Page 1 of 46 Bio-Energy Mission to Austria 2010 The Wood Science and Technology Centre (WSTC), Canadian Bio-Energy Centre (CBEC), National Research Council – Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC- IRAP), the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Embassy of Canada to Austria in Vienna developed a Bio-Energy Technology Mission to Austria at the time of the World Sustainable Energy Days (WSED) and Energy Fair including 2 days at the European Pellet Conference www.wsed.at and www.expoenergy.eu . The week long technology mission included plant tours of agricultural and forestry based bio-mass energy products and energy generation facilities. The final program is given in Appendix A. The mission participants were: 1. Mr. Robert Godbout, Grand Falls Milling Co. 2. Mr. Steven Humphrey, Dairytown 3. Mr. Todd may, Holson Forest Products 4. Mr. Jason Inman, Monaghan Farms 5. Mr. Brian Dorrans, Powerhouse Sales and Service 6. Mr. Charles Jonah, Powerhouse Sales and Service 7. Mr. Jim Richard, Business New Brunswick 8. Mr. Michael Albright, WSTC-CBEC EVM (Energieversorgung Margarethen / Moos) The first facility visited was a 15 farm co-operative which operates a combined heat and power plant (CHP) and a gas (methane) filling station. Deemed and energy self- sufficient community, Margarethen am Moos 3 million Euro facility was built 5 years ago and operates on a not for profit basis. The operation is managed by one of the farmers and an engineering consultant. The facility serves the local community of St. Margarethen which consists of about 450 households (1300 people). The CHP plant consists of an anaerobic digester which produces bio-gas and a GE bio-gas powered generator. Excess heat from the operation is fed into a hot water district heating system. Methane gas is produced from the digester, filtered and cleaned to 97% pure methane and fed to the generator and to the gas filling station. Excess gas is sold into a fuel grid of about 130 methane gas stations throughout Austria. The biomass feedstock is pig slurry, sudan grass, green rye and silo-maize. Margarethen am Moos has in total 1200 hectares (ha) of land. Only 250 ha is needed for food production and 350 ha was needed to operate the CHP plant. This still leaves 600 ha for future food or energy production. On an annual basis the biogas plant produces 5 million kWh electricity, 6.3 million kWh heat and fuel for about 1.9 million km by car. This example shows how to have a community based agricultural biogas CHP plant balanced with food production and community energy needs.
Transcript
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Bio-Energy Mission to Austria 2010 The Wood Science and Technology Centre (WSTC), Canadian Bio-Energy Centre (CBEC), National Research Council – Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Embassy of Canada to Austria in Vienna developed a Bio-Energy Technology Mission to Austria at the time of the World Sustainable Energy Days (WSED) and Energy Fair including 2 days at the European Pellet Conference www.wsed.at and www.expoenergy.eu. The week long technology mission included plant tours of agricultural and forestry based bio-mass energy products and energy generation facilities. The final program is given in Appendix A. The mission participants were:
1. Mr. Robert Godbout, Grand Falls Milling Co. 2. Mr. Steven Humphrey, Dairytown 3. Mr. Todd may, Holson Forest Products 4. Mr. Jason Inman, Monaghan Farms 5. Mr. Brian Dorrans, Powerhouse Sales and Service 6. Mr. Charles Jonah, Powerhouse Sales and Service 7. Mr. Jim Richard, Business New Brunswick 8. Mr. Michael Albright, WSTC-CBEC
EVM (Energieversorgung Margarethen / Moos) The first facility visited was a 15 farm co-operative which operates a combined heat and power plant (CHP) and a gas (methane) filling station. Deemed and energy self-sufficient community, Margarethen am Moos 3 million Euro facility was built 5 years ago and operates on a not for profit basis. The operation is managed by one of the farmers and an engineering consultant. The facility serves the local community of St. Margarethen which consists of about 450 households (1300 people). The CHP plant consists of an anaerobic digester which produces bio-gas and a GE bio-gas powered generator. Excess heat from the operation is fed into a hot water district heating system. Methane gas is produced from the digester, filtered and cleaned to 97% pure methane and fed to the generator and to the gas filling station. Excess gas is sold into a fuel grid of about 130 methane gas stations throughout Austria. The biomass feedstock is pig slurry, sudan grass, green rye and silo-maize. Margarethen am Moos has in total 1200 hectares (ha) of land. Only 250 ha is needed for food production and 350 ha was needed to operate the CHP plant. This still leaves 600 ha for future food or energy production. On an annual basis the biogas plant produces 5 million kWh electricity, 6.3 million kWh heat and fuel for about 1.9 million km by car. This example shows how to have a community based agricultural biogas CHP plant balanced with food production and community energy needs.
Figure 8 - PLC Shows all Process Variables and Control Points
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Ökowärme – Ökopellets The second plant visit of the day was to a new pellet plant built to utilize wood which would otherwise be left in the woods. The plant purchases local wood biomass of all species. The bark is burned and the heat used to dry the pellet furnish. The plant produces 60-70 tonnes of pellets a day on a 24-7 basis with a Salmatec pelletizer line for a total annual production of about 20,000 tonnes when routine shutdowns for maintenance are taken into account. The pellets are sold in bulk to consumers and their own district heating plants for about 200-210 Euro per tonne delivered. The plant was constructed for 4 million Euro. Expected payback period is less than 3 years. Pictures were not permitted inside the pellet plant.
Figure 9- Wood Supply to Pellet Plant
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Figure 10 - Chipped Material Storage
Figure 11 - Okowarme District Heating Facility; Container Bin on Left for Bulk Delivery of Pellets
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GrasKraft Reithbach To begin day 2 of the mission the group travelled to GrasKraft Reithbach, another CHP biomass plant (anaerobic digestor) established in 2004 by 4 local farmers in the Eugendorf Austria area. The plant consists of a biogas plant feeding into a gas turbine generator and gas fired hot water district heating system. Biogas, 99.9% pure methane, is sold through their own filling station for vehicle consumption and also into the natural gas grid. The plant has a tandem wood biomass boiler system which provides extra heat capacity for peak demand times or if the digestor is down for service. In the off heating season they dry wood chips for local pellet producers. GrasKraft also provides guided tours of their facilities to promote the use of biogas and green energy solutions. They charge entrance fees to all visitors which averages 800-1000 visitors per year. Most of these tours are for schools and universities. Total electricity production capacity is about 1 megawatt. The capital cost of the plant was approximately $4 million Euros. The tour was conducted by Peter Stiegler, an engineer with EnergieWerkstatt (a not-for-profit renewable energy organization formed following the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago). Mr. Stiegler was instrumental in the conversion of an existing dairy farm to a biomass plant. Graskraft is a not-for-profit organization now owned by a co-operative group of 20 farmers whose revenue sources are generated as follows: i) 60% from production & sale of methane gas through an on-site gas filling station as well as by way of a fuel feed-in-tariff contract with the Government. ii) 20% from sale of heat through a local district heating unit (extending upwards of 3 kms from the facility) iii) 4% from sale of electricity through a feed-in-tariff at $0.17/kwh. iv) 11% from utilizing excess heat to custom dry wood chips for pellet mills. v) 5% from guided plant tours of the facility (50 Euro per group plus 7 Euro per person) The project was setup with a payback period of 15 years.
Figure 12 - GrasKraft Filling Station
Figure 13 - GrasKraft Methane Powered Vehicle
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Figure 14 - GrasKraft Biogas Distribution Network
Figure 15 - Biogas and Wood Biomass Boilers
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Figure 16 - GrasKraft Wood Chip Burner/Boiler
Figure 17 - Wood Chip Dryer
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Figure 18 – GrasKraft Anaerobic Digestor
Figure 19 - State of the Art PLC Control System at GrasKraft
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Figure 20 - Gas Turbine Generator; Ultra quiet
Figure 21 - Generator Output Display
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JOTechnik Next up was a tour of the JOTechnik district heating plant, Holzwarme Bad Goisern. In 2006 construction was begun on the 2 MW biomass boiler plant. The construction was completed in only 4 months. The state of the art plant burns waste wood at high temperatures, cleans the exhaust gases through a two stage cyclone and condensation system to produce extremely efficient heat recovery and extremely low emission from the stack. This unique system washes the smoke gas and removes micro-fine ash particles while obtaining maximum heat recovery by condensation of the water vapour present in the flue gas (about 20% of the overall power output). The resulting flue gas temperature was only 40 degrees Celsius. This results in no visible emissions from the stack making it extremely community friendly. The plant serves the community of Bad Goisern Austria with 128 customers as of February 2010. The wood biomass requirement is expected to be 35,000 cubic meters when at full capacity (200 customers). They currently buy green wood chips for 15 Euro per cubic metre from local producers. The plant displaces approximately 1 million litres of heating oil annually which equates to an annual reduction of CO2 emissions by about 2,700 tonnes. When fully complete the planned length of the district heating system will be 13 km. The capital investment to date is approximately 5.9 million Euros. They currently have a 15 year contract to supply heat to the municipality.
Figure 22 - 2.4 MW District Heating Plant
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Figure 23 - Biomass Storage
Figure 24 - Chip Infeed to Boiler
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Figure 25 - Flue Gas Scrubber
Figure 26 - Step Grate Fire Box
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Figure 27 - Stack Temperature 40 C; Very Clean
Figure 28 - Boiler Control System
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Figure 29 - District Heating Pipeline
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World Sustainable Energy Days and European Pellet Conference The next two days were spent attending the World Sustainable Energy Days Fair and European Pellet Conference. The fair included exhibitions of renewable energy products including appliances, building products, pellets, briquettes while the pellet conference gave up to date information on energy markets, bio-energy technology developments and case studies on renewable energy projects. A Canada night, hosted by the Canadian Embassy to Austria, was also held during the conference where mission participants were given the opportunity to talk one on one with Austrian and other European/Scandinavian parties with interest in sharing their bio-energy expertise, forming partnerships and future collaborations.
Figure 30 - Hot Water Heating Systems
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Figure 31 - Bio-Mass Harvesting Equipment
Figure 32 - State of the Art Bio-Mass Heating Systems
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Figure 33 - Combined Solar and Bio-Mass Heating Components
Figure 34 - Bulk Storage Systems
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Figure 35 - Information on Planting, Harvesting, and Pelletizing Miscanthus
Figure 36 - Mini District Heating Plants
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Figure 37 - Pellet Powered Generators
Figure 38 - Conference Hall, European Pellet Conference
Figure 40 - Exchange of Ideas, Canada Night WSED 2010
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Landfrisch Molkerei Located in Wels Austria, Landfrisch Molkerei is a dairy which recently replaced its heating plant and electricity needs with a co-gen biogas plant which utilized waste whey from their dairy product production. The tour was lead by Mr. Egon Arnold, managing director of AAT Environmental Technology, the engineering firm which was responsible for the co-gen plant construction. The plant had a capital cost of about 3.4 million Euros. The plant has an electrical capacity of only 0.5 MW which is considered the smallest plant of this size which is feasible. The plants’ digestor was specifically designed to utilize and digest whey. AAT has built such plants since 1981 and has a total of 150 plants worldwide with one of them installed in North America and plans for a new one in Western Canada.
Figure 41 - Dairy Co-Gen Plant to Use Waste Whey
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Figure 42 – Mr. Arnold explaining Biogas Plant configuration
Figure 43 - Biogas powered generator
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Figure 44 - Gas Pumping and Filtration
Figure 45 - Heating Plant at Landfrish Molkerei
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RZ Pellets Next up was RZ pellets, located in Ybbs Austria right next to the Stora Enso sawmill. RZ pellets is a 70,000 tonne per year pellet plant with a 30 MW combined heat and power plant. The electrical generator produces 10MW and the 20 MW balance is produced as heat for the pellet dryer, the sawmill lumber dry kilns and building heat. RZ produces and sells 30,000 tonnes in bulk and the rest to the bagged pellet market. The pellet plant has 4 Salmatec pelletizers. The plant has a 2000 tonne bulk pellet storage (1 weeks production) built into the plant. They operate 24-7 year round but with 4 pelletizers they can increase or scale back production based on market demand very easily.
Figure 46 - CHP Plant at RZ Pellets
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Figure 47 - Feed Lines from RZ Pellets to Sawmill
Figure 48 - Fully Automatic Pellet Bagging System
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Figure 49 - Bagged Pellet Storage and Inventory System
Figure 50 - Bulk Pellet Storage System
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Figure 51 - Bulk Pellet Loading and Delivery
Figure 52 - Salmatec Pelletizers
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Figure 53 - Binder used to assist in pelletizing
Figure 54 - Control System for Pelletizers
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Figure 55 - Pellet Furnish Dryer
Figure 56 - CHP Plant Boiler Building
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Kausl GmbH Kausl is a 30 year old plumbing and heating company which expanded into a district heating provider. The company had access to wood bio-mass and since they were already familiar with installation of hot water heating systems they began to develop mini district heating systems which they would design, install, operate and provide the bio-mass to feed the plant. These plants would be setup in small communities where several homes (~20) and at least two larger heat loads (a school, hotel and or restaurant) were located within a few kilometres of each other. The company now operates 14 such plants from a central office. The following photographs were taken at Muhldorf Austria where Kausl operates two mini district heating systems, 220 kW and a 300 kW hot water boiler plants, and a wood chipping operation to feed the two plants.
Figure 57 - 220 kW Mini District Heating Plant
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Figure 58 - Fully Automatic Wood Chip Boiler
Figure 59 - Computer Controller for Boiler
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Figure 60 - Hot Water Surge Tank Everything required for the heating plant is contained in a small footprint building about 16’ x 20’ which includes chip storage.
Figure 61 – Kausl Wood Chipping, Drying and Storage facility
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Figure 62 - School heated by Kausl District Heating System
Figure 63 - Kindergarten also on same heat district
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Figure 64 - Chip Bin for 330 kW Boiler
Figure 65 - 330 kW Boiler
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Figure 66 - Fully Automatic Boiler system with heat recovery system on stack
Figure 67 - Compact efficient design to fit community plan
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Blaue Lagune Model Home Park For the last stop, mission participants also had the opportunity to see state of the art model homes using energy efficient building technologies and heating systems while touring Blaue Lagune. With 85 model houses in one place, Blaue Lagune is Europe’s number one model home park . With numerous companies showing their model houses fully setup in a housing park, parties interested in new buildings as well as building rehabilitation will find a vast array of information and technology at the Blaue Lagune. Below are a few notable photographs of some of the technolgies seen at Blaue Lagune.
Figure 68 - Integrated Pellet & Solar Hot Water
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Figure 69 - Solar Refill Station for Electric Cars
Figure 70 - High Efficiency Pre-fabricated Wall Systems
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Figure 71 - High Efficiency Log Home Systems
Figure 72 - State of the Art Wood Heating Systems
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Figure 73 - State of the Art Bio-Mass Heating Systems
Figure 74 - Homes with Massive Wood Wall Construction
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Appendix A – Mission Program
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Programme for participants from NB Monday, March 1st 2010 Visited EVM (Energieversorgung Margarethen / Moos) Leithastraße 12 2433, St. Margarethen / Moos +43-664-3570-588 [email protected] Agricultural and agricultural-waste products for CHP and a methane gas filling station. Visited Ökowärme – Ökopellets office: Eisenstraße 75; plant visit: Eisenstraße 3 4462, Reichraming Contact: Johannes Schörkhuber +43-7254-706-700 [email protected] 60.000 tpa pellet production from waste wood residue that would otherwise be left in the forest unused. Stay in Salzburg Tuesday, March 2nd 2010 Visited Graskraft Reitbach Distelbergweg 2 5301, Eugendorf Contact: Mr. Golai +43-664-5059-371 [email protected] Biogas from grass and other agricultural products. CHP and methane gas filling station. Visited JOTechnik Ramsau 3 4822, Bad Goisern (2nd plant in Bad Ischl) Contact: Stephan Putz +43-3622-72211-202 mobile: +43-676-847114-502 [email protected] Meeting point at district heating system at Stammbach 125, near Bad Goisern. Mr. Unterberger +43-650-2316-835 Mr. Mittermayer +43-676-8471-14522
Wednesday-Thursday, March 3th & 4th 2010 Attended World Sustainable Energy Days Pellet Conference and Energy Fair, Wells Austria Friday, March 5th 2010 Visited Landfrisch Molkerei Schubertstraße 30 4600, Wels +43-7242 469960 [email protected] Using whey for CHP. Visited RZ Pellets Bahnhofstraße 31 3370, Ybbs Contact: Gottfried Baumgartner – General Management +43-7412-545-88-40; mobile: +43-664-6072-0552 [email protected] 80.000 tpa pellet production; CHP feeding into the electric grid and district heating. Waste energy is used for drying sawdust. Visited Kausl GmbH Ötz 4 3622, Mühldorf Contact: Rene Kausl +43- 2713-8424-0 cell: +43-676-8466-1520 [email protected] See Two mini district heating systems – 220 kW / 300 kW plus chipping operation. Company operates 14 plants controlled from a central office. Saturday, March 6th 2010 Visited Blaue Lagune Model Home Park Fertighauszentrum “Blaue Lagune“ Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG A-1070 Vienna, Mariahilfer Straße 84 Telephone: +43/1/526 11 03 Telefax: +43/1/526 11 00 E-Mail: [email protected] Visited a model home park to see state of the art model homes using energy efficient building technologies and heating systems. With 85 model houses in one place, Blaue Lagune is arguably Europe’s largest model home demonstration park.
