Forestry

A 50kW wood pellet-fired boiler is proving considerably cheaper than electricity for heating the Bay of Plenty‘s 30 bed Titoki Healing Centre.

Fully automated and fed by a 3-tonne hopper topped up by the truckload, the system operates virtually hands-free.

Installation cost around $80,000. That compared more than favourably to the other main option, heat pumps, at around $90,000. Running costs are even more competitive at about $4,400 annually, almost a third of the costs estimated for running heat pumps.

Ernslaw Bio-Energy's new mobile wood chipper means the Central Otago company is well-placed to take advantage of an expected increase in the use of wood-chip boilers.

The company bought the $250,000 German-made Heizohack HM10-500 KT chipper and the John Deere 7530 tractor which powers it in 2008 with the help of a business grant from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.

After a long period on the sidelines, gasification is attracting new interest.

For businesses with ready access to a good source of wood fuel - and increasingly other forms of biomass - it could be a very attractive way of producing low-cost and low-emission heat and electricity. This article overviews the technology and shares the experience of the ‘advance guard' driving this technology forward in New Zealand.

Waste was one of the first considerations for Southern Pine Products when it started manufacturing MDF (medium density fibreboard) products.

The company opted to install a briquette press, which turns MDF dust into combustible briquettes for boiler fuel.

Moffatts Flower Company, a greenhouse complex only 5 km from Southern Pine, now buys all the briquettes the company produces.

The saving in Southern Pine's waste disposal costs is projected to be $180,000 a year and annual revenue from briquettes is projected to be around $25,000.