INDIAN HEAD, Sask. — It wasn’t so long ago that most people heated their homes by burning wood.
That fuel could soon return as an important heat source but in a cleaner, more efficient way.
A pilot project at the federal Agroforestry Development Centre near Indian Head will use woody biomass, mainly chips from willows, in a biomass boiler beginning this fall.
Project manager Ian Pickering said the centre reviewed its heating costs and looked for ways to cut its natural gas bill. The biomass furnace has just arrived at Indian Head, and Pickering hopes that at least the greenhouses and administration building will be connected in time for this winter.
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The entire 43,000 sq. foot research facility could eventually be heated using renewable willow and waste wood.
“It’s new to us, but not new technology,” Pickering said of the European furnace. “They’ve been using it in Austria for 30 years.”
Willows are an ideal fuel because they can be harvested every three to five years and will grow back on their own.
The willows are harvested with a Quebec-built baler that uses a mulcher header to cut the trees and bale them in a single pass.
The bales are allowed to dry and can be processed in a tub grinder within six months.
The resulting chips are fed into the furnace, which heats water. The water then moves into a heat exchange to heat buildings.
Natural gas systems provide what is required if there isn’t enough heat from the water.
Pickering said the boiler can offset 90 percent of the natural gas now used, or $40,000 worth, as well as 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The boiler is 90 percent efficient; it will emit ash and fumes but at levels that are considered low.
A flue gas recirculating control valve will recirculate and dilute the gas produced during the burn before it goes out of the emissions stack.
“It’s a clean burn,” Pickering said.
The furnace can use waste wood generated by the centre.
The heavy-duty baler, worth $130,000, can also cut and bale young poplar trees.
The entire system will regenerate the trees.
“This will do what fire and bison used to do to regenerate trees every five to 10 years,”Pickering said.
“We’re looking at a whole agricul- tural-agroforestry sustainable system.”
The project will run for three years.
The centre wants to be able to quantify maintenance and operating costs and share the information with farmers and small communities that want to adopt the technology.
Pickering said district heating is common in Europe and could be done on the Prairies, considering the amount of naturally growing willow and other woody biomass that is available.
Communities could use the system to heat municipal buildings.
He also said farmers could easily adopt the technology to heat their entire farms, particularly if they worked together to purchase the baling system. Many already have Haybusters and other grinders that can chip dry wood.
Chris Stefner, a senior research technician at the centre, said the system costs $280,000, depending on the size of equipment and furnaces used.
Three bales weigh one tonne. Seven bales would heat one house for a year.
“We would want 300 tonnes of biomass on hand at any one time,” Stefner said.
However, the system does not have to rely just on bales. The 300-kilowatt furnace will use 200 tonnes of chips a year, which Pickering said is larger than what a farm would need.
He said farmers can participate in the project by contributing their willows, especially if they need to regenerate an old stand. However, there is enough waste wood on site to produce a lot of heat.
The system costs $50 per tonne of fuel.
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