meters the flow rate of the chips into the gasifier feed conveyor. This part of the project is a key component in the overall process. If the conveyors in the Covington project fail to deliver the prescribed flow rate of chips to the gasifier the entire system fails to operate at peak performance, or possibly it will fail to operate completely.

Unscheduled shutdowns or poor performance are both costly and avoidable.

Eliminating weak links When wood processing plant managers are asked to identify the weak link in their operations the answer is often conveyors. Why do sawmills, pellet mills, biomass power plants and other wood processing facilities have major issues with conveyors?

Every biomass project offers its own unique issues. Fuels are difficult to define and consistency can be an issue.

Wood fuels can be especially challenging. In many instances,

Bioenergy Insight

conveyers Bioenergy the wrong conveyor is chosen for a given application.

Conveyors are often selected to connect major pieces of a project together as an afterthought. After the major pieces have been selected the owners, engineers and project managers may be looking for areas to save money on the project. This is a mistake that is repeated over and over again. The failure to identify and invest in the correct conveyor for each application can cost millions in lost production, excessive maintenance and in some cases total replacement of conveyors that fail at startup. Awarding the conveyor package of a multi-million dollar project to the lowest bidder can be problematic and create a weak link between the storage system and the fuel processing system.

The right conveyor All conveyors are not created equally. Belt conveyors, screw conveyors, single drag chains, dual drag chains, and pneumatic systems all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Belt conveyors, while great for large volumes, are quite messy and leak large amounts of material at the head and tail. Limited angles to reach high elevations force long runs and a maze of switchbacks to get material to the desired height. Open belts will leak dust and there are safety concerns from open pinch points.

Screw conveyors, while

perfect for precise material metering are often impractical.

High friction within the screw requires high horsepower to move material and screws are limited to short runs in straight lines.

Typical drag chain conveyors require high horsepower due to the chain running directly on the floor of the conveyor frame. This wears out the chain, the floors, and the paddles. Chain wear is high and replacement costs can also be very expensive.

Pneumatic conveyors require high horsepower, air permits, and are very loud to operate.

How does it work?

The Smart Conveyor is best described as a twin chain drag conveyor. The system works by pulling material through the conveyor using paddles attached to paddle frames.

Paddle frames are connected to tabs that are welded onto the chain. The system is a modular bolt together construction utilising straight sections and curve sections. Steep inclines (up to 75 degrees) are possible with curve sections that are designed for wear strip changes from outside the conveyor. The twin chains are totally supported in wear materials outside the material path allowing the chain to glide through the conveyor with very little friction. Low horsepower is required to operate the conveyor due to the low friction loads.

The paddles do not touch the floor or walls which also helps

The precise flow of wood chips provided by the Smart Container, metering bin, and Smart Conveyor are essential to successful gasifier operation at the Covington plant

Bioenergy Insight

BE&E Smart Conveyors were the right choice for the PHG Energy waste-to-energy gasifier plant in Lebanon, Tennessee

with friction loads. The system is extremely quiet since there is no metal to metal contact within the conveyor except for the chains rotating around the sprocket. The chains and paddles are enclosed in a dust tight frame that eliminates the large messes found at the heads and tails of other conveyor systems. The system is also very safe due to no openings, drive belts or pinch points.

Strength of the conveyor frame is another benefit when compared to other systems.

Each side panel has ten bends in the steel to create the channel for the chain which results in incredible strength for each section.

feedstock is much closer to the gasifier than it is in Covington.

This requires the conveyors carrying the feedstock to rise at a 75 degree angle and deliver material to the top of the gasifier more than fifty feet in the air. This would be impossible with a belt conveyor or conventional drag chain.

Considerations

The project at Covington required a long run from the chipping operation, across a creek, and then a rise to the sludge mixing point. This was achieved with one conveyor and one gear motor. Other systems would have required at least two conveyors and two gear motors. The conveyor travels horizontally along the ground for approximately 100’ (30m) then angles upward for another 25’ (7.8m) to meet up with the mixing port.

It is critically important to choose the right conveyor for each application. The initial savings realised by selecting the least expensive conveyor option will quickly disappear if an expensive chain must be replaced every year, or if the conveyor is unable to deliver the required capacities for the project. PHG Energy selected the Smart Conveyor from BE&E to satisfy several of their project needs. Considerations included: enclosed and dust tight, ability to rise at a steep incline due to space constraints, robust design with long life cycle, capable of long runs, low maintenance, and ease of maintenance. A project is only as strong as its weakest link, and so it is vital to choose the right conveyor that fits the longterm goals for the project. l

Steep inclines

For more information:

Long runs

At the Lebanon facility, the receiving station for the gasifier

This article was written by Tim Brown, business development director at Biomass Engineering & Equipment. Visit: www.biomassengineeringequipment.com

July/August 2017 • 43

SPONSORED ARTICLE

Old and familiar, redefined ONE SHREDDING SPECIALIST IS PRODUCING INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY TO ENSURE THAT WOOD WASTE IS FIT FOR BIOPOWER PRODUCTION

S

hredding and screening are the key processing steps needed to turn waste into the desired raw material. As familiar as they may be, Komptech can always find ways to give them a new spin.

Whether wood, biomass, green cuttings or organic waste, waste treatment will always be influenced in a fundamental way by the shredding at the start and

the screening at the end of the process. In shredding the material is not chopped with sharp blades like in a chipper, but shredded by impact with blunt teeth. The resulting breakage gives the pieces comparatively large surface area, promoting faster biodegrading and thus better composting.

Komptech offers a notably wide variety of shredding machines to cover any

imaginable application.

They range from the low-speed single-shaft Terminator shredder for all types of waste, to the Crambo line for biomass, to the high-speed Axtor.

High and low speed The low-speed dual-shaft Crambo direct has an extralarge shredding chamber with two 2.8 m counterrotating toothed drums that ensure

The high-speed Axtor universal chipper is one of the most flexible machines there is for processing wood and green cuttings

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positive feed. From bulky branches and cuttings to rootstocks of any size, to used wood contaminated with contraries, it shreds it all down to a set granular size. The degree of shredding can be adjusted flexibly.

The mobile Crambo direct is powered by a modern Caterpillar diesel engine with the latest exhaust scrubbing, and has a drive train that combines the functionality of hydraulic with the efficiency of mechanical drive. That means top economy while retaining all the familiar benefits like overloading protection, reversibility, adaptation to the material, and more. The Crambo is also still available in a pure hydraulic version as well.

The high-speed Axtor universal chipper is one of the most flexible machines there is for processing wood and green cuttings.

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SPONSORED ARTICLE rock trap make Komptech a star screen technology leader.

Drum screening is a robust, highly functional technology. It can be used for any task, be it biomass, compost or soil production.

On Komptech machines the drum can be changed simply and quickly for wide flexibility, while delivering heavy-duty performance under extreme conditions and with difficult materials. Most problems can be dealt with easily by the operator. The technology is tough and proven effective the world over. With the Primus, Maxx, Nemus and the electric-powered Cribus series, Komptech offers a wide range of drum screens that cover any customer requirement.

From bulky branches and cuttings to rootstocks of any size, to used wood contaminated with contraries, the Crambo shreds all types of material down to a set granular size

Everything that goes on the feed ramp is immediately captured and taken in by the feed system. The Axtor’s voracious appetite means that loading material into the feed is usually the limiting factor.

The machine itself is capable of up to 300m³ per hour.

Drum screens like the Nemus shown here are very robust and proven machines

There is no question that fast chippers are preferred for green cuttings. But the Axtor can do much more. In shredder mode with free-swinging teeth it makes material for composting, while in chipper mode with fixed blades and lower speed it makes biomass fuel for heating plants.

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Conversion from one mode to another is fast and easy.

Its most important features are a low-emissions Caterpillar diesel engine in a maintenance-friendly underfloor position, and above it a wide-area forward-facing feed with aggressive intake and high 100cm clearance.

Star or drum – it’s the utility that matters Komptech has a lot to offer in screening as well.

The Multistar mobile star screens can split material into up to three fractions in one pass, while at the same time breaking up clumps.

What’s more, the operator can change the grain size of the fractions within seconds from the control panel. Easy operation, efficient electric drive with current from a diesel generator or directly from the grid, and additional options like wind sifter, magnet and

A new star is born The new Multistar One star screen makes treatment of waste wood and biomass even more efficient. It separates out a defined useful fraction while returning overlengths to an upstream shredder like a Crambo or Terminator. With a feed hopper designed for precise material transfer to the generously dimensioned screen deck, a discharge conveyor with four metre discharge height and a return conveyor that can pivot through 220°, the new One delivers a throughput of up to 200 cubic metres per hour. Its very compact crane lift frame and variable conveyors for flexible setup, plus electric drive, make it a highly economical machine.

For more information: Visit: www.komptech.com

July/August 2017 • 45

Felled ash areas restocked with mixed species

Bioenergy harvesting

Biomass serving sound woodland management

What’s in a wood?

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hroughout the UK, woodlands present an important natural resource, and many of these woodlands are currently managed and maintained for a variety of reasons such as commercial timber production, small-scale timber production, woodfuel, sporting, recreation, habitat conservation, landscape and amenity. However, sound woodland management methods can achieve all of these objectives in balance, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Sadly, a large number of woodlands in England remain unmanaged and this can be for a variety of reasons.

In some cases, woodland owners are simply unaware of the opportunities, or instead choose not to manage their woodland, but rather concentrate their efforts on other more lucrative land management and estate enterprises. Lockhart Garratt, Environmental Planning and Forestry Consultants, specialise in the management of woodland, helping to identify opportunities and oversee timber harvesting operations that yield woodfuel products. These products can then be converted to a profit for landowners, or can instead be used to supply and source woodfuel-grade timber to meet the annual feedstock requirements for a system(s) installed on a property.

Woodland produces a

46 • July/August 2017

wide variety of timber products. In recent years new and emerging forestry machinery and equipment, in response to the growing woodfuel markets, has made management of previously ‘uneconomic’ woodland areas more viable. There are now forest machines in a range of sizes that are fitted with hydraulically-powered tree shears and accumulators that can cut and hold multiple stems, meaning low grade and previously unmarketable material, such as low quality (and low volume) plantations, coppice, understorey growth and ride-edge growth can now be managed economically.

This low-grade material is very suitable for conversion into woodchip, and can additionally be used in biomass boiler systems. Consequently, we are now seeing a more positive approach to woodland management and maintenance being taken forward. As with any commercial operation, we advocate the importance of grading timber, to not only continue supporting longstanding markets, but to also encourage the development of niche markets in order to maximise returns and otherwise partly, or fully, address any cumulative financial deficits. By way of an example, it does not seem moral to convert prime oak logs into woodfuel, denying the traditional construction and furniture markets of suitable material, and thereby

creating a negative impact on the overall stand economics.

There is no question that in recent years, emerging biomass markets have made a tangible difference to the financial outcome of many woodland management projects. Outlined below are two specific examples.

Best outcomes — the good news stories Case study 1 A mixed estate near Coventry had a commitment to deliver a large programme of woodland ride widening and non-commercial crop maintenance, as part of their biodiversity-based woodland improvement programme.

The estate had to deliver all of the work areas without a pre-agreed budget, within a two month working period (to avoid shoot disturbance) and as part of a wider suite of commercial thinning work

— without engaging a raft of different contractors.

The ride programme involved felling trees and cutting back encroaching woody vegetation. A further project, within the same area of woodland, involved removing an understorey of small diameter regenerating rowan from beneath a developing crop of midrotation oak. The operation was undertaken by an external professional timber harvesting company who deployed a Bracke head to cut multi-stemmed coppice growth along the ride network edges of a 40ha block of woodland. When combined with the rowan understorey beneath the oak plantation, there was a sufficient volume of material to justify the machinery movement, and the resulting material was chipped at roadside, discharged into purpose built chip-carrying lorries, and

13 tonne excavator plus harvester head clearing ash areas (Credit Sarah & Phil Whatton, Woody’s Logs)

Bioenergy Insight

harvesting Bioenergy taken to a biomass customer based in the Midlands. Without this market, as well as the efficient means of cutting the material, the work would have otherwise proven quite costly to undertake. This material turned a small profit of £1 per tonne however, through use of an easily inter-changeable machine-head; higher quality timber was graded out when processed and sold on into firewood, fencing, horse bedding and construction markets at higher unit prices.

Within the required window of opportunity, the commercial block of timber had been thinned to increase future yield; a developing block of oak was managed to promote future quality, with an under-storey which will regenerate and keep the stems free from side branching, producing yet another crop of wood-fuel in the future; and the rides were managed and widened at no cost and at full benefit to woodland wildlife.

All works were undertaken by a single contractor.

Case study 2 A large mixed estate in south Northamptonshire wished to become less dependent on oil for heating estate properties.

The estate holds 280ha of woodland, legally protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI): these were managed for high-quality ash milling timber and firewood, with some hedging products from the hazel coppice.

A biomass boiler was installed in 2012 to replace the existing oil boiler, and the decision was taken that this should be fed with woodchip from the estate, rather than bought in. As the estate’s forestry consultant, Lockhart Garratt was asked to ensure that the estate woodlands were managed as a sustainable source of biomass feedstock, as well as keeping to the existing objectives.

The estate woods contain 65-90% European ash and are vulnerable to Chalara

Bioenergy Insight

13 tonne excavator plus harvester head clearing ash areas (Credit Sarah & Phil Whatton, Woody’s Logs)

ash dieback, which has devastated ash populations on the continent and in eastern counties. As the woods are important, both to the estate and nationally as a SSSI, Lockhart Garratt researched and applied sound scientific advice to minimise disease effects as follows: • Aim for a mix of species and ages of trees in the woodlands — through felling and restocking with more varied species, the age mix of woodlands across the estate has also been re-balanced.

• Ensure all areas are thinned — felling licences were obtained for a substantial programme of thinning and felling, ensuring the woods are producing at an optimum level.

• Grow trees as fast as practicable — densely grown, stressed trees are more susceptible to the disease, and the thinned and restocked areas stand a better chance against Chalara.

As a testament to these efforts, and following a tense round of judging, the estate was awarded Silver in the 2017 Royal Forestry Society’s Duke of Cornwall Award for Resilient Multi-Purpose Forestry.

Lockhart Garratt now meets annually with the estate to

present the previous year’s budget, and to establish a programme of thinning and felling for biomass feedstock.

In preparation for this, our forestry consultants will have surveyed the standing timber in blocks for thinning, calculated what these sites and species can yield sustainably (no more than 70% of each year’s growth to be harvested), and consequently when we can return to thin the stand again. This meets the updated Renewable Heat Incentive requirements for sustainability, and greatly simplifies the audit process. Felled areas must be restocked, and Lockhart Garratt’s knowledge of the nursery trade gives access to the best genetics available for timber production.

By preparing the above strategy in high-level meetings with both Forestry Commission and Natural England, Lockhart Garratt was able to make the case for substantial grant assistance with the initial programme of restocking, which is challenging at this scale. Input from a wide range of experts, both within and outside Lockhart Garratt, also ensured that each decision was checked to ensure best value for the estate.

As Chalara continues to spread across the UK, we

anticipate biomass production from infected ash to increase.

However, it is not financially sustainable to simply burn everything, as this takes material away from markets which offer better returns. On this estate, Lockhart Garratt will continue to ensure the woods can supply a diverse range of markets, whilst maintaining this historic ecosystem and landscape.

Conclusion The biomass market has increased opportunities for low-grade timber and has brought more woodland into management, where previously the economics may have not stacked up. This is positive news all round, and it is important that we continue to promote and support the woodfuel market whilst ensuring that all timber harvesting programmes remain sustainable and everyone involved (including growers, managers, processors and producers), takes responsibility to minimise overcutting in stands. l For more information:

This article was written by Rob Stockley, assistant forestry consultant, with support from Cheryl Lundberg, senior forestry consultant, and Matthew Willetts, senior forestry consultant at Lockhart Garratt.

Visit: www.lockhart-garratt.co.uk

July/August 2017 • 47

Bioenergy harvesting It might seem unlikely, but it is possible to make money from willow

Making a profit as a willow grower

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an you make money as willow grower? It might not be a very likely scenario, but it can be economically viable. Here’s how: • Firstly, you need dry, first grade wood chips, whole-rod harvested from high yielding, well managed willow stands.

• Secondly, a supply contract where you are paid according to the calorific value of the chips, not the amount of m3 supplied.

• Thirdly, you need a client for the heat within reasonable geographical reach.

Then — you mix it all up with 30 years of experience in willow cultivation and production of wood chips — and you have a viable set-up.

Easy peasy! Of course not, but sharing experiences might show you some short cuts.

It has taken Nordic Biomass many years of practice to produce dry, clean and first grade wood chips, and also to succeed in becoming a supplier of the end product

Two STEMSTERS running at a Nordic Biomass plantation

— heat to the end user. It is through refinement of the crop husbandry and by taking control of the whole chain of production from field to the end product that Nordic Biomass can now make a profit. However, each step of this chain can be a challenge for SRWC growers — it is to some degree still a pioneer’s trade.

Well managed plantations are no longer such a rare thing, however. In the UK, where the climate favours

the basic needs of the willow tree, keen farmers have become expert willow growers. In most countries though, harvesting and the business strategy to allow for profit have been more of a challenge. For Nordic Biomass, the key turning point was the development of a reliable and robust whole-stem willow harvester — the STEMSTER. Today, this harvester concept has been sold to many countries and is one of the few commercial harvesters in the market produced specifically for SRWC. The ideal crop and harvest

A special container was made for the delivery of chips to the Skallerup seaside resort

48 • July/August 2017

At harvest, the ideal crop for the production of first grade chips has a standing yield around 100 t/ha of fresh biomass. Strong plantation growth is needed so that most of the biomass is from large stems. This ensures that chips are free from small branches and have a lower proportion of bark. With a crop like this,

the STEMSTER can harvest 70 t/hr of fresh biomass.

Nordic Biomass cultivates 240 ha of willows, and most of the fields are run on four year harvest rotation, with harvesting only performed during the winter months.

Summer harvest damages the regrowth, so if the fields are too wet during winter, tracks are applied. The STEMSTER can also be used to harvest poplar, acacia, alder and eucalyptus with a maximum diameter of 18 cm and height of 10-12 m.

The STEMSTER concept, where whole stems rather than wood chips are produced, is the key to producing dry wood chips with minimum waste. Wholestem harvesting allows the crop to dry from the winter harvest period through to late summer in neat stacks left by the harvester on the field headlands. It is vital to ensure generous headlands to allow easy access for the chipper and container trucks which

Bioenergy Insight

harvesting Bioenergy

Mounting of tracks – a necessity during warm and wet winters

Custom-made container which brings chips to the Skallerup seaside resort

transport the chips from field to barn storage or direct to the client. This approach, which allows chipping to happen in dry weather, results in clean mould-free chips with a 16-20% moisture content and a calorific value of around 700 kWh/m3. Nordic Biomass’ early experience with chipper-harvesters never allowed the company to achieve the consistent chip quality it achieves using the whole-stem approach.

The perfect client The perfect client is best exemplified by a real-life business case. Nordic Biomass has a heat-supply contract with Skallerup seaside resort and leisure centre. They need 1 million m3/year of heated water to ensure that their guests can enjoy heated pools, saunas and spa facilities. The resort is branded for its green and environmental friendly profile so the enjoyment of guests is further enhanced by

Bioenergy Insight

knowing that the heat that they bathe in has been produced according to these principles.

The total annual supply of high quality chips needed to meet this heat demand is 6-8.000 m3/year, which is exclusively derived from local willow fields. The eight-year contract between Nordic Biomass and Skallerup Seaside Resort is on the basis of a fixed price per MWh of heat metered from the wood chip boiler.

Payment on the basis of delivered heat (rather

than for wood chips) means that the resort’s energy bill is under their control — depending only on the amount of heat they consume and not variable energy prices.

Nordic Biomass takes the risks that the company can control itself — producing dry wood chips of consistent quality.

In our view, this puts the responsibilities with the right parties in the contract and has motivated us to strive to achieve high quality standards and efficient production processes to allow us to profit from the arrangement.

Looking forward Having learned that the STEMSTER and the whole-stem harvesting approach really was the key to turning our willow into profit, we continue to develop this approach. Though the STEMSTER technology has reached a commercial level it is a large machine

which requires a significant investment. Another drawback of a large trailed machine is that it can be an extra cost to transport between widely spaced plantations. New effort has therefore been put into the development of a junior version of the STEMSTER. The challenge is to construct a harvester which is a bit smaller and a lower cost, is cheaper to move between sites and yet maintains the capacity and robustness of the Stemster.

Nordic Biomass has sold the STEMSTER to a number of countries, for example France and Sweden. Right now one is being produced for a client in Spain, where the STEMSTER will harvest Eucalyptus. The junior version of the STEMSTER is still undergoing tests, and is not available on the market yet.

Given the massive amount of interest and requests the large STEMSTER has received, Nordic Biomass expects the new version to be a success — mainly due to the fact that this version will be more affordable for farmers. Nordic Biomass has developed SRWC harvesters since 1988 and the STEMSTER is as such a result of many years of research and development of harvesters. l For more information:

Wood chips

This article was written by Vibe Gro Falk, information and project manager at Nordic Biomass, and Damian Culshaw, renewable energy development manager at Freshview.

Visit: www.nordicbiomass.dk

July/August 2017 • 49

Bioenergy pyrolysis Converting dead trees into fuels and chemicals

The beetles and the biofuels

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ver the course of the last decades, the mountain pine beetle has infested trees in 40 million acres of forest in the western United States and Canada. The beetle attacks and inserts fungi into the wood, compromising the transport of nutrients and eventually leading to the death of the trees. The dead trees are often identified by the red colour of their needles. Though standing, these trees may fall without previous warning, placing nearby communities at risk.

In addition, the moisturefree wood from the dead trees could easily become a medium for the propagation

of wildfires. The damage caused by wildfires, in turn, increases the susceptibility of the forest to future ‘bark beetle’ attacks. With these considerations in mind, removing ‘beetle-killed’ trees from the forest and finding applications for this wood is an important goal for maintaining forest health. Applications involving the wood manufacturing sector, however, are complicated because of the cracked structure of the infested wood.

Fast pyrolysis as an option Recently, fast pyrolysis has been suggested as a potential application for beetle-

killed trees. The goal of fast pyrolysis is to convert the solid lignocellulosic structure of the wood into a liquid brownish fuel, referred to as “bio-oil”. This is accomplished by quickly heating the wood to high temperature (around 500°C) in an oxygen-free environment. The products are released in the form of volatile compounds, which should be promptly cooled in order to condense and generate the bio-oil, which typically comprises 55-75wt% of the product depending on the feedstock. A solid carbonaceous material, referred to as bio-char (1020wt%), and permanent gases (10-20wt%), such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide,

are also produced. Fast pyrolysis has been extensively studied on a laboratory scale, but to this date it has rarely has been employed in pilot or larger facilities.

The conversion of forest residues into bio-oil is envisioned to involve at least four steps: 1) transport of the wood from the forest to the processing location, 2) grinding wood chips to particle size in the range 1-3mm, 3) drying of the wood to minimise moisture content, and 4) fast pyrolysis.

A new method proposed by researchers at the Bioresource Science and Engineering programme in the University of Washington suggests that the first three steps Drive shaft

Graphalloy bushing

Upper plate (inserted 3 cartridge heaters)

Pressure

Graphite gasket Flanges

Hot plate

Inlet (Inert gas)

Wood chips

N2 inlet

Outlet (Inert gas + Product)

Wood chip bowl

Thermocouple

Band heater

Thermocouple N2 outlet Band heater

Perforated tube Graphalloy bushing

Drive shaft

Gear motor

Ablative reactor concept: general (left) and detailed (right) (Fuel, vol. 194, 229-238)

50 • July/August 2017

Bioenergy Insight

pyrolysis Bioenergy

Ablative pyrolysis process diagram

(transport of the biomass, grinding of wood chips, and drying) may be eliminated, potentially leading to significant process savings.

The proposed method The low moisture content of beetle-killed trees makes them an appropriate feedstock for fast pyrolysis, because it reduces the need for drying. In addition, mobile units are proposed to carry out fast pyrolysis of beetlekilled trees on-site, which would save in transportation costs since the bio-oil is much denser than the original wood.

The grinding of the biomass, in turn, can be avoided by using entire wood chips for fast pyrolysis. Usually, fast pyrolysis is carried out in fluidised bed reactors, which require small particles sizes (1-3mm) for proper fluidisation and to minimise heat transfer limitations, allowing fast heating of the particles. The work developed at the University of Washington, however, allows for the use of entire wood chips via a technique called ablative pyrolysis.

In ablative pyrolysis, heat is transferred to the wood chips via direct contact with a hot metallic surface. This ensures a high rate of heat transfer at the surface and promotes pyrolysis primarily at the thin surface layer, instead of the entire particle.

The team led by assistant professor Fernando Resende designed and constructed

Bioenergy Insight

Removing ‘beetle-killed’ trees from the forest and finding applications for this wood is an important goal for maintaining forest health a novel unit for ablative applied by the plate on pyrolysis of wood chips. the wood chips. The first The unit contains a rotating author of this work, Guanqun bowl where the wood chips Luo, is now a postdoctoral are placed. A hot metallic associate at North Carolina surface moves from the top State University. to the bottom, applying One of the remaining pressure against the wood challenges associated with chips and generating pyrolysis this process is the quality of volatiles. Vacuum suction the obtained bio-oil, which removes the volatiles from contains a large percentage of the chamber, which then flow oxygen atoms reminiscent of through a heat exchanger and the structure of lignocellulosic condense, producing liquid biomass. A large fraction bio-oil. Within the conditions studied, the highest yield of bio-oil obtained with lodgepole pine chips is about 60%, which is slightly lower (5%) than what is obtained with a 2mm particle size of the same feedstock in a fluidised bed reactor. The team carried out a study to evaluate the effect of several process parameters, such as the temperature of the hot plate, the rotation speed of the bowl, Overall view of the ablative reactor (University of Washington) and the pressure

of these oxygen atoms are present in the form of aldehydes and ketones, which confer poor thermal stability to the bio-oil. In addition, high acidity, water content and low energy content compromise the use of biooil. The team has recently partnered with Professor Anthony Dichiara to add an upgrade unit to the ablative pyrolysis reactor, and is using catalysts based on metals doped on carbon nanotubes to upgrade the bio-oil into BTX (benzene, toluene, and xylene), which are substances of important commercial use in oil refineries. The goal is to produce liquid fuels proper for use in transportation and high value chemicals.

The results reported recently (Fuel, vol. 194, 229-238) were obtained in a laboratory-scale unit that operates in batch mode. The next planned steps involve a detailed techno-economic analysis, and the construction of a pilot scale continuous reactor that can be a component of mobile units for the conversion of entire wood chips into bio-oil. l

For more information:

This article was written by Fernando Resende, assistant professor Environmental and Forest Sciences, at the College of the Environment, University of Washington.

Visit: www.environment.uw.edu

July/August 2017 • 51

Bioenergy pyrolysis A new technology is set to provide a solution to domestic waste management

I need a HERU

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by Liz Gyekye

ik Spencer is a sustainable entrepreneur and inventor of the Home Energy Recovery Unit (HERU).

Spencer has started a number of companies. These included a refuse vehicle hire company that grew to a fleet of 180 trucks, alongside a recycling facility using custom-designed materials recovery facility equipment, developed using processes learned from the food and drink industry. After securing a buyout offer from Kier Environmental, Spencer agreed to sell it, with the caveat of taking a seat on the Kier Environmental Board whilst remaining chairman of the companies he retained.

From agricultural contracting and animal bedding, municipal waste processing and window cleaning, Spencer has established and sold numerous successful businesses.

Nik Spencer, inventor of the HERU

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Working in partnership with numerous academics from across Europe, he developed an idea which would bring waste-to-energy technology to the home — the HERU. HERU was born out of a personal drive and passion to stop homeowners wasting valuable resources, as well as wider pressures to minimise the landfilling of waste.

Designed to fit seamlessly into domestic properties, the unit will process all domestic waste into clean energy, generating hot water for the household.

Here, Liz Gyekye catches up with Spencer.

How did the idea come about?

It was formed on the back of wondering whether we were going to be running around running dustcarts to six miles to the gallon and collecting rubbish to incinerate it and make energy. Yet, we thought we could actually

make energy with an innovation within the home.

What is the HERU? The best way to describe pyrolysis is visualising a dinosaur and a tree. If you took the dinosaur and a tree and you buried it in the earth’s crust in the absence of oxygen, you would eventually end up with oil, gas and coal over a few million years. If you buried the same tree and dinosaur in the Northern Hemisphere where it’s a bit colder, you will end up with more coal and less oil and gas. If you buried the same things in Saudi, you will end up with more oil and gas and not very much coal.

We went for the Northern Hemisphere type of pyrolysis — this method uses very little gas and very little oil but an awful lot of char (solid fuel). It needed to be something that would fit into the home and be accepted by the home owner.

Using low temperature pyrolysis, waste is transformed into char, oil, water and syngas, which is cleaned prior to efficiently venting to the atmosphere.

Essentially, the process works when you put your waste into an airtight selfcontained unit. This is the size of a wheelie bin. Connected to the water main and drainage, the HERU runs off a normal 13-amp domestic plug. The system is incredibly energy efficient, with every 1kWh of electricity consumed to power the unit generating 2.5kWh of heat energy.

What’s the clever bit?

The clever bit is the heat pipe technology. That has been developed by a Dr Hussam Jouhara at Brunel University.

If you imagine the spokes of a wheel made out of stainless steel pipes and then off that wheel you have pipes that come up vertically around the outside and up from the middle. At the bottom of the spokes of the wheel, there is something like a sealed tube that brings all the parts together to form one big pipe. You use a 3kW heat band out of the dishwasher and you heat the bottom of it to around 300°C and this boils the water that’s in that heat pipe. What this creates is a thermal cycle, so the water turns to steam and passes around all of the heat pipes. Therefore, you get exactly the same temperature everywhere. As soon as it gets to the top it condenses and runs back down. By doing this you create a thermal cycle which is 3,000 times more conductive than the stainless steel it sits in.

Bioenergy Insight

pyrolysis Bioenergy This process is really, really simple. Essentially, it is just water and stainless steel - a tiny bit of water at that.

We have done a lot of testing on what will happen if a fire happens. There is a release valve at the bottom of the unit and it just releases a few millimetres of water out onto the floor.

So, it’s perfectly safe.

When you open the lid up and pop your rubbish in the unit it goes over heat pipes.

So, the heat pipes inject through the bag of rubbish. You shut the lid, so it’s sealed and you have no oxygen going in.

Importantly, it’s not a pressure vessel; it’s an open-to-theatmosphere system. You switch it on and let it heat up and then it heats up to 100°C. Then it starts to boil the moisture from the waste. This then sweeps out of the chamber through heat exchangers and then the heat exchangers condense the steam to water and also recover the energy that is created. We then run this through a 390-litre water tank on a closed-loop system through a coil (just like an immersion heater).

So, where are these wheelie bins?

We have designed them so that you can have them at the back of your house or your garage. We have been talking to housebuilders and they have been saying they would like one that goes in the kitchen. So, at the moment we have a unit size of 600 x 1000mm, but we are working on one that is 600 x 600mm so it fits under your kitchen. For every 1kWh of energy you put in, you’re getting 2.5kWh of energy out.

Glass and metals will not be processed. Everything else goes through. However, if you put them in it doesn’t matter.

You just have to wait until the process is finished and then take them out. It washes itself after the process is finished.

We spend about £6 billion (€6.86bn) a year on refuse

Bioenergy Insight

collection and disposal. There are huge savings to be made with this system. Of course, the homeowner would also obtain energy efficiency savings as well. So, it’s heating about 44% of your hot water requirements from your daily production of waste.

How long does the whole process take?

It takes about five hours to do the pyrolysis process and then combustion process takes around four hours.

It’s a nine hour process in total. Due to this, we would recommend that you put your bag of rubbish out in the evening before you go to bed. It is then running on cheap electricity through the night. You would wake up in

completely colourless using the water screen filter and we’ve captured all of the exhaust gas. We then hold this gas and then release that into the boiler as well.

This is because we are using the boiler like our catalytic converter, so to speak. It is taking the carbon out of the exhaust. Essentially, we’ve made the combi boiler more efficient than it was before.

We wanted to make a system that was not going to be too expensive, and was energy efficient. It needed to be something that would fit and integrate with the current home appliances. The beautiful thing about it is the combi-boiler only needs to switch on when we get up to three bars of pressure in our

If you took the dinosaur and a tree and you buried it in the earth’s crust in the absence of oxygen, you would eventually end up with oil, gas and coal over a few million years the morning to the hot water being ready for your shower.

The system also produces syngas which is turned into a fuel to power boilers.

Once you’ve finished pyrolysis, the HERU can turn a single black bag of rubbish into 72 litres per day of hot water at 41°C. It also creates char. You open up the valve and that lets a little bit of air flows in.

It simultaneously combusts and then burns away nice and gently. That produces around 500°C of heat. This heat goes through the heat exchanger, which extrapolates the heat and heats the hot water for your house. The exhaust gas that is left goes through the water screen filter and scrubs any volatiles that are left. This then goes into the compressor. What we are left with is particles of carbon in the exhaust from the combustion.

We’ve made this smoke

tank. When it does switch on, it is not only using the exhaust that we produced in HERU to save energy, it using hot water as well so you are not wasting any energy.

Is the HERU being used anywhere at the moment?

Yes, we have got three local authorities to take field trial units to use for domestic housing. We would like to use the field trial units next year.

What can the waste management industry to do to help the lowcarbon economy?

In the waste management business, they need to look at the whole lifecycle and to what carbon and pollution is generated at each point of the waste management process chain. They should do this rather than saying ‘we need a recycling target of 50% by 2020 to divert waste away from landfill’,

almost regardless of what carbon that might produce.

This then drives craziness, like putting on dustcarts to collect material which is 50% water (i.e. grass).

Waste arisings will continue to rise as the population grows.

Are you looking at different markets across the world?

Certainly. We have patented across different markets across the world with a view to taking the HERU to market and licensing it to different manufacturers. We recognise that different countries want different types of technology. In the US, they might want a top loader.

In the UK, they might want a front loader. In China, it might need to be a different type of unit to the one in India. You have to recognise that the moisture levels of waste change in different countries. In India we can expect the waste to be a lot wetter because you do not have the amount of packaging like you do in the Western world. So, the unit will need to change to adapt to that.

Why hasn’t pyrolysis taken off in the UK? Pyrolysis is a really difficult subject.

What is the outlook?

Initially, we thought we would be working with boiler manufacturers.

However, we think we will be working with the white good manufacturers now. We would license the technology to them to make them work with the unit in the way that they see best. I will not be doing a ‘Dyson’ and not manufacturing it myself.

The government need to allow more innovation and creativity in the UK. All in all, my real desire is for this vision. A child is popping out to eat from his home and the mum shouts out to him as he heads for the door: “Don’t forget to bring your rubbish back home”. l

July/August 2017 • 53

Bioenergy biomethane In a post-fossil fuel world, what role will biomethane play?

Fossil fuels out, biomethane in?

S

candinavia is at the forefront of greenhouse gas reductions. Sweden, for example, has set itself the goal of reducing traffic-related fossil fuel consumption by 70% by 2030, and of becoming fossil fuelfree by 2050. To reach such ambitious goals, every bit of the energy efficiency and renewable energy potential available will have to be tapped. In the transport sector in particular, the alternatives are rather limited. Biogas — be it in compressed (Bio-CNG) or liquefied form (LBG) — offers a climate-friendly means of covering a significant amount

of the demand, provided there are concerted efforts to harness all the available sources, such as manures, waste organics, sludge, etc.

Tapping organic waste sources There is already a longstanding tradition in Scandinavia of using wet anaerobic digestion (AD) systems to produce biogas from manures or moist food waste fractions. However, several wet AD plants have experienced difficulty with waste streams with higher solids and/or high impurities, requiring extensive pretreatment of substrates, often including dilution

with huge amounts of water. Furthermore, wet AD plants — which are typically operated mesophilically — require an expensive external sanitation step to comply with Animal ByProduct Regulations (ABPR).

Harnessing the full biogas potential of all organic waste streams available in a specific region therefore requires a more robust and impurity-tolerant technology, but without compromising on biogas yield.

The continuous dry AD technology Kompogas offers exactly that. The ‘omnivorous’ Kompogas plug-flow process can handle very diverse waste streams including

those subject to seasonal fluctuations, such as green waste, without difficulty. The modular digester technology means such systems can also be retrofitted to existing composting plants, thus converting the plant from an energy sink into an energy source. It also opens up the possibility of replacing some of the wet digesters in an existing wet AD plant experiencing problems with high solids.

Dry thermophilic AD The thermophilic operating temperature of 55°C combined with the typical digestion period of 14 to 21 days ensures ABPR compliance at no additional costs. The ‘dry’ operating regime also results in the production of significant amounts of compost, unlike wet AD plants which produce huge amounts of liquids only. In central Europe, compost from dry AD plants is appreciated as a storable natural product with high nutrient content and even higher humus values. Many plants achieve organic farming certification for the compost products they derive from biowaste.

High biogas yields

Contribution of EfW technologies - thermal (baseload electricity) and biological/dry AD (on-demand electricity and/or vehicle fuel)

54 • July/August 2017

In more than 150 applications worldwide, the Kompogas system has proven its ability to almost completely degrade the anaerobically digestible substance in the substrate within just a few days, so

Bioenergy Insight

biomethane Bioenergy contribution of advanced EfW technologies, both thermal and biological, to a fully renewable energy system.

Creating solutions for complex tasks

Closing the nutrient cycle while generating energy – the Kompogas technology digests all kinds of organic waste arising in a city/region, so tapping into the full potential of organic waste

delivering the maximum biogas yield from basically any organic waste stream in a municipality. This is exactly what is needed to reach the ambitious, but necessary, climate goals.

With more and more renewable electricity coming from wind and solar worldwide, power production and related prices are fluctuating highly. Power-toGas (P2G) technology allows surplus or peak renewable electricity to be converted into synthetic biomethane (syngas), which can be stored and thus used flexibly

on demand. Hitachi Zosen Inova’s proprietary ETOGAS technology uses electrolysers to generate hydrogen, followed by an innovative methanation step which supplements this hydrogen with carbon dioxide — taken from a biogas-to-biomethane upgrading plant, for example — to produce syngas.

Importance of biomethane As a storable medium, biomethane — be it wastederived (from biogas plants) or generated via the P2G technology from excess

renewable energy — is therefore a highly valuable new option for load balancing in the fully renewable and carbon-neutral energy systems of the future. It complements the already well-known baseload electricity generators, such as hydro run-offriver, biomass, and thermal energy-from-waste (EfW) plants, as well as existing on-demand sources such as hydro pump storage plants.

The figure on the previous page shows the links between the different technologies and the

The planning and execution of modern EfW projects is already a highly complex task, and integrating advanced technologies such as gas upgrading or P2G demands an even better understanding of the technology and a comprehensive implementation skill set.

Project developers and investors may therefore want to rely on an experienced and capable total solution provider to deliver a turnkey project, thereby reducing their risks in key areas such as interface management or plant operations. Zurichbased Hitachi Zosen Inova has exactly the right solutions to address these needs. l

For more information

This article was written by Lukas Heer, sales manager at Hitachi Zosen Inova.

Visit: www.hz-inova.com

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July/August 2017 • 55 The Pumps Experts.

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Bioenergy combined heat and power A Sweden-based biomass innovation consortium that can turn sawdust waste into energy has announced early success

Leading the way

H

aving formed the Local Residue Energy (Loreen) project in spring 2016, Meva Energy and its partners are set to celebrate their first anniversary. Following an extensive feasibility study and work to optimise its demonstration system, Loreen’s project management team has now secured €2.9 million of investment from InnoEnergy, the European engine for sustainable energy innovation.

The project’s goal is to develop a cost-effective cogeneration plant fuelled by the gasification of unprocessed, dry biomass residues from agriculture and wood-based manufacturing. The gasification process enables Meva Energy to build cogeneration plants that will be suitable for a wide variety of industrial applications, and small enough for de-central closed-loop energy systems that ensure minimal energy losses from transportation and distribution.

The proposed cogeneration power plant is an end-toend solution that comprises a feedstock management system, an entrained flowgasification reactor, and systems for cooling and

cleaning the resultant gas.

That gas is then injected into a gas engine which produces power via a generator.

‘The circular economy in action’

The initial feasibility studies showed that Meva Energy’s gasification processes will be able to produce heat and power in the range below the commercial viability of existing steam-turbine technology ­— typically less than 10MWe.

from Chemical Fuels Thematic fFeld at InnoEnergy. “It taps into a number of key sustainability trends. First, by cogenerating heat and power, it challenges heat-only biomass boilers. Secondly, it uses previously unfeasible, low-cost biomass like sawdust, grains and husks, enabling better use of primary energy in the feedstock and creating a more economic, costefficient model for combined heat and power (CHP).

The project’s goal is to develop a cost-effective cogeneration plant fuelled by the gasification of unprocessed, dry biomass residues from agriculture and wood-based manufacturing This will enable smallerscale installations that can be deployed in a variety of scenarios, including districtheating models and closed-loop systems for manufacturers.

“For us, Meva Energy’s technology and this project are an ideal illustration of what can be achieved through collaborative innovation and market focus,” says Roland Doll, leader of the Energy

“Thirdly, as a closed-loop system, in which manufacturers and farmers use their own waste product to fuel processes, it is an example of the circular economy in action. And finally, it can play an essential role in the move towards more distributed energy resources where the focus is on more efficient, localised production and consumption. This could be the solution that really expands the possibilities for cogeneration and for biomass.”

‘Pipeline of potential customers’

The Sweden-based Local Residue Energy (Loreen) project is moving forward

56 • July/August 2017

Meva Energy’s partners include the research institute of Sweden (RISE) and a well-known global furniture manufacturer that may also be the project’s pilot customer. In addition, Meva Energy’s has a pipeline of potential customers in a number of sectors, including tissue production, flooring manufacture, food

production, and commercial district heating. The company has also spoken extensively with delegations from SouthEast Asia, where the technology can deliver heat and power from rice husks to smaller communities, leap-frogging the often-inadequate legacy power infrastructure.

“A number of companies have shown an interest in the technology,” says Niclas Davidsson, CEO of Meva Energy and Loreen’s project director. “Many have ambitious sustainability programmes and, having picked the lowhanging fruit like converting fleet vehicles or monitoring energy consumption, they are now ready to take the next step. Our studies show that payback for our technology is in the region of four to eight years, which is a remarkably short time for industrial-scale renewable power generation.

“This is why the investment from InnoEnergy is so important to us. With private venture capital firms more focused on the digital sector, there’s a great need for investors like InnoEnergy in clean tech and related fields. In addition to the financial injection, the InnoEnergy team which is specialised in the energy sector has given us extensive levels of support and expertise.

“They have proactively suggested meetings and events in which we could participate.

They have a network of invaluable contacts we can plug into. But most of all, they understand the energy markets and take the long view that this sector demands. Our future looks very bright indeed.” l For more information:

This story was written by a freelance environmental writer.

Visit: www.innoenergy.com

Bioenergy Insight

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July/August 2017 • 57

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