Now that's a boiler!

[Woodsrover]

The Hotchkiss School, a private (and very wealthy) prep school in the next town over has just put their new biomass boiler plant on-line. They have two Messersmith steam boilers making steam for all the buildings on campus with low-pressure steam. The estimate an annual fuel consumption of 5400 tons of wood chips! Thought you guys would get a kick out of it. If you're nearby, they offer tours of the plant. I need to get over there and check it out one of these days.

Hotchkiss School biomass plant.

 

[Eric Johnson]

The Messersmith is a nice boiler. Lots of schools seem to be converting to biomass heat. Nice trend.

 

[flyingcow]

That's about 270 trailer truck loads of hog fuel. Majority of it in the winter.

 

[Gasifier]

I liked the impact section that said this.

Impact · By using locally sourced wood chips from sustainably managed forests, the Hotchkiss community will reduce its carbon footprint by 35-45%. Biomass will save the school a minimum of $522,000 per year. This assumes a $2.50/gal oil cost and represents a reduction of approximately 62% of the annual heating costs.

"Assumes a $2.50/gal oil cost." Good to see they will be saving even more.

Thanks for the post Woodsrover. Cool story. Glad to see it.

 

[DaveGunter]

An institution local to me recently installed, according to them, "The largest of it's kind in North America" pellet boiler

80lb of pellets a minute

32 ton tanker truck deliveries of pellets

Offsets 1.2 million gallons of fuel oil per year

http://www.jax.org/thesearch/vol4no2/biomassive.html

 

[peakbagger]

Hows this for a wood boiler ( in the link below). B&W has been working on it for the last year and expect it will be on line September 2013. 70 MW (somewhere around 700,000 lbs per hour of steam) and the biggest biomass power plant in the northeast. They are going to be burning more than 1600 tons per day of wood. I expect someone could heat their house on the wood that is going to fall off the trucks that are delivering wood to the facility.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=berlin+NH+biomass+boiler&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1514&bih=625&tbm=isch&tbnid=dxHgzLTp-pLYpM:&imgrefurl=http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120710/NEWS02/707109973&docid=rmJ8HKhffngFWM&imgurl=http://www.unionleader.com/storyimage/UL/20120710/NEWS02/707109973/AR/0/AR-707109973.jpg%253Fq%253D100&w=618&h=480&ei=_mCBUN-xB6S-0AHkuIDIDw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=452&sig=116785348254511059896&page=2&tbnh=130&tbnw=158&start=21&ndsp=27&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:20,i:180&tx=85&ty=58

 

[JP11]

Seems a bit wasteful.. but still better than oil.

They buy pellets.. which took energy to make, but use energy to pulverize them before they burn them.

BUT.. very good that the money is staying in our state.

I have a brother in law that runs a big biomass boiler at a textile manufacturer. I should go visit sometime. I guess they use massive amounts of heat to dry the fabric. He told me that their chips can get too dry.. and they get better performance around 30% moisture or so.

LOVE to see local loggers making the money from our heating needs.

JP