Aalborg Energie Technik secures Order

Aal­borg Energie Tech­nik a/s (AET) will assist Nova­wood in achiev­ing clean­er air and pre­vent­ing soil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing a com­mer­cial income from waste wood and rail­way sleep­ers, which were pre­vi­ous­ly seen as a waste product.

By build­ing a bio­mass-fired cogen­er­a­tion plant, Novacarb aims to improve its envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance while main­tain­ing its com­petive­ness. In part­ner­ship with ENGIE Solu­tions a ded­i­cat­ed com­pa­ny has been cre­at­ed: Novawood.

The high-effi­cient cogen­er­a­tion plant, Nova­wood, will pro­duce steam for the Novacarb site in Laneu­veville-devant-Nan­cy and pow­er for the grid by com­bust­ing waste prod­ucts. ENGIE Solu­tions will, as main con­trac­tor, arrange fuel col­lec­tion from two sources: Rail­way sleep­ers from the French nation­al rail­way com­pa­ny (SNCF) and waste wood from SOVEN.

The plant is in accor­dance with ENGIE Solu­tions’ strat­e­gy to sup­port indus­tries by pro­vid­ing them with solu­tions to the chal­lenge of the ener­gy tran­si­tion. Their goal is to achieve: Opti­mised use of resources, increased sup­ply and use of local, green ener­gy as well as a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly production.

Novacarb is part of the Min­er­al Spe­cial­ties divi­sion of the SEQENS group and spe­cialis­es in the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of sodi­um car­bon­ate and bicar­bon­ate. Pro­duc­tion has tak­en place for more than 160 years at this site and the prod­ucts are made from two nat­ur­al raw mate­ri­als: Lime­stone extract­ed from its quar­ry in Pag­ny-sur-Meuse and salt from its Lénon­court salt farms.

Novacarb’s goal with Nova­wood is to reduce the site’s depen­dence on the high­ly pol­lut­ing coal by approx. 40% and reduce the CO₂ emis­sions by 150,000 tonnes per year. With an invest­ment of 80 mEUR, the bio­mass-fired cogen­er­a­tion plant will sup­ply steam for their pro­duc­tion plant and it will also sup­ply 115 GWh of green elec­tric­i­ty per year to the nation­al elec­tric­i­ty net­work, cor­re­spond­ing to an annu­al con­sump­tion at around 65,000 households.

Ener­gy will be pro­duced from com­bust­ing two fuels: waste wood and rail­way sleep­ers. Waste wood, which is sourced through col­lec­tion cen­tres, con­sist­ing of e.g. scrapped fur­ni­ture, floors, doors, win­dows and pal­lets and is han­dled by SOVEN. By com­bust­ing old rail­way sleep­ers a new busi­ness area is being cre­at­ed and the mod­erni­sa­tion of the Nation­al Rail Net­work owned by SNCF can be made in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly way.

The fuel trans­for­ma­tion is also an eco­nom­ic aspect for Novacarb, as the grad­u­al­ly increas­ing car­bon tax price affects the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the com­pa­ny. As a major local work place, it direct­ly employs 300 peo­ple and 150 peo­ple from out­side com­pa­nies, who are per­ma­nent­ly on site. Novacarb’s activ­i­ty gen­er­ates 900 local jobs, or a total employ­ment pool of around 1,350 peo­ple. The Nova­wood project will help devel­op the region’s econ­o­my and attrac­tive­ness through the cre­ation and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of local jobs. The project will be a bench­mark in terms of ener­gy tran­si­tion, cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and local job creation.

The Nova­wood project began in 2014 with talks between the par­ties (Novacarb, ENGIE Solu­tions and SNCF), fol­lowed by dis­cus­sions at local and nation­al lev­els. The oper­at­ing autho­ri­sa­tion was obtained in MAR 2018, and the project was announced as a win­ner of CRE 5 in DEC 2019.

The plant will annu­al­ly com­bust around 130,000 tonnes of rail­way sleep­ers and waste wood, which would oth­er­wise have been dis­posed of, and instead pro­duce 55 tonnes steam/hour to Novacarb and 14,6 MW_e of green elec­tric­i­ty for export to the grid.

The rail­way sleep­ers con­tain cre­osote, PAH com­pounds and oth­er chem­i­cals from trains and are clas­si­fied as haz­ardous waste. The cre­osote, which is tar con­tain­ing phe­no­lic com­pounds, can evap­o­rate from the sur­face and/or be released into the soil. The waste wood in this case, includes Chro­mat­ed Cop­per Arse­n­ate treat­ed wood, and there­fore has, amongst oth­er things, a high con­tent of Cop­per. How­ev­er, the com­bi­na­tion of AET Com­bus­tion Sys­tem, AET Bio­mass Boil­er and flue gas clean­ing ensures very low emis­sions, which com­ply with the Euro­pean emis­sion lim­its as a min­i­mum. The plant is designed in accor­dance with WID.

The AET Bio­mass Boil­er will be designed for a fuel heat input of 65 MW_t, a boil­er effi­cien­cy of 92% and a steam tem­per­a­ture of 522 ^oC, which ensure a high over­all plant effi­cien­cy. To pro­tect the boil­er against cor­ro­sion it is equipped with Inconel cladding and spe­cial alloy steel for the superheaters.

AET is respon­si­ble for engi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion of the AET Bio­mass Boil­er, includ­ing AET Com­bus­tion Sys­tem, AET SNCR DeNOx Sys­tem, boil­er house, flue gas treat­ment, tail-end heat exchang­er and PLC con­trol sys­tem. The tail-end heat exchang­er, which is posi­tioned after the flue gas treat­ment, cools the flue gas tem­per­a­ture by more than 30 ^oC. The regen­er­at­ed ener­gy is, amongst oth­er things, used at an ORC plant, which pro­duces pow­er. It there­by increas­es the over­all plant effi­cien­cy further.

The in-house pow­er con­sump­tion for the boil­er plant is only approx. 1,6% of the fuel heat input and there­by increas­es the net pow­er production.

The plant is planned to start pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the sec­ond half of 2022.

Alain Guillerme, Project Real­iza­tion Direc­tor, Nova­wood: “As every indus­tri­al cus­tomer, NOVACARB requires a reli­able steam sup­ply and a high boil­er avail­abil­i­ty. ENGIE has sev­er­al AET Bio­mass Boil­ers in its port­fo­lio, being oper­at­ed for years. The expe­ri­ence from these sites is very good with low main­te­nance issues. In addi­tion, the AET design offers high effi­cien­cies, which is a crit­i­cal cri­te­ria for an indus­tri­al plant oper­at­ing all along the year. Last­ly, the good expe­ri­ence we had with the AET project man­age­ment has con­vinced ENGIE Solu­tions to sign with them for the Nova­wood project.”

“We are pleased to con­tin­ue the coop­er­a­tion with ENGIE Solu­tions and now with com­bus­tion of rail­way sleep­ers and waste wood; waste wood is an up-com­ing fuel in France. The high steam tem­per­a­ture, with com­bus­tion of rail­way sleep­ers and waste wood in this case, is essen­tial to make a viable busi­ness case for ENGIE Solu­tions and Novacarb. At AET, we are very hap­py to take a new step with Nova­wood, which will reduce CO₂ emis­sions by 150.000 tonnes per year”, says CEO of AET Lars Kris­tensen.

AET has pre­vi­ous­ly sup­plied plants, which burns waste wood/railway sleep­ers in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Unit­ed Kingdom.