A look inside the Index Energy facility where the biomass is chipped wood primarily from the GTA’s construction and demolition sectors. energy facility in 2007. Index Energy’s FIT contract is for up to 17.8 MWh, but Blais says the realistic average power generation of the facility is 16 MWh when taking into consideration a 90 per cent facility availability rate. “While we have achieved up to 16.8 MW, we have had hurdles with availability,” Blais said. “One such hurdle is a single wood fuel supply to the plant. In order for the fuel to get to the combustors it must go through a hydraulically driven walking floor where it’s metered on the first belt conveyor. It is then transferred to a second incline belt conveyor and then through a common screw. Should any of these pieces of equipment or their auxiliaries break down, the facility needs to be brought offline. Our solution to this is to install one 80 MMBtu natural gas burner in each retention tunnel to fire up when there is a fuel interruption. “Another challenge we have been able to overcome is constant fouling of the HRSG [heat recovery steam generator] evaporator and superheater tubes and the formation of large clinkers by the addition of a specialized Fuel Tech Inc. product,” Blais adds. “We are now working with BMA, an engineering and consulting team from Montreal, to address issues with the volume of carryover of ash from the combustor through a uniquely designed combustor grate, which they have developed.” Another completed portion of the revamp is the installation of a CMMS system, which is a computerized maintenance management system, to proactively track metrics such as uptime, downtime and worker wrench time. It also allows maintenance manager Alan Sidock to co-ordinate and schedule preventative maintenance and corrective maintenance with the purchasing and maintenance staff. “We can pull trends together to see what has been the No. 1 mechanism of failure, or what’s causing poor revenue from the plant,” Blais says. If all goes well, the facility hopes to consume up to 158,000 tonnes of biomass in Phase Two of its overall optimization plan, which also includes installing a second fuel-feed system to get fuel into the plant’s combustors. “We’ve been burning closer to 100,000 tonnes a year, but if we can get the plant up to a 90 per cent availability factor, which is our target, we’ll be burning up to 158,000 tonnes per year,” Blais says. PHASE TWO EXPANSION “Part of Phase Two is we’ve actually got six kilometres of underground steam lines that are currently in place, so it’s a district heating loop around Ajax — it goes down to the hospitals, the high schools, other energy sectors around here and other industrial sectors such as Ajax Textile across the road,” Blais explains. Phase Two would be providing lower-cost steam and heating, and even electricity to the community surrounding Index Energy. “You can imagine the cost to produce steam with natural gas is significantly more than the cost to produce our steam with biomass, so we can lower the utility cost of our neighbourhood and make that infrastructure more competitive,” Blais says. “The underground infrastructure is already there, but for us we’ve got to put in new combustors, so we’re scoping that here in 2018 and looking to start implementing the project in fourth quarter 2018,” he says. Blais and Rainbow are also approaching builders and constructors of residential buildings to build partnerships. “We’re here to help, not pollute… We’re a local solution for renewable and clean energy,” says Rainbow, whose family runs a scrap metal and waste processing business in the U.K. where he migrated from. “Daniel knows this Ontario wood market better than anyone,” Blais adds. “He’s very involved in the waste industry, he goes to all kinds of biomass seminars, biomass events… He’s constantly looking for disposal options for our waste, our waste ash, bottom ash, fly ash. He’s also come up with a lot of the projects that we’re looking to implement, so he’s been a key person for us.” Index Energy is also hoping to construct a megadome on-site that will be “I live by the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement,” Index Energy president Derek Blais says in how he operates with the team at the facility. Canadian BIOMASS 11
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