34 | Focus on Italy Part One: Turboden
also now a matter of energy.” One of Turboden’s selling points is that
the ORC is easy to operate, with no skilled operators required, unlike a conventional steam turbine.
“Implementing a CHP in the wood panel
industry, especially with a belt dryer present, is something that is sustainable and economical. It reduces the carbon footprint if producing locally from biomass. “Of course, it is not necessarily ideal to
create 100% of your own electricity, but a good proportion in order to maximise the effectiveness of the resource. Using the residual heat from production processes makes sense. “We look to dimension the solution starting from the thermal demand. So if you have a process with 30MW of heat demand for a belt dryer, then we dimension the ORC to produce 30MW heat and also ca 7MW of electricity.” As well as the traditional composite panel
ENERGY TRENDS The economic climate has been turbulent in the last few years, with price and availability of materials and energy changing quickly. This volatility, acknowledges Turboden,
makes it “diffuclt” to make forecasts for the future in terms of energy provision and prices.
The price of electricity was extremely high a year ago but that has now reduced. Natural gas from Russia was below €25/MW/ hr (before the Ukraine conflict). Natural gas prices sky-rocketed to hundreds of euros briefly a year ago. “No-one knows for sure what will happen with the prices,” commented Mr Guercio. “But my impression is that the price of natural gas will stabilise to an average of €80-90/MWh. If the price of energy remains as expected [in the €80/MWh region] many new investments on energy efficiency will become not only environmental friendly but also economically sustainable.” One of the strongest marketing points
for Turboden is how it can help insulate customers from energy price fluctuation. “If you do not produce your own electricity you don’t know what the impact will be of the price of electricity bill in your production process in the short and medium terms. But if you install your CHP, producing your own electricity, you can control 50-70% of your electricity bill. “We now have a range of products that
cover different situations,” added Mr Guercio. “We have the ORC, which is excellent to produce electricity from biomass waste. When the price of electricity is high, the ORC is an interesting solution. If the electricity price is low then the return of investment in the energy efficiency project will be longer.”
Turboden sees more electricity production in the future generally, pointing to the rise in alternative forms of energy such as solar, wind and biomass power. The company also has large heat pump
technology, which works in the opposite way to the ORC because it uses electricity to provide useful heat. The difference is that the ORC cycle works via producing electricity via rotation of a turbine, whereas with the heat pump a compressor replaces the turbine, generating heat through a thermodynamic cycle.
Mr Guercio points out that considerations for energy solutions need to also take into account the energy mix of the region where plants are located, the economics of the energy and also the environment. Some Nordic ountries, such as Norway and Sweden, have a lower carbon footprint of the electricity production due to large use of eco-power. But there are also parts of the world where the opposite is true. “We believe the market for the large heat pump will be very important in the mid-term for Turboden. So we follow the situation closely from the economic and environmental point of view.” In biomass applications, hot gas can be used from the factory chimney to condense the vapour contained in the fumes into water, in this way extracting a lot of latent heat at low temperature, – to feed the heat pump. Electricity is used by heat pump to rise the temperature of this waste heat and producing hot water for belt dryers but also steam for MDF refiner. In this way a small amount of electricity can be converted in a big amount of useful heat. “Until a few years ago, I think the wood-based panels industry was only focused on raw materials and chemicals,” explained Mr Guercio. “But it’s
WBPI | August/September 2023 |
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sector, the plywood/LVL industry is also interesting to Turboden although but the heating demand of those products for the drying process is at a higher temperature, which is not compatible with the ORC’s production of heat. “We can produce heat up to 130O
-150O
C
but it is difficult to introduce heat at a lower temperature with the dryer.” But Turboden has met with plywood
makers and is looking at solutions. “The main heat demand in the wood-based panels industry is the drying process, so if that process has the temperature compatible with the co-generation it is very interesting. “This is why it is not convenient for biomass co-generation to heat a rotary dryer in particleboard production because the rotary dryer works at a very high temperature.”
Top left: Turboden has nearly 100 installations in the wider wood industries Above: Wood panel manufacturing site with Turboden technology
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