The British power company, Drax, has launched a £50 million project to replace 10% its coal usage with biomass particles. The company is planning to mix wood chips, sunflower husks and grasses with coal in order to save several millions in carbon dioxide emissions.
Officials from Drax have signed a deal with Alstom to build a plant that will produce 1.5m tonnes of biomass fuels per year. The building for the plant will start this year and officials hope the first part of the plant will be finished by 2009.
Executives at Drax hope to save 2m tonnes of CO2 per year and cut back their total emissions by 15% by 2012. "Last year, we set ourselves the target of 10% of co-firing of biomass - that's equal to the output of about 500 wind turbines. In capacity terms, that's 400MW. That will make us the single biggest biomass-generating unit site in the world," said Dorothy Thompson, the chief executive of Drax. (Quoted in The Guardian)
Producing up to 7% of Britain's electricity, Drax is the UK's leading power station as well as the biggest green house gas emitter. The company has tested the plan over the past several months, using 2-3% biomass in the coal-fired boilers. In this case, the biomass mixes directly into the coal but officials say this would not work for larger quantities.
The plant is an integral part of Drax's plan to reduce their emissions by increasing their usage of biomass fuels. Officials hope to be able to use a wide variety of biomass fuels that burn in different ways. The plan will hopefully move the company in the direction of less CO2 emissions. Executives have estimated that it would take 1.5 m tonnes of biomass fuels to replace the 1m tonnes of coal they use each year.
If the plant goes well, Drax officials say they may increase the percentage of biomass fuels used, possibly up to 20%.
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This post was written by Christine Pinella on May 22, 2008