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Wood Burning Power Station at Wilton 10 |
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Wilton 10 Power Station will be the UK's first large scale biomass power station to use wood as its renewable fuel source.
The £60m plant will generate 30MW of 'green' electricity ? the equivalent needed to power around 30,000 homes (compared to a new 42MW gas turbine, which typically costs more than £20m) and 10MW of thermal energy. Located in Teesside, UK, it is the largest biomass project of its kind in the UK.
"The £60m plant will generate 30MW of 'green' electricity - the equivalent needed to power around 30,000 homes."
Wilton 10 will operate separately to the existing 197MW Wilton Power Station, but will be partially situated within the existing building. The new power plant meets UK and European emissions targets by applying Best Available Technology (BAT). SembSolutions, SembCorp Utilities UK's in-house project team, will oversee the project.
Wilton 10 will create around 15 permanent new jobs in SembCorp Utilities UK and around 400 during construction.
On course for completion in the summer of 2007, the project will also secure and create jobs within the farming, forestry, construction, wood recycling and transport sectors. The electrical power will be sold directly to the grid, with the 10MWt of steam going to the site's district heating steam circuit, mainly for process heating.
UK'S LARGEST BIOMASS PROJECT
The engineering, procurement and construction contractor is Foster Wheeler. A $53m contract included designing, building and commissioning the complete boiler island. This included the fuel handling system, biomass fuelled boiler and flue gas treatment system.
The bubbling fluidised bed boiler works with high moisture content fuels and fuels that are difficult to handle or have difficult ash characteristics. It is therefore suitable for forest waste and short rotation coppice wood. The plant will burn green and recycled wood and will meet emission limits of the EU's Large Combustion Plant directive and Waste Incineration directive.
The 35MWe steam turbine and power island is being supplied by Siemens PG, using the SST 400 steam turbine/generator set. This comes complete with condenser, Flender gearbox, oil system, and PCS7 control system.
ENERGY CROPS FOR FUEL
The wood for the station will come from four separate sources. Around 40% of the 300,000t a year total will be recycled wood from UK Wood Recycling. This will be received, stored and chipped on a nearby, separately owned site at Wilton.
A further 20% will come to the site already chipped as offcuts from sawmills. SembCorp is working with the Forestry Commission to bring another 20% from north east forests in the form of small roundwood logs ? items sometimes left on the forest floor after routine tree felling operations.
"The new plant will require the growth of around 7,500 acres of coppice in the area, an activity that will create local wildlife havens."
Finally, 20% will comprise specially grown energy crops in the form of short rotation coppice willow. The company Greenergy will supply the wood, to be grown by farmers and other landowners within a 50-mile radius of the site.
The new plant will require the growth of around 7,500 acres of coppice in the area, an activity that will create local wildlife havens. All the wood needs to be chipped and mixed in careful proportions before being fed into the boiler, which will encompass technology already in use in Scandinavia and other areas.
WOOD RECYCLING FACILITY CONSIDERED
Around £10m of the investment has come from a grant made under the Bio-energy Capital Grants Scheme. SembCorp has financed a significant element of its investment through a long-term project finance loan with French bank, Calyon, the corporate and investment banking arm of the Crédit Agricole Group.
A feasibility study is also being undertaken into the possibility of creating a separately owned and operated wood recycling facility on the Wilton International site.
SembCorp's 'wood to energy' approach comes in response to a call from the UK Government, following the 1997 Kyoto Agreement, for more energy throughout the UK to be generated from renewable sources. Generating power and steam by burning renewable fuels instead of fossil fuels is carbon neutral because the carbon dioxide emitted to atmosphere is that absorbed by the trees during their growth cycle.
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