Advanced Utilization of Wood Pellets

A cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to convert already existing pulverized coal-fired power plant boilers from coal to operation on biomass pellets. The present project addresses some important and unresolved issues to ensure an effective milling and good combustion of biomass pellets to achieve a high fuel flexibility, boiler availability and electrical efficiency. To achieve this, the main goals of the project are: (i) To provide new fundamental knowledge about biomass fuel characterization that can improve current biomass pellet specifications by incorporating measurable parameters that describe the milling properties in a coal mill. (II) To obtain a deeper understanding of the milling properties of biomass pellets, thus allowing a broader and cheaper range of biomass pellets to be sourced. (iii) Lead the way for an optimal operation of coal mills running on biomass pellets and thereby optimize boiler efficiency while avoiding building new milling facilities. (iv) To trace dependencies of coal mill grinding of biomass pellets to the upstream pellet production process and to the properties of the original biomass material. (v) To establish correlations between laboratory milling tests and large-scale milling tests onsite at the power plant.