New Technology All Fired Up The energy system at Kruger Products burns syngas from biomass directly in the boiler, replacing natural gas. Photos: Nexterra By Stefanie Wallace K ruger Products is show-ing off a new sys-tem that’s allow-ing it to replace natural gas w ith biomass energ y. In late September 2010, approxi-mately 50 representatives from the forest products and pulp and paper industries attended a demonstration of the new tech-nology at Kruger Products’ paper mill in New Westminster, British Columbia. The demo, hosted by FPInnovations, showed participants a direct-fired biomass gas-ification system that’s producing 40,000 pounds/hour of process steam for the mill. In this system, synthetic gas, or syn-gas, is used directly in the boiler in place of natural gas. Adding heat to woody bio-mass releases the energy into a gaseous form called syngas. The syngas is burned in a pre-ignition chamber and direct-fired into the boiler. Nexterra installed the gas-ification system, which was first fired up in December 2009, according to Frank Van Biesen, vice-president of technology for Kruger Products and sponsor of the proj-ect. “We started it roughly a year prior to that. We had a timeline that said we would be starting up in the first week of Decem-ber of 2009 and we never missed a beat there,” he says. Once installed, the gasification system went through the normal commissioning process. “There’s been some optimization and commissioning to make it a better per-forming system, but for the most part, it turned on and met the output capacity,” says Darcy Quinn, manager of marketing and business development for Nexterra. “One of the major advantages of doing this is the The Nexterra system at the Kruger Products tissue mill is the first commercial installation of this direct-fired biomass gasification system. significantly lower emissions, which suits the environment,” says Quinn. Van Biesen says that Kruger Products chose Nexterra for the project based on its technology. The proven emission reduc-tions were helpful in getting the project underway, he says, noting, “A permit for burning things besides natural gas isn’t easy to get, especially in an urban centre.” Ac-cording to Van Biesen, the emissions will be recorded and reported by Kruger Products as required on an ongoing basis. Kruger, Nexterra, and FPInnovations formed a consortium to build the system, which is the first commercial demonstra-tion of Nexterra’s direct-fired gasification solution. “FPInnovations’ interest in it was to have the ability to demonstrate and showcase it to the rest of the industry, to see whether or not it could provide similar benefits to other parts of the forest prod-ucts or paper industry,” says Van Biesen. The multi-million dollar project received funding from Natural Resources Canada, the British Columbia Innovative Clean En-ergy Fund, and Western Economic Diversi-fication Canada. “There was a bit of a con-sortium of financial support there, which helped. But at the end of the day it was still largely our investment,” he notes. Incorporating the gasification system was part of a long-term goal to reduce the Canadian BIOMASS 7
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