Renewable Cogen Asia

Wood waste to power is a matured technology and several boiler suppliers have mastered the technology. Compared to rice husk power plant, the total power plant cost is low for wood waste projects.

Though wood waste is a good biomass fuel, the availability and sustainability of wood waste is limited in Asia. However, we came across several sites in Africa, in which wood waste is dumped or burned without any use. To ensure the sustainability of wood for boiler fuel, energy plantation is considered as an option in several places. The ideal sites to implement power/cogeneration plants are large sawmill/plywood/furniture industries.

From the technological perspective, in the last 10 years, very good improvement was witnessed particularly in turbines. Nowadays, even small size turbines are also available with good efficiency. Even demolished wood and tree-trims are used as fuel now and there are two projects in Singapore using such wastes to produce power.

Though wood waste is easy to use in boilers, the type of wood waste (hard wood/softwood), percentage composition (bark, wood chips, saw dust, sander dust, and stem), characteristics should be studied thoroughly in the feasibility study stage itself.

With CDM revenue, in most of the cases, it is worth going in for wood waste power generation/cogeneration. If the project replaces fuel oil, then they are attractive for investments. Today, there are several green energy funds and the investors are looking for good projects to invest.

The most commonly used technology in Southeast Asia is travelling grate, reciprocating step grate and FBC system. However, in India, FBC system is widely used along with other technologies. The most common plant size ranges from 2 MW to 10 MW and some are even beyond 30 MW capacity. Rice husk and other biomass fuels are also mixed together with wood.

These days, ultra modern power plants are being installed in Southeast Asia with  lot of environmental protection measures, which are at par with  developed countries. We have worked with several wood waste projects around the globe with sizes ranging from 1 MW to 36 MW. Refer our recent publication section for additional information on wood waste to power.

If careful and innovative project development, implementation and operation  approaches, tactics, strategies are followed from the beginning stage itself then it’s possible to reduce the overall project cost to around 20 to 30% thereby leading to considerable increase in IRR. For services related to wood waste to power, contact us.