Biomass Systems

Biomass: the low cost, low environmental impact heating option

Using wood and straw-derived fuels can deliver very high carbon and cost savings when replacing fossil fuels for heating. What's more, the abundance of these resources locally can be quite surprising.

Biomass fuels take many forms - forestry residues, premium wood chip, and agricultural waste products such as grain husks or straw and recovered wood from demolition operations. Wood pellets are also available at a higher cost, but can still produce savings when compared to heating oil or electricity.

Systems burning biomass are largely automatic in operation, particularly in terms of ignition and regulated fuel feed. It is essential that the boiler, fuel storage and feed systems are designed for the intended fuel, although Perpetual Energy can design to allow for more than one fuel type.

Fuels that have a lower energy content - such as forestry residues or straw - need to be sourced more locally than higher energy varieties.

In the case of very dry and dense fuels such as wood pellets, even inter-continental supply doesn't significantly reduce environmental benefit.

Biomass systems usually integrate well with existing building infrastructure, because biomass boilers work at similar temperatures to their gas or oil fired counterparts. Emissions are very clean (smokeless) and NOx emissions can be further reduced by re-circulation of flue gases if required by regulators.

Perpetual Energy offers comprehensive biomass expertise, including:

• Feasibility work reporting on the availability and suitability of local fuels, project capital and operational finance models, carbon savings that include transport carbon emissions, space requirements, optimum configuration with existing or new building systems and regulatory requirements
• Detailed design work including energy consumption modelling, boiler sizing for optimum cost and carbon savings, and design of civil engineering work
• Supply, installation and maintenance of biomass boiler plant and on-going contract supply of fuel and remove ash
  

Biomass technology: how it works

As plants grow they absorb carbon dioxide and water to produce their wood and leaf structures. If these biomass products are burned, the carbon dioxide and water is re-released into the atmosphere and the net carbon emissions are very low as long as new plants are grown.

Countries with historically well-developed forestry operations and virtually non-existent fossil fuel reserves have tended to lead in biomass technology. Germany and Austria in particular have developed boiler plant which burns biomass very efficiently and automatically.

The boilers range from the domestic scale to 1MW and larger for commercial applications.

It's important to note that some carbon will be emitted from the processing and transport of biomass, and this must be included in calculations if carbon emission reduction is part of your brief.