Vattenfall Inaugurates Straw-Burning CHP Boiler at Fynsværket Power Plant in Denmark

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Leading utility company Vattenfall AB (Stockholm, Sweden) has inaugurated a new straw-burning unit at the Fynsværket power plant in Odense, Denmark. The new boiler will be fuelled by more than 300,000 large bales of straw per year, producing energy equivalent to almost 100,000 tons per year of coal. Straw is an environmentally friendly fuel, and the new plant will effectively eliminate the emission of 245,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The new combined heat and power (CHP) boiler will supply 35 MW of electricity to almost 35,000 homes and 84 MW of heat to about 60,000 people living on Funen Island. The Fynsværket power plant was commissioned in 2009.

The straw-fuelled CHP boiler will not only turn Odense into a greener city, but it will also go a long way in helping Vattenfall achieve its target of turning the company's Nordic operations carbon-neutral by 2030. To achieve that goal, the company must make regular changes to its existing emission contributing facilities. Plant Manager Klaus Winther said that the new boiler at Fynsværket would play a large role in Vattenfall's plan to gradually replace coal with biomass fuels in its power plants.

Vattenfall's other thermal power facilities in Denmark include the Amagerværket plant in Copenhagen, the Nordjylland plant in Aalborg, and the plants at Helsingör and Hilleröd. The company's continuous efforts are to convert its plants to biomass-fuelled plants and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. In early 2009, Vattenfall's coal-fired CHP power station at Amagerværket was converted to a co-combustion plant that burns both coal and straw. Vattenfall began rebuilding its Fynsværket and Amagerværket coal-fired plants in 2008.

With more than 30 biomass-fuelled heat and CHP plants, Vattenfall is one of the largest buyers of biomass worldwide. However, there is a growing concern about the ability of the country's agriculture department to supply an adequate quantity of biomass. The costs of the projects are also a concern. In 2009, Vattenfall called on the European Union to clearly define "biomass power," so that it could ensure that its expanding portfolio of biomass-fired power plants had sufficient supplies of officially approved renewable fuel. At that time, only 15 to 17 materials were defined as biofuel, while all other types of biomass were defined as waste.

In 2009, Vattenfall announced plans to invest about 680 million euros ($908 million) on the MaxBio project that would rebuild all the company's Danish coal-fired power plants to operate on biomass fuel and enable the company to become carbon neutral by 2030. The project calls for the replacement of 724,000 tons of coal per year by biomass, starting in 2018. This would reduce CO2 emissions by 27%, or 1.5 million tons per year. By 2018, Vattenfall intends to operate its largest heat plants in Denmark--Amagerværket, Fynsværket and Nordjyllandsverket--completely on biomass, or a mixture of coal and biomass. Wood pellets, wood chips and straw will make up the biomass fuel during the first phase, while the later phases will see the utilization of other forms of biomass fuel.

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