The new system will have a five-year payback through annual savings of $234,000. proposals on the design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of the hospital’s biomass project. The company specializes in biomass heating so it was able to take control of the whole process, except for the manufacturing of the heaters, which was subcontracted by the Groupe Simoneau from Boucherville. The model chosen for this product was WX, an industrial-calibre combustion cham-ber that is able to respond to the hospital’s energy needs, explains Francois Laroche, marketing co-oordinator at Combustion Ex-pert. “This system can make use of greener material. It tolerates up to 58 per cent mois-ture content without losing efficiency.” The furnace can burn even the greenest biomass, with some loss of efficiency. For the Mont-Joli hospital, CFM delivers biomass that is at a 30 per cent moisture content. “We’re very proud that the Mont-Joli bio-mass installation has worked well from the get-go,” Laroche stresses. Nadia Drapeau agrees that the project was off to a good start from December 2012. Adjustments were necessary only to the fre-quency of biomass shipments. Two ware-houses that hold 45 tons of biomass can pro-vide around four days of heating during the cold winter months while the hospital used to have a reservoir with 113,000 litres of oil that could provide heating for more than a month. • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 were asked to explain the project since there were concerns about emissions and pollu-tion coming from the smoke stacks,” says Drapeau. “When we explained that only steam would be emitted and that we were complying with the Ministry of the Environ-ment’s requirements, the project was very well received.” Biomass emission targets are set at 150 mg/m 3 of particles while typical residential chimneys produce more than 400 mg/m 3 . comBustion expert took controL It was Combustion Expert, a company based in Trois-Rivières, that won the request for 14 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass November/December 2013: Page 14
