EVENT 15 – COVERING ALL COMMERCIAL OMASS TO ENERGY The new EUR 320 million waste-to-energy plant at Vantaa, Finland’s fourth largest city. This state-of-the-art plant achieves an impressive 95 percent energy conversion efficiency and produces about 50 percent of the heat energy demand. Delegates and speakers came from around the world. Here Dr Kazuhiro Aruga, Dept. of Forest Science, Utsunomiya University, Japan outlinig the nation’s pathway towards a low-carbon society. He discussed the availability of logging residues for the Nakagawa biomass power plant based on the existing forest management plans for Takahara Area in Tochigi Prefecture (photo courtesy Arto Rummukainen, LUKE). Finnish bioenergy technology and knowhow is not confined to large forest-based biomass. Here a biogas plant with upgrading to biomethane technology supplied by Metener. Bioenergy International No 82, 6-2015 51 Temporary policy stall The following two days of the Bioenergy 2015 conference included the usual wide range of information concerning policy and targets, forestry management, industry and research in Finland, and also information from a significant number of international speakers. Some standout talks on developments in Finland were about progress building the new Metsä plant at Ääneskoski, which will see a near-tripling of wood going into processing, up to about 6.5 million m³ per annum; energy production being sourced mainly from residues, and a widening of the product line to include biofuels and fibre. International speakers were from Argentina, the USA, Canada, Austria, Korea, Japan, Australia, Estonia and Germany. The changing uses of biomass in the EU were clarified by Jori Sihvonen from the European Biomass Association (AEBIOM), while the current world picture and direction for the coming decades was provided by Dr Heinz Kopetz of The World Bioenergy Association (WBA). Overall, while EU and Finnish policy development in relation to bioenergy and biofuels has stalled temporarily, it is clear that there is no alternative to ongoing development in bioenergy. Showcasing Finnish tech Finland is in the box seat to supply plant, equipment, technology and expertise, a message was reinforced a number of times, with countries at the rear in bioenergy development, including the USA, Argentina and Australia, clearly being potential clients for some of this array of services and equipment. Some of these companies at the conference, like Renewa and KPA Unicon, are world leaders in their combustion technologies. Biogas and biofuels companies included BioGTS with a pilot plant demonstrating their innovative anaerobic digester design. At the expo that ran in parallel with the conference many stands were taken up by other leading Finnish manufacturers of forestry and bioenergy equipment, including Kesla cranes, heads and chippers (including their prototype hybrid powered chipper), AFM heads and Hewsaw one-pass milling systems. The optional post-conference tour the day after was of a small district heating plant in a village near Joutsa. Here the boiler was in modular housing with an integrated feed supply. The 150 kWth boiler and all of the systems carried the name Säätötuli, a maker well known in Finland but one of many not widely known outside that country yet. The second site was to a newly completed 3000 m³ per annum municipal anaerobic digester near Joutsa where the biogas was upgraded using the Metener system (developed in Finland) for fuelling cars and buses. The site is just off the E75 highway and the tour group was at the filling station when a pair in their Volvo V70 AFV estate car, heading north on a fishing trip, came in to top up with the cheapest fuelling option of biomethane (the V70 AFV is able to run on methane, gasoline or ethanol). After the usual hearty lunch the final stop was to visit VTT (the Finnish National Research Organisation) in Jyväskylä, and to see the test rigs for bubbling and circulating fluidised bed furnaces. This was an appropriate end KPA Unicon awarded new supply contracts in Finland In Finland boiler technology supplier KPA Unicon has been awarded a contract by Porvoo Energy to supply a turnkey 10 MWth biomass heat plant to be built in Loviisa. The deal also includes a five-year plant service and maintenance agreement. A ground-breaking ceremony was held recently and it is scheduled for handover in April 2016. The new plant will use local woodbased fuels such as bark and woodchips and serve as a new baseload plant for the Loviisa district heat network. The existing 7 MWth boiler plant will serve as peak load and reserve use in the future. Also in Finland, KPA Unicon has been awarded a contract to supply a 6.25 MWth flue gas scrubber and heat recovery system to the Pieksämäki district heat plant by energy utility Savon Voima. In addition to the improved energy efficiency of district heat production, the carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emissions will be reduced by over ten percent. – Our target in district heat production is to reach close to 100 percent utilisation rate of domestic fuels. This new investment reduces the use of oil in energy product ion, said Maija Henell, Business Director of Savon Voima. BI82/5028/AS point as many of the innovative systems seen in practice have been developed based, in some way, on the detailed work done by VTT in this and its other laboratories over the last 25 years. Text & photos: Andrew Lang BI82/5029/AS
Bioenergy no 6 October 2015
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