Focus on Italy Part One: Turboden | 33


and Kastamonu provinces, where electricity is being generated from wood and particleboard production wastes. An ACC (air-cooled) model was installed


in Balikesir, producing electricity while not requiring the use of water. The CO2


saving


will be ca 30,000ton/year. A co-generation ORC system, that produces both electricity and hot water, was delivered for the Kastamonu project. In this case, the CO2


saving for electrical


will be ca 30,000 ton/year and for thermal will be ca 62,000 ton/year. Mr Guercio said Turboden is pushing a lot outside Turkey, looking to form relationships with all the big wood-based panel groups.


TURBODEN TECHNOLOGY Turboden technologies can contribute to energy efficiency and decarbonisation in the wood-based panel production processes, starting with the biomass-fired ORC for combined heat and power (CHP) in particleboard and OSB production. One of the primary characteristics of the


Turboden solution is it does not use water as the working fluid, but organic fluids, such as siloxanes and cyclopentane instead. Turboden ORC plants use any kind of biomass, from virgin wood to organic residues from various production processes. The generated power ranges up to 20MW electric and 80MW heat per single shift. Turboden units can generate either hot


water or higher temperature heat mediums (for example, saturated steam or thermal oil). Alternatively, Turboden can provide electric power only solutions.


In the 2000s, the industrial growth of


Turboden was fuelled by its penetration into the untapped market segment of medium- small wood-based CHP power plants employed in the wood processing industry and in small district heating networks. In these segments Turboden’s ORC


technology offered the advantages of a completely automatic system, with very low O&M and competences to run it: such CHP systems can be employable also by sawmills and district heating networks that cannot afford to hire new people to run the CHP plants. Typical applications include sawmills, panels factories, district heating and wood pellet production. With specific regard to the panels sector, Mr Guercio outlined Turboden’s solutions to meet current requirements. “There is a transition in the wood-based panels industry where production of particleboard and OSB is turning from the use of rotary drum dryers to belt dryers. “It has opened a very interesting


development to us because the belt dryer operates at about 100- 110O


C and this fits


very well with the ORC where we produce electricity but the residual heat can be delivered at a similar temperature.” Mr Guercio said the belt dryer was


becoming a real standard in the OSB and particleboard industry, with the ORC able to deliver all the heat for the belt dryer. Turboden says it has some compatibility with the MDF sector, having supplied an Austrian MDF producer in the past, but it highlighted the fact that higher temperatures were


needed in the MDF production process. The conventional ORC can deliver about 60% of the heat required for an MDF dryer - eg about 10-12MW of the 20MW required. Turboden has been exploring a higher


temperature ORC solution for such applications, with high temperature steam heat produced at the condenser. “We can produce steam at 12bar at the condenser which is the pressure needed at the refiner – the big consumer of heat in MDF production,” said Mr Guercio. “But we can also feed the MDF dryer with an indirect heat exchanger and deliver steam at 190O


C or 200O C which is good for the


refiner and also for a heat exchanger, able to heat fresh air up to 180O


C.”


The company is working with partners in order to offer a flexible solution to the MDF industry, as customers often decide on what boiler supplier they want. “We are fully compatible with every kind of boiler, so the customer can decide.” The product has been developed with two experimental plants but fed by natural gas. Now Turboden is developing the solution with a biomass pellet boiler. The technology does not use a


conventional mineral or synthetic thermal oil as heat medium, it is a pressurised thermal oil that can operate at higher temperatures of +400O


C.


But the company is not anticipating a big push on this at the moment because it is focusing on processing a large number of current project orders.


“It is a product that we will start to push again in the near future,” Mr Guercio said.


Above: The wood-based panels industry is a target for growth for Turboden www.wbpionline.com | August/September 2023 | WBPI


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