Global science company Solvay is turning to waste wood to power its Rheinberg plant.
The Rheinberger Solvay plant produces soda and sodium bicarbonate used to manufacture everything from glass and solar panels to laundry detergents and baking powder.
To reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, by about 190,000 tonnes per year, Solvay Chemicals is building a power plant to generate steam and electricity using waste wood as fuel and has incorporated HAAS technology in the plant.
AVG Baustoffe Goch GmbH, a member of the German BAV, will process the waste wood into high-quality biofuel.
Ramon Janssen, President AVG, says about 300,000 tonnes of waste wood each year will be used to generate energy in the power plant.
The waste wood will be collected within a150 kilometre radius of the plant by certified disposal companies.
The challenge
Ramon says AVG is faced with the challenge of processing 300,000 tonnes of waste wood per year according to precisely defined biofuel specifications.
The power plant needs at least 60 tonnes of waste wood per hour to cover its operating demand.
Clean wood chips, without any impurities, are required to achieve optimum efficiency of the plant’s combined heat and power (CHP) boiler. AVG will use a HAAS waste wood processing system to achieve the desired outcome. Ramon says AVG has been using a stationary HAAS waste wood processing system at its Goch site for many years.
A HAAS system has also been in use at the Stobart Energy waste wood processing plant since 2017 and produces the fuel for an identical biomass power plant in the UK – TGP Tilbury Green Power.
The solution
The largest HAAS pre-shredder, a TYRON 2500-E, will first process waste wood of classes A to C. The wood will then be processed by a hammermill, ARTHOS 2000-E, equipped with two powerful 315 kW electric motors to produce recycling chips of less than 100 millimetres.
Ramon says the unique ballistic chute protects the hammermill from wear and tear and machine breakage. Impurities, especially iron, are automatically separated.
In addition, the mill can be opened hydraulically in a flash so that wear parts and the screen basket can be changed within a very short period of time. This minimises downtimes and reduces costs,” he says.
To ensure optimum cleaning and screening of the wood chips, the material flow is distributed over two lines.
Intelligent material diverters and distribution screws guarantee redundancies and thus operational reliability in the event of problems during processing.
Powerful neodymium magnetic separators, magnetic drums and eddy current separators remove the remaining impurities such as nails, screws or staples from the wood.
The cleaned biofuel is finally separated into three fractions with HAAS flat screens. The usable fraction is fed into the power plants storage silo, the fine fraction is separated and the oversize is fed back into the process.
A dust extraction system consisting of a filter unit with a suction capacity of 40,000m³ air per hour keeps the plant almost dust-free.
HAAS equipment is available in Australia through CEMAC technologies.
For more information, visit: www.cemactech.com