Sonoco unveils $75 million biomass boiler

[Capt Worley PE]

HARTSVILLE — Sonoco unveiled what company officials said is the largest biomass boiler in the state Friday at its plant headquarters in Hartsville.

The two-year, $75 million project enables the international recycling giant to convert wood chips derived from leftover limbs and logs from local logging operations into steam power that is used to augment traditional carbon-based power sources needed power plant recycling work

.Sonoco CEO Jack Sanders said the biomass boiler will shave $6 million a year off the company’s power bill while producing 16 megawatts of what he called green power for plant operations.

“It’s a significant investment but it reduces our energy costs because we’re not relying on fossil fuels like natural gas and the cost of biomass waste is less than natural gas,” Sanders said.Unlike other forms of green energy, biomass plants do produce emissions.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/17/3212786/sonoco-unveils-75-million-biomass.html#storylink=cpy

I have no idea why the quote function did that when I spaced between the paragraphs....

The biomass plant at USC had a problem or two:

The plant closed after more than three dozen breakdowns and a 2009 explosion that sent a metal panel 60 feet in the air.

Story here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/10/04/5276442/usc-reaches-24-million-settlement.html

 

[knight1fox3]

Interesting.

 

[Wolverine]

$75,000,000 construction cost. = 12.5 years to break even on the construction investment.

$6,000,000

Oh, wait, I forgot to include daily operating costs, fuel costs for the trucks bringing chips to the plant, cost of the water used to make the steam to turn the generator, operators salaries, drivers salaries, increase in cost of pulpwood paper products , , ,

I love this idea!

 

[Wolverine]

I was up in N.Ga. talking to a local about their neighborhood biomass plant and she said they hates it. She said the operator ran out of subsidy money and so stopped paying the county water bill, which apparently is massive, and the local taxpayers were afraid they were going to get stuck with the bill in the end. Not to mention the wood trucks (and wood chips) all over the road.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

$75,000,000 construction cost. = 12.5 years to break even on the construction investment.

$6,000,000

Oh, wait, I forgot to include daily operating costs, fuel costs for the trucks bringing chips to the plant, cost of the water used to make the steam to turn the generator, operators salaries, drivers salaries, increase in cost of pulpwood paper products , , ,

I love this idea!

They make paper products there, so I'm guessing they have the feedstock on hand.

That being said, I don't think it will work out well for them. Those things don' have a very good track record.

 

[Master slacker]

I am atman

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Oh, looky here!

In 2011 Sonoco committed to a $75 million investment to replace two aging, coal-fired boilers and add the new biomass boiler at its plant in Hartsville. The new boiler is fueled primarily by woody biomass from regional logging activity but can also run on natural gas.

http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/news/50162-sonoco-dedicates-75m-biomass-boiler-facility?rss=0

 

[Master slacker]

"This announcement marks the conclusion of an event that's taken two years to come to fruition. Two years, $100 million and countless hours,”

all for

about 16 megawatts of unicorn farts and rainbows green energy

16 MW... are you FKM?

 

[Dleg]

Europe is doing a ton of biomass - so much that they are even importing wood processing waste from the US as fuel (yes, shipping it over like it's coal or something). It's paying off, for them. They are also using the waste heat for district heating, whic probably isn't as common in the US, but that makes it more attractive for them.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Europe is doing a ton of biomass - so much that they are even importing wood processing waste from the US as fuel (yes, shipping it over like it's coal or something). It's paying off, for them. They are also using the waste heat for district heating, whic probably isn't as common in the US, but that makes it more attractive for them.

Have you seen their electric rates? Germany was at $0.43/kW-hr last time I checked (a year or so ago).

I'd say somethings bad wrong.

 

[mizzoueng]

The nat gas is needed for startup and peak loading. We are working on a biomass (corn products) boiler now and they work great for base loading, but the low load and high load ranges are where it gets tricky as issues with flame out on biomass are much much higher. I would think this would work somewhat well, but with wood products, you have issues with sulfur, chlorine, PM, NOx, etc that are just as prevalent as coal, so you will need a baghouse, DSI, and activated carbon just to meet air quality