Bioenergy on show at AusTimber 2012Friday 16 Mar 2012
The coincidence is that Mt Gambier is the site of the last wood biomass-fuelled combined heat and power plant (CHP) in Australia, which ceased producing electricity in the early 1990s. Soon it’s likely that we’ll see many of this sort of biomass-fuelled energy plant opening up again across regional Australia. Supplying them will provide a profitable use of forestry and timber industry wastes and residues. Within the same biomass-to-energy sector will be the supply of smaller volumes of chipped residues for institutions and industry, and production of pellets for household space heating. In Australia up to 40% of overall energy requirement is as heat energy. An example of the Finnish-made Veto chip-fuelled boiler is on show. This system is suitable for heating larger houses, or schools, hospitals or commercial premises. The available outputs range from 30-700 kW. The system on show is a smaller model from the Veto range, imported by David Matuschka, well-known as the importer of Karasaws. Across the world many companies are pursuing the ‘holy grail’ of turning wood waste into electricity at smaller scale and cost-competitively with coal-fired power plants. While companies in Germany, Finland, the USA, Belgium and China are working on gasifier prototypes or producing small numbers of small gasifiers it is presently in India that hundreds of gasifiers are in regular use. At the Bioenergy Precinct will be a small Ankur 10 kilowatt electrical output (10 kW-e) gasifier as used in about 150 Indian villages to power minigrids using agricultural and forestry waste. Larger gasifiers being used by industries to produce heat, or heat and electricity, have outputs of up to 500 kW-e, or all the electricity needs for 500-750 average Australian households. A major function of the Bioenergy Precinct will be to provide information, including on costs, rates of return and pay back periods for various bioenergy technologies. Helping to provide this information will be Liz Hamilton, Senior Bioenergy Officer with the Victorian Department of Primary Industry. Liz is also the driving force behind the Victorian Bioenergy Network, which regularly brings industry and government members together to share information and educate each other. Also at the Precinct will be Andrew Lang, a board member of the World Bioenergy Association. Andrew has good knowledge of developments in bioenergy around the world and also about the equipment used in Scandinavia for harvesting and handling biomass. Both Liz and Andrew have used Gottstein Fellowships to study bioenergy development in North America and Scandinavia respectively, and will be happy to talk about bioenergy developments in Australia and elsewhere. | ||
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