Alive and kicking!!!!!!!

[ceylon220]

Just to let you all know that I am still alive and kicking, not been on the site for a while due to problems with the laptop but looking forward to catching up with the news and photos.

Dave frae Silloth.

[Ian]

Good to see you back.

[coastie]

Welcome back, Dave!!

[G-CPTN]

Welcome back - what news from your part of the World?

[G6 UXU]

Welcome back Dave, all the best.

[ceylon220]

Originally Posted by G-CPTN

Welcome back - what news from your part of the World?

We are being turned into a power producing area what with windmills arriving by ship (more coming into port within the next fortnight) and large store tanks being fabricated to convert wood shavings into enough power to supply over 2000 homes--these boffins can talk us into anything--bet my gas/electricity bill don`t reduce in price--but its business as usual here in sunny Silloth, everybody making money apart from me.

Thanks lads for the friendly welcome, glad to be back.


Regards to you all

Dave.

[G-CPTN]

The swimming-pool leisure-complex in our nearby town is heated exclusively by 'biomass' (wood-chips that arrive in bulk-tippers that dump it into a chute to the cellar from where it is moved mechanically automatically to the boiler.

When the new Wentworth Leisure Centre was built in 2008, a woodchip fired boiler was installed into the building. The boiler heats the swimming pool and the central heating system along with hot water for washing.
Designed to reduce the centre’s energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the boiler uses woodchip sourced from local forests. It provides a use for low grade timber, thereby increasing the efficiency of woodland management.
Using this kind of energy rather than fossil fuels reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 550 tonnes– enough to fill 60 Olympic sized swimming pools. The boiler can be seen in action through a viewing window outside the building.

[coastie]

Originally Posted by G-CPTN

The swimming-pool leisure-complex in our nearby town is heated exclusively by 'biomass' (wood-chips that arrive in bulk-tippers that dump it into a chute to the cellar from where it is moved mechanically automatically to the boiler.

Two things, firstly, who is going to sit at said window and watch a boiler burning away?

Secondly, if as we have been told, wood is getting scarce (paper shortage?) why is it ok to chip it and burn it like that instead of in logs?

[G-CPTN]

I believe it is possible to harvest timber from plantations before it is mature enough to be used for construction and then replant and repeat the process.
Of course, you need to include the energy expounded to reduce the trees to chips and the fuel used to transport it from the forest to the boiler facility where it is consumed (and the fuel used by the vehicle to return to base).
Where the chips are a by-product of normal forest management the equations are probably beneficial, but when wood-chips have to be 'grown' specifically for use as biomass then costs will rise.

(My one-time employer was buying cotton waste to include in brake linings. The specification for this was carefully written to ensure repeatability, though this reflected the original product.
In due time the supplier raised the price to levels that seemed unreasonable for what had been a waste product. The reason turned out to be that the supplier had discontinued the original process and, in order not to lose the business, had resorted to 'manufacturing' the waste from scratch according to the specification.)
I suspect the same will happen to supplies of 'biomass' as greater use is adopted of this material.
People with log-burning stoves are finding the cost of logs escalating as demand for these is rising.

In Denmark in the 1980s, many 'district heating' systems were established, supplying hot water from a 'power station' that was fuelled with straw from agricultural 'waste'. I don't know what they used when the straw ran out . . .

[coastie]

The one in Shetland uses waste which cannot be recycled and is a lot cheaper to heat your hoos via this means than by anyother, I believe.