More bang for the biomass:Proposed co-gen plant would feed grid, heat provincial buildings

摘要

Coming at a time when there is a bit of a backlash against large stand-alone power plants that rely on wood-fired boilers, a renewable energy project proposed for the town of Bridgewater, on Nova Scotia's South Shore, is designed to use biomass in themost efficient way possible.A new company called Bridgewater Renewable Energy Works plans to build a gasification plant that will generate 3.2 MW of electricity for the grid while producing an equal amount of thermal energy for heating provincial buildings near the site. The project has received approval under Nova Scotia's renewable energy COMFIT (community feed-in tariff) program, and the proponents hope to have it operational in 2016.Dave Stewart, one of the company's major shareholders, says synthetic gas produced from biomass will fuel twin engines, which will drive a generator. "You're basically spec'ing a landfill gas Caterpillar gen-set," he says. "It has almost no emissions compared to a steam boiler. There's no particulates. The syn-gas, it's basically natural gas, and it gets burned in the Caterpillar, and the catalytic converters keep it clean."