BioEnergy Generation

BioEnergy Generation is a process that converts organic material, such as forest and mill wood residues, into electricity.

The scope of these facilities are as follows:

• Commercially proven as a reliable generation source.
• Typically range between 5 and 60 MW in size.
• Most commonly developed in the pulp and paper industry.
• Typically, electricity generation from Biomass occurs by direct combustion using Biomass-fired boilers and steam turbines as part of a Cogeneration process.
• Organic material, such as forest and mill wood residue, is burned to produce electricity.

Because of the dispersed nature of the remaining wood residues in British Columbia, smaller scale Biomass plants, ranging in size from 5 to 30 MW, are expected to be more feasible for development versus larger scale operations.

While these smaller plants may tend to have a higher cost of construction and may not be as efficient in fuel conversion or operations and maintenance as a large plant (on a $/kW basis) there are many benefits of smaller BioEnergy Generation Facilities:

• Use of standardized design and thus are more easily developed, designed, constructed and operated.
• Can be brought on-line in a much shorter time frame.
• More manageable fuel requirements of smaller plants allows them to obtain Biomass from only a few mills and/or forestry operations resulting in considerable savings in fuel transportation and simplified fuel management.
• Scale allows opportunity to operate within the sawmill property, as opposed to the stand-alone requirement often seen with large scale generators offering cost savings.

The Mackenzie Green Energy Centre is a proposed project of Pristine which utilizes BioEnergy Generation technology.