Biomass CHP – Combined wood-fuelled heating and power systems for decentralised renewable energy.
Use wood fuel to create electricity as well as heat with our combined heat and power (CHP) systems, suitable for businesses with a year round high power and heat demand.
HWEnergy has partnered with Europe’s leading manufacturers of biomass CHP systems to provide small scale renewable energy solutions suitable for manufacturing, hotels, care homes, hospitals, district heating schemes and a range of other businesses. With the ability to link multiple units together in a series the electricity and heat output can be scaled to suit.
A dairy farm – an example of biomass CHP use:
The CHP plant installed on a farm produces electricity during the day for the milking plant, machinery, etc. The generated heat is partly used for heating buildings, with the remainder stored in buffer tanks.
When the power consumption is reduced at the end of the working day, the performance of the CHP plant is also greatly reduced, but the building’s heating is still provided through the stored heat energy in the buffer tanks.
The electricity and heat produced are both fully utilised in this example. ‘Waste’ energy is kept to a minimum since electricity is produced on demand and the heat stored for use as required.
Biomass CHP can also be used for:
- Refrigeration
- Steam
Biomass CHP – will it work for your business?
The following is an extract from Veto’s CHP brochure which explains biomass CHP and its applications well:
The production of heat is common to all types of power generation. Often this heat is released into the environment as waste heat, such as through the cooling towers in most conventional power plants. In order to make use of this waste heat, a local heat demand (heat sink) is needed, which could include the heating of a building or a process heat system. In general, electricity and heat demand vary. Consequently, the production and use of both forms of energy must be flexible with regard to the end user’s needs.
In thermodynamics, the different forms of energy are placed in a hierarchy. Crucial to the ‘rank’ of energy is its availability and convertibility. Thermal energy ranks significantly lower than electricity, since electricity is easily convertible into other forms of energy, although it can be difficult to store in large quantities. An electric motor can easily convert electricity into kinetic energy; however, battery systems for storing electrical energy are highly complex and expensive.
Thermal energy is much easier to produce and store. Solar energy embedded in biomass (such as wood) is available in an almost limitless supply. Wood can be stored for several years and still releases the stored solar energy when burned at the desired time. Combustion of such fuels can be used to heat liquids which are easily stored in inexpensive buffer vessels.
To make the operation of a CHP plant both economical and environmentally sound, it is crucial for it to enable both the generation of electricity on demand and the storage of heat in an easily available medium. Feeding the electricity into the grid should only be a second choice; net losses, feed-in tariffs and incentives are good arguments for local self-consumption.
Economy and ecology are significant influences on both the design and the respective size of a CHP-plant; high installed capacities could have a negative impact. It is therefore recommended to cover peak loads in electricity use (e.g. when switching on electric motors) with electricity coming from the grid.
Download biomass CHP brochures: