Training Module

SPEAKERS NOTES

BIOMASS HEATING PROJECT ANALYSIS

CLEAN ENERGY PROJECT ANALYSIS COURSE
This document provides a transcription of the oral presentation (Voice & Slides) for this training module and it can be used as speaker's notes. The oral presentation includes a background of the technology and provides an overview of the algorithms found in the RETScreen Model. The training material is available free-of-charge at the RETScreen International Clean Energy Decision Support Centre Website: www.retscreen.net.

SLIDE 1: Biomass Heating Project Analysis This is the Biomass Heating Project Analysis Training Module of the RETScreen Clean Energy Project Analysis Course. Here, we discuss the controlled combustion of biomass to provide heat. In this photo, we see a plant in Sweden that burns woodchips in order to generate heat for distribution among the buildings of a community.

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SLIDE 2: Objectives This module has three objectives. These are first, to review the basics of biomass heating systems; second, to illustrate key considerations for biomass heating project analysis; and third, to introduce the RETScreen Biomass Heating Project Model.

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SLIDE 3: What do biomass heating systems provide? Biomass heating systems burn organic matter such as wood chips, agricultural residues, or even municipal waste to generate heat. This heat can be used wherever it is needed for the ventilation and space heating requirements of buildings or whole communities, or for industrial processes. Biomass combustion provides more than simply heat. Because it usually makes use of fuel that is available locally and because it requires considerable labour to operate and maintain the system, it creates local jobs. The money spent on biomass heating supports these local jobs rather than capital-intensive industries, such as oil extraction, that may be located far from the heating

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SLIDE 3: What do biomass heating systems provide? (cont.) plant. In addition, biomass combustion systems often use waste products, such as byproducts from lumber mills or agricultural processing. These waste products are transformed from liability to resource. Biomass systems integrate well with district heating and waste heat recovery systems. District heating is the use of one central plant to furnish heat to multiple consumers located in the area around the plant. Underground water ducts transport the heat from the plant to the distributed consumers. The labour needed to operate a central biomass plant is much less than that needed to operate many smaller biomass plants, located on the premises of each consumer. The central plant can also justify the investment in waste heat recovery equipment that can make use of heat exhausted from an industrial process or power generation equipment. This reduces the overall need for biomass or conventional fuels. The photo on this slide shows a district heating plant in the community of Greussenheim, Germany. The plant generates electricity and heat by combusting rapeseed.

SLIDE 4: Biomass Heating System Description The biomass systems that we discuss in this presentation are highly efficient plants that achieve near complete combustion of the biomass fuel in a controlled manner, and often incorporate automatic fuel handling systems. Woodstoves and fireplaces are not included in this presentation. Biomass heating systems consist of a heating plant, a heat distribution system, and a fuel supply operation. Typically, the heating plant contains four sources of heat. First, whenever possible, the plant makes use of a waste heat recovery system providing free or low cost energy recovered from an industrial process or electricity generation system. Second, base load heating demand in excess of that provided by waste heat recovery is provided by a biomass combustion system. Third, when the heating load outstrips the combined output of the waste heat recovery and the biomass combustion systems, a peak load heating system is brought on line. It is designed to meet only a small portion of the annual energy demand. Fourth, in case of a biomass system shutdown or an interruption in the biomass fuel supply, a backup heating system provides heat. In some cases, the peak load heating system obviates the need for a backup system; the waste heat recovery system is also optional. The heat distribution system transports heat from the heating plant to the locations where it is required. These locations may be within the same building as the plant or, in the case of a district heating system, a cluster of buildings located in the vicinity of the plant. A network of insulated piping conveys hot water away from the plant and returns the cooled water back to the plant for reheating.

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SLIDE 4: Biomass Heating System Description (cont.) The fuel supply operation includes the components and procedures required to maintain a reliable supply of fuel to the plant. This is usually more complicated than supplying fuel to a gas or oil-fired plant. A local operator must be responsible for collecting and processing the biomass fuel and transporting it to the plant one part of this operation is seen in the photo on this slide. To accommodate the regular delivery of fuel, the plant must have a fuel receiving area, accessible by truck, with enough space for vehicles to turn around and, if necessary, mobile loaders and other equipment to operate. The plant must also have an indoor or outdoor fuel storage area; smaller storage areas are less expensive to build and take up less space, but necessitate more frequent fuel deliveries. A fuel reclaim system will transport the fuel from the storage to the fuel feed of the combustion system. Manual transport is possible in very small systems, but this is labour-intensive, and larger systems make use of mobile loaders and automatic equipment such as augers. Because the fuel may be of variable consistency and quality, and even include small detritus like sticks, wires, or gloves, automatic fuel reclaim systems must be carefully designed. The output of the fuel reclaim system enters a small storage buffer, called a day bin, or is fed directly into the final stage of the fuel supply operation, that is, the fuel transport system. This conveys metered quantities of the biomass fuel into the combustion chamber.

SLIDE 5: Biomass Heating System Description (cont.) Some of the components of the biomass heating system, already discussed in the previous slide, are shown on this slide. On the left hand side, the biomass fuel delivery and storage area are seen. The system shown here combusts particulate feedstock, fuel that has been processed into small particles. As a consequence, the fuel reclaim, which is seen moving feedstock from the storage area to the smaller day bin, and the fuel transport, here seen moving feedstock from the day bin to the combustion chamber, can utilize conveyer belts and augers. The combustion chamber is at the center of the slide. It is an enclosed area where the feedstock is burned under controlled conditions that maximize efficiency and encourage complete combustion. The feedstock is typically dumped onto a grate; regulated airflow up through the grate and over the top of the feedstock varies the rate of combustion in response to the energy demand. Larger systems sometimes use moving grates to maintain an even bed of fuel and to move the burning fuel through zones of progressively stronger airflow. The movement also shakes ash, the particulate by-product of combustion, to the end of the grate. The combustion chamber is often lined in refractory material such as firebrick that radiates and reflects heat back into the fuel layer and thus maintains high temperatures. Heat is captured by a heat exchanger, situated either in the combustion chamber itself or in a duct transporting hot gases out of the combustion chamber and into the exhaust system and stack. In small systems, the heat exchanger may be a simple, insulated water jacket that surrounds the firebox. Larger systems use boilers, with hot water, steam, or thermal oil as the heat transfer medium. The heat exchanger supplies heat to the loads via a hot water loop.

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SLIDE 5: Biomass Heating System Description (cont.) Bottom ash, which accumulates in the combustion chamber, can be removed manually or, as seen in this system, automatically. Fly ash is light particulate matter suspended in the gasses exiting the combustion chamber. It can escape the system through the exhaust system, thereby becoming particulate emissions, can drop out of suspension and be collected, as seen here, or can accumulate as deposits that must be removed. A peak heating and backup boiler is seen in the background of the slide.

SLIDE 6: Peak vs. Base Load Systems A major consideration in the design of a biomass heating system is the sizing of the biomass combustion system. Two approaches are commonly taken. In peak load design, the biomass combustion system is large enough to meet the maximum heat load that will occur. In base load design, it is only large enough to meet the base load, that is, the load that occurs during typical operation. Peak load design maximizes the use of biofuels and minimizes the use of fossil fuels. This can be advantageous when the cost of fossil fuel is very high. But the biomass combustion system required to meet the peak load will be larger and therefore more expensive than in the base load design. With variable loads, it will often operate at a loading well below its nominal capacity and consequently efficiency will suffer and emissions may be more severe. Base load design typically permits a much smaller biomass combustion system, significantly lowering capital costs. Nevertheless, because it satisfies the base load, most of the annual energy requirements are met by the biomass system. This arrangement can be very cost-effective. Furthermore, since the biomass system operates at or near its design load most of the time, efficiency is high and emissions are reduced. However, a conventional peak heating system is required, and fossil fuel consumption is higher. While the best approach will depend on the nature of the installation, large systems with high continuous energy demand tend to use the peak load approach and small installations serving exclusively space heating or variable loads tend to use the base load approach.

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SLIDE 7: District Heating Systems As mentioned earlier, in a district heating system, a central plant provides heat to a number of consumers spatially distributed around the area near the central plant. The consumers will often be grouped in clusters of public, commercial, and residential buildings located within a few hundred meters of each other. Insulated pipes buried 60 to 80 cm below the surface of the ground transport water around the network. The hot water is supplied at temperatures up to 130C and returned to the plant at temperatures of 40 to 80. The pipes need not be buried below frost line since they are insulated and contain circulating heated water. District heating offers a number of advantages over the use of individual heating plants in each building. A central plant can benefit from a level of sophistication, operator involvement, and automation that could never be justified in the smaller plants. This permits the larger plant to make use of high efficiency biomass combustion systems whereas the smaller plants would need to be either fossil fuel-fired plants, which are simpler and less costly to install and operate, or low-efficiency biomass systems, such as wood-burning stoves. The principal disadvantage of fossil fuel-fired plants is their high fuel costs; they also have serious environmental consequences. Compared to the lower efficiency biomass systems in individual buildings, the central plant offers higher efficiency, lower emissions, the comfort of an easily controlled heat source, increased safety, organized and efficient fuel production, easier utilization of any available waste heat, and operator convenience. The initial costs of a district heating system are high. It is easiest to integrate into newly constructed communities. The combination of biomass combustion system and district heating needs more attention than simple fossil fuel-fired systems. All these factors demand a high level of dedication and organization.

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SLIDE 8: Biomass Fuels A wide range of low-cost matter can be used as biomass feedstock. This includes wood and wood residues in chunk, sawdust, chip, or pellet form; agricultural residues such as straw, chaff, husks, animal litter, and manure; fast-growing energy crops grown specifically for biomass combustion, including willow, switchgrass, and hybrid poplar; and municipal solid waste. This slide illustrates two possible feedstocks: wood and walnut shells. Biomass fuels vary in their quality and consistency far more than fossil fuels, which are refined to a product of uniform consistency. Because of this variability, it is important to assess a potential biomass fuel supply for moisture content, ash content, and heating value. Most biomass feedstock contains moisture; the more it contains, the heavier it will be during handling and transport and the less efficiently it will burn due to the need to convert the water to steam. Wet feedstock can also lead to higher emissions of carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons in low temperature biomass combustion systems and is subject to biological activity during storage. Ash is the non-combustible inorganic matter of the feedstock. It does not contribute energy through combustion, and can cause problematic deposits in the combustion chamber, ash removal equipment, and heat exchanger.

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SLIDE 8: Biomass Fuels (cont.) The heating value is the quantity of heat released by the biofuel on combustion. It is a function of the relative proportions of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in the fuel, and is reduced by the ash and moisture content. The price of the biofuel depends on the source. If the feedstock is a waste product that must be disposed of, it may have a negative cost since tipping fees are reduced. Residuals, such as bark from a saw mill, which do not need to be disposed of but have no alternative use, are available at no cost. By-products, such as shavings and sawdust, have a low-value alternative use and therefore will be available at a low cost. Biomass harvested or purpose-grown specifically for use as a biofuel will have higher costs, and prepared fuels, such as wood pellets and briquettes, may cost more than fossil fuels. A reliable long-term supply of biofuel at a stable price is essential. The price of the biofuel will be influenced by possible alternative uses. For example, the price of waste wood bark may jump if it begins to be used in landscaping. Long-term contracts should be sought. To ensure a reliable, secure supply, the supplier must be chosen carefully. The way that a fuel is delivered to the plant, handled, and stored will depend on the type of biofuel. This in turn affects the layout of the fuel receiving and storage areas.

SLIDE 9: Environmental Attributes of Biomass Fuels Biomass that is harvested in a sustainable manner is considered a renewable energy resource since it will last indefinitely. Growing biomass removes the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere as is released during combustion, so there is zero net production of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Most biofuels have negligible sulphur content and thus do not contribute to acid rain. Biomass combustion does generate emissions that can affect local air quality and may be subject to regulation. These include particulates, also known as soot; gaseous pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons; and low levels of carcinogens. These emissions and the regulations that apply will depend on the type of fuel as well as the size and nature of the combustion system. The photos on this slide show two biomass fuels that are by-products of major industries. Sawmills produce woodchips and bagasse is the fibrous matter left after juice is extracted from sugar cane.

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SLIDE 10: Examples of Biomass Heating System Costs The table at the top of the slide compares the initial and annual costs for a biomass combustion system with those for an oil-fired boiler. Both systems are for heating an 800 m2 building and can satisfy a peak load of around 150 kW. The initial cost of the biomass system is four times that of the oil-fired boiler. The former requires the construction of a separate building to house the system as well as costly fuel handling systems; the latter can be situated in a corner of the building itself. The operating and maintenance costs of the biomass system are also much higher than those of the oil boiler. But due to high fuel costs, the oil-fired boiler costs around $19,000 per year to operate while the biomass system, which uses residual wood chips available at a very low cost from a local sawmill, costs under $10,000 to operate. In the long term, the biomass system is the least-cost option. This is characteristic of biomass combustion systems: they have high initial costs but very low fuel costs. The table at the bottom of the slide compares the cost of heating energy for a number of conventional and biomass fuels; these costs fluctuate from region to region and over time, but the table can be considered as illustrative of general tendencies. Electricity is by far the most expensive source of heat. Oil and gas are in the middle of the range. Around the same cost is wood chips, here assumed to be produced specifically for biomass combustion. By far the least cost fuel in this table is sawmill residue, having no other use and therefore available for little more than the cost of transport.

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SLIDE 11: Biomass Heating Project Considerations Unlike fossil fuels, which are standard products available from a wide range of suppliers, biomass feedstock is a highly variable fuel, differing in quality from one supplier to the next. In order for a biomass heating project to be successful, feedstock of acceptable quality must be available on a long-term basis at a price that is competitive with fossil fuels. This will often be the case when biomass residues are generated on site or available locally, and fossil fuel costs are high. Future demand for the feedstock, stemming from alternative uses for the material, should be estimated and its effect on the price of the feedstock anticipated. Long-term contracts help ensure price stability.

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SLIDE 11: Biomass Heating Project Considerations (cont.) Biomass heating works best when a substantial load occurs year-round, such as with industrial processes. In these cases, the potential energy benefits are high, offsetting high initial and operating costs, and the biomass system can operate near its nominal capacity, where it is most efficient. Biomass combustion systems require far more space than comparable fossil fuel-fired systems. Rural and industrial areas tend to have the space necessary for fuel delivery, storage, and handling. Biomass heating systems generally require more attention than fossil fuel-fired heating systems. They require committed operators throughout the heating season. Biomass fuel must be produced and loaded into feed hoppers or fuel storage, ash must be removed regularly from the burner or ash bins, and system function must be monitored closely. Failure to dedicate reliable people to biomass system operation can result in a shutdown and force a switch to a fossil fuel-fired system with higher fuel costs. Biomass heating systems often require special attention to fire insurance premiums, air quality standards, ash disposal options, and general safety issues. These requirements should be investigated at the initiation of the project.

SLIDE 12: Community Energy Systems Examples: Austria, Germany, and Slovenia Biomass heating systems can be combined with district heating to provide energy to clusters of buildings or an entire community. Such community energy systems can provide space heating, heating of ventilation air, water heating, and process heat. These can be supplied to institutional buildings, such as hospitals, schools, and sports complexes; commercial buildings, including office buildings, warehouses, and stores; residential buildings, such as apartments; and industrial buildings. They can even provide heat to individual homes, especially if the houses are constructed in groups; retrofitting individual houses for connection to the district heating system is less attractive. The photo on the left of the slide shows a community in Slovenia with a district heating system. The heating plant for this system has recently been converted from fossil fuels to biomass feedstock. The center photo shows a boiler for a small-scale biomass system; the photo on the right shows an automatic feedstock handler for a large-scale biomass system.

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SLIDE 13: Institutional and Commercial Buildings Example: Canada Individual buildings can meet their heating requirements using biomass combustion systems. Since substantial fuel savings must be achieved in order to offset the high initial costs and annual labour requirements of the biomass system, it is rare that a building as small as a house would use a biomass heating plant. Rather, biomass heating is found in institutional buildings such as schools, hospitals, and municipal buildings as well as commercial buildings like stores, garages, and hotels. The photo on the left shows a Canadian insitutional building that is heated with biomass; a small commercial biomass plant is seen in the photo on the right.

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SLIDE 14: Process Heat Examples: Brazil and USA Industries that both generate biomass residues and need heat are excellent candidates for biomass heating. If the biomass residues and by-products have no high-value alternative use, or need to be disposed of, they can be a very low cost fuel. Sawmills, which generate wood chips, sawdust, and bark, and need heat for drying kilns, are one example. Sugar cane refineries, which generate bagasse, are another, as seen in the two photos on the left. Other successful applications include hog, dairy, and poultry farms, furniture manufacturing sites, alcohol production facilities, and industrial drying and processing of crops.

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SLIDE 15: RETSCREEN BIOMASS HEATING PROJECT MODEL The RETScreen Biomass Heating Project Model is a simple but useful tool for the preliminary investigation of the technical and financial feasibility of biomass heating projects. For an installation anywhere in the world, it can provide an analysis of the energy production, life-cycle costs, and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The tool covers installations ranging from individual buildings to large clusters of buildings connected by district heating; the heating plant can include biomass, peak, backup, and waste heat recovery systems. The tool also assists in the preliminary sizing and costing of district heating piping networks. To conduct this analysis, the user provides the applications heating design temperature and the number of heating degree days for each month. The software includes a large database of these parameters for sites around the world. The user also indicates the hot water requirement which can be used to specify heating loads that remain constant throughout the year. While RETScreen can be applied to a vast range of applications and systems, its use for large-scale district heating projects that is, projects over 2.5 MW has not been validated.

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SLIDE 16: RETScreen Biomass Heating Energy Calculation The RETScreen Biomass Heating Energy calculation determines the energy provided by a biomass heating project over the period of a year. Here we provide an overview of this calculation; for more information, see the RETScreen Engineering and Cases Textbook, available on-line and free-of-charge.
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The first step in the RETScreen calculation is the conversion of the user-specified hot water demand into an equivalent number of heating degree days for each month. RETScreen assumes that the hot water demand is constant year round, and accounts for it by augmenting the space heating demand for each month. In order to raise the space heating demand, it increases the number of heating degree days for each month. Next, RETScreen uses an empirical procedure to determine a load duration curve and demand duration curve. The load duration curve has time, in hours, along the x-axis, ranging from 0 to the number of hours in the year, and the heating load along the y-axis, expressed as a fraction of the peak load. The curve relates a value of heating load to the fraction of the year that the heating load is greater than or equal to that value. For example, suppose that the heating load is greater than 50% of the peak heating load for a total of 2,000 hours in the year; the curve would then include the point at the intersection of x = 2,000 and y = 0.5. Thus, the curve intersects the y-axis at 1, the peak load. The demand duration curve is related to the load duration curve, and has the load along the y-axis, expressed as a fraction of the peak load. But the x-axis shows demand, rather than time. Thus, the curve indicates the fraction of the total demand that occurs at or below a given power level. RETScreen also finds the equivalent full load hours, which is equal to the total energy demand divided by the peak load. Thus, a heating plant sized to furnish the peak load would have to operate at capacity for this number of hours in order to generate the total annual energy demand. Since the total energy demand is unknown at this point, RETScreen must determine this by finding the area under the load duration curve. RETScreen then calculates the peak heating load. This is the sum of the peak heating loads for each building in the district heating system. The user specifies the peak heating load for each building on a per unit floor area basis; RETScreen suggests values for this based on the heating design temperature and the level of insulation in the building. The total energy demand can then be found by multiplying the peak heating load by the number of equivalent full load hours. RETScreen determines the fraction of the total energy requirement that will be provided by each of the waste heat recovery, biomass, and peak heating systems. It assumes that at power levels up to the capacity of the waste heat recovery system, all heat will come from waste heat recovery. Then additional power will be provided by biomass, up to the capacity of this system. Power above this will be provided by the peaking system. The heat generated by each system can thus be read off the demand duration curve. The fuel required to furnish this amount of energy is calculated; for the biomass system, this involves dividing the required heat energy by the biomass systems seasonal efficiency and the heating energy that is liberated by a unit mass of biomass during combustion. As a final step, RETScreen assists the user in design of the district heating network. The flow required in the different sections of the network is determined by the amount of heat that must be transported, which is in turn a function of the supply and return temperatures. An assumption about the maximum acceptable loss of pressure is used to determine the maximum flow that could be provided by pipe of a given diameter.

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SLIDE 17: Example Validation of the RETScreen Biomass Heating Project Model The RETScreen software has been validated by comparison with other biomass heating analysis software and chemical analyses of biomass feedstock. The validation focused on three areas: calculation of the load duration curve, calculation of the heating value of wood, and distribution network pipe sizing. RETScreens calculation of the load duration curve was compared to that determined by a proprietary Swedish model called DD-IL. This model is based on extensive records from two large, closely monitored district heating projects one in Minnesota and the other in Sweden. Load duration curves were generated for four cities in Canada, the USA, and Sweden. These were Edmonton, Toronto, St. Paul (Minnesota) and Stockholm. As can be seen in the figure on this slide, the two programs agreed to within 1%. The district heating network design algorithms of RETScreen were validated using ABBs R22 computer program. This software has been used extensively in the Scandinavian countries for design of district heating networks. RETScreens pipe sizing corresponded closely to those of R22 although in general, RETScreen slightly overestimated the required pipe diameter. RETScreens estimate of the heating value of wood biomass was compared with chemical analyses of 87 samples of bark collected from different species of tree in Eastern Canada. RETScreen was accurate to within 5% of the measured value for most samples.

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SLIDE 18: Conclusions Biomass combustion systems can provide heat for commercial and industrial buildings, process heat, and community energy systems. Where biomass is available as a residue having few or no alternative applications, it can serve as a very low cost fuel. Compared with fossil fuel-fired systems, biomass heating plants are physically larger, have higher initial costs, and require more operator involvement. But when heating loads are high over a considerable fraction of the year, the reduced fuel costs and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and acid rain-causing compounds makes biomass heating systems very attractive. The RETScreen Biomass Heating Project Model calculates load and demand duration curves, required biomass and peak plant capacity, and district heating network pipe sizes using minimal data. Providing an annual analysis based on monthly resource data, RETScreen considerably reduces the cost and difficulty of conducting a pre-feasibility study of biomass heating projects.

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SLIDE 19: Questions? This is the end of the Biomass Heating Project Analysis Training Module in the RETScreen International Clean Energy Project Analysis Course.
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