Project Profile Biomass and bandages BSB builds biomass-fuelled solution for Grand Falls General Hospital By Andrew Snook Grand Falls General Hospital’s new boiler system consumes about 400 metric tonnes of wood pellets annually, displacing more than 300,000 litres of heating oil. For many of the people who reside in the northwestern region of New Brunswick, the name Groupe Savoie is well known. In addition to being a major employer in the area, the specialty hardwood products manufacturer is very active within the communities it operates and runs Fondation Hector Savoie, a non-profit organization that assists low-income families throughout northwestern New Brunswick. One of the ways the foundation assists people is by paying for their trips and meals to and from hospitals when they need to travel to receive treatments for various ailments. One of those hospitals is the Grand Falls General Hospital in Grand Falls, N.B., located just over 70 kilometres south of Groupe Savoie’s headquarters in Saint-Quentin, N.B. In 2013, the Province of New Brunswick was looking for a solution that would replace the hospital’s outdated oil heat boiler system – which was burning more than 300,000 litres of oil annually – while reducing the facility’s greenhouse gas emissions. The province decided to put forth a pilot project that would have the hospital replace its primary oil heat unit with a biomass boiler system, which opened up a new market for the local forestry sector’s wood residuals. The contract for the project ended up being awarded to Biomass Solutions Biomasse (BSB), which is a partnership company formed by Groupe Savoie and Compact Appliances out of Sackville, N.B. The BSB team was well equipped to provide a biomass-fuelled solution. Groupe Savoie are a major producer of wood pellets in New Brunswick. The pellets are created from the residuals of the company’s wood product plants in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which process more than 430,000 cubic metres of hard maple, red maple, aspen yellow and white birch harvested from a combination of Crown lands and private wood lots. The contract for the project was awarded and confirmed in January 2013 with construction starting in August 2013 and commissioning taking place in January 2014. BSB decided to go with an 850kW Binder biomass boiler for the primary heat at the hospital. “The capacity of the proposed boiler was based on fuel consumption information provided from our discussion with existing oil boiler operators and historic oil consumption,” explains Théo Losier, development agent for BSB and Groupe Savoie. “The objectives were to obtain a viable conversion project and attain the adequate heat load requirement demand for the hospital.” Losier says that the Binder boiler chosen for the project uses the latest in moving grate technology and provides advanced combustion performance complete with automatic de-ashing, flue gas recirculation and clean air emissions. “This system included a large buffer storage tank properly sized for the application at hand,” he says. “Boiler controls included a tank management system for optimum boiler performance and efficiency. The actual customer heat usage is monitored using a BTU meter located inside the hospital, which measure the hospital heating demand by gigajoules.” SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 14 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass September/October 2017: Page 14
