Crude vegetable oils, chicken, fish and industrial process side streams. All can be fuel sources.
Wärtsilä began testing crude vegetable oils as early as 1995. The first commercial power plant running on palm oil was taken into operation in 2003. Now, we have delivered the world’s first engine-driven combined heat and power (CHP) plant to be fuelled by a variety of liquid bio-fuels, such as oil extracted from the seeds of the jatropha plant.
Jatropha has great potential since it thrives outside the world’s rainforest areas and can be grown on marginal land. It can also be intercropped with other cash crops such as coffee, sugar, fruits and vegetables, thus contributing to more sustainable agriculture.
The new CHP power plant is located in an agricultural area in Merksplas, Belgium. Heat from the plant is used in a drying facility for digested biomass recovered from a manure fermentation plant, and for local greenhouse farming operations. Electricity is sold to the local grid.
The plant utilizes a Wärtsilä 20V32 engine with an electrical output of 9 MW, sufficient to serve approximately 20,000 households. The scope of supply also includes exhaust gas cleaning equipment and heat recovery systems. The plant has a gross electrical efficiency of 44.2% and an overall efficiency of more than 85%, which results in savings of more than 36,000 tons of CO2 per year.
There is still more! The VTT technical research centre in Finland has conducted a series of tests that prove Wärtsilä engines can even be successfully operated on animal fats and waste oil from industrial processes.
Excess is now becoming an asset.
More information www.wartsila.com
