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So, you thought that biomass pellets were Clean, Green, Safe and Simple did you?

DRAX coal fired power stations used to use lumps of coal to burn to heat water to create steam for the steam turbines that turned the generators. Those were the power stations with big cooling towers, many of which have been demolished now.

Then DRAX improved the system and used powdered coal to burn. That coal dust burnt very fiercely and efficiently. Also the output gasses were filtered, and by products were used to make plasterboard etc.

Now, due to government subsidies biomass wood pellets are burnt in the power stations. Many of these are imported from America.

Biomass wood pellets have problems with storage. There have been silo fires due to self heating in storage when the biomass pellets naturally reach a high critical temperature in storage.

So, using biomass pellets is not so simple and green after all.

Have a little look at this video on the matters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc_jRyhlYRU

Z.

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0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

The transition from burning “lumps of coal” typically on a chain grate to pulverised coal long pre-dates Drax, which was the ultimate development of 1960s coal fired Power Station technology in the UK , although the second phase wasn’t completed until the mid-1980s, shortly before I became closely associated with it, often working on site as part of CEGB North East Region Training Department (later National Power to 1996). During that time Flue Gas Desulphurisation was added. All forms of combustion or heat creation to produce high temperature, high pressure steam involve risk and many substances are potentially explosive in powder form. In a sense a pulverised fuel boiler is a “controlled explosion”. In my early career at another Power Station, memories were fresh of colleagues killed by a pulverised coal explosion in pipework feeding into a boiler.

As you can imagine, there were engineers who specialised deeply in combustion and efficiency, I wasn’t one of them.

https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/45463-coal-pulverising-in-boilers/

https://www.ieabioenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/P07-The-firing-and-co-firing-of-biomass-in-large-pulverised-coal-boilers-Livingston.pdf
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0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

The transition from burning “lumps of coal” typically on a chain grate to pulverised coal long pre-dates Drax, which was the ultimate development of 1960s coal fired Power Station technology in the UK , although the second phase wasn’t completed until the mid-1980s, shortly before I became closely associated with it, often working on site as part of CEGB North East Region Training Department (later National Power to 1996). During that time Flue Gas Desulphurisation was added. All forms of combustion or heat creation to produce high temperature, high pressure steam involve risk and many substances are potentially explosive in powder form. In a sense a pulverised fuel boiler is a “controlled explosion”. In my early career at another Power Station, memories were fresh of colleagues killed by a pulverised coal explosion in pipework feeding into a boiler.

As you can imagine, there were engineers who specialised deeply in combustion and efficiency, I wasn’t one of them.

https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/45463-coal-pulverising-in-boilers/

https://www.ieabioenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/P07-The-firing-and-co-firing-of-biomass-in-large-pulverised-coal-boilers-Livingston.pdf
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So, you thought that biomass pellets were Clean, Green, Safe and Simple did you?

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