Bioenergy

Blue Mountain Lumber is a sawmill located in Southland, New Zealand. The sawmill was expanded in 2000 to enable the processing of approximately 160,000 tonnes sawlogs annually. Prior to expansion the sawmill operated with several small wood residue fuelled boilers that were at the end of their economic life. The site was dumping significant quantities of woodwaste into a local landfill.  As part of the expansion an energy facility was built to provide improved steam quality and capacity for increased steam loads.

The Waipa sawmill near Rotorua has been generating its own electricity for over 50 years, cutting its costs and returning power to the national grid.

The rising cost of natural gas prompted Tatua Co-operative Dairy Factory near Hamilton to look at alternative energy sources to run its boilers.
Wood-fired boilers are common in sawmills and wood processing plants, but are yet to be used in a New Zealand dairy factory. Tatua's site engineer Jack van Lankveld says they were motivated by a desire to be more self-sufficient and environmentally friendly.
"If the [gas] supply went down we would have to stop operating. There's also the whole carbon issue to think about - this is something that is becoming increasingly important."

Wood used for energy does not fit well with a payment system that works using non-energy (eg. volume or weight).  The energy content of wood is closely related to moisture content, and this can vary substantially, depending on the origin and storage history of the material.  This study looks to determine the effects of moving from a weight-based payment system to a specific energy-content-based payment system at a large industrial site, using woody biomass as a fuel source on a large scale.

The Landcare Research space heating is currently derived from coal boilers that are located at the Crop and Food facility. The desire to pursue a carbon neutral fuel that is in line with their policy, along with improving the level of heating that is currently available from the
current system, are the key drivers for this feasibility study.

A feasibility study to investigate the most appropriate heating option for Mt Difficulty Winery was undertaken by Transitionz Group Limited under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority's (EECA) Wood Energy Grant Scheme. Mt Difficulty is in the early stages of expanding the winery and it was identified that the current heating system was not suitable and a replacement system is being reconsidered as part of the expansion. The study looks at several technologies, solar hot water, ground-source heat pumps and wood pellet and chip boilers, to replace the current gas boiler system.

With its future at stake, New Zealand Foam Latex needed an economically viable and environmentally friendly fuel to produce steam needed to manufacture their products - all made from foam.
Coal was cheap, from $6.10/GJ. But emissions and the costs of mitigating them ruled it out. Diesel and LPG would cost over $30/GJ.
Wood was cost-effective and clean-burning. A variety of sources helped assure reliable supply - forestry hoggings, timberyard residues, left-over pallets and demolition, even dunnage reclaimed from shipping.

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.
The mobile chipper is one of the first of its kind in New Zealand. It produces about 13 tonnes of wood chips an hour-enough to heat an average-sized school with a wood chip boiler for 10 days.

A wood fuel feasibility study was conducted in the Christchurch area for supplying wood chips to Christchurch Hospital. Four companies were evaluated for their potential volume of supply, quality of wood chips and the sustainability of supply.