20 INDUSTRY NEWS VALMET


Pulp Paper & Logistics


Making the most of existing biomass power


Pulp and paper makers are increasingly using biomass boilers for generati ng their power. At power company Mölndal Energi, producti vity was improved signifi cantly by Valmet. PPL reports


S


wedish energy company Mölndal Energi has greatly improved the


producti on in its new biomass- fi red boiler since it was supplied by Valmet in 2009. Valmet has helped with advice, studies and equipment upgrades but the main driver behind the achievement is the philosophy of always trying to improve. This moves the limits of what’s possible. Mölndal Energi’s chief executi ve Christi an Schwartz explains that


July/August 2015


the company strategy is focused on getti ng more from the existi ng equipment: “The three parts of our strategy are increased capacity, bett er availability and longer operati ng season. What we’ve done around our new boiler is a good illustrati on of this. We bought it from Valmet and started it as planned in January 2009. During the project, I was oft en asked what our capacity would be and I always answered that I knew what the contract said, but that I would know what


we would have in our yard only aft er the performance tests. “We realized that we should


increase our capacity, so aft er the warranty period, we turned to Valmet for advice. We got good help and today we can run the boiler at 80 MWth, instead of the 70MWth that we had in the contract. That’s 15 per cent more producti on every hour we run at maximum capacity. I always say that there might be another MW or so in there, so let’s see what happens next.”


The second part of Mölndal’s


strategy is plant availability. This indicates how much of the planned operati ng ti me the plant actually spends producing. “During our fi rst operati ng season, we had 98.4 per cent availability. This was a good start, but we have been able to improve on that. Last year we only had one outage of about one and a half hours. This gave us 99.96 per cent – now that’s a very good number!” Increasing the length of the


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