Weyerhaeuser Installing Waste-Heat-to-Energy Plant

by | Jul 26, 2011

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Weyerhaeuser Company is building a waste-heat-to-energy plant at its mill in Greenville, N.C.

The installation will capture waste heat from a kiln where cut lumber enters the drying process, and covert the captured thermal energy into electricity. Waste heat recovery developer KGRA Energy has started civil engineering and equipment delivery on the plant, which is being built in partnership with Turbine Air Systems.

When completed, the project will provide Weyerhaeuser’s mill with about 4.5 million kilowatt hours of 100 percent emission-free electricity per year and displace the equivalent of more than 9 million pounds of carbon dioxide each year, the company said.

KGRA Energy’s system employs an organic Rankine cycle-based power generation skid, packaged by Turbine Air Systems at their Houston factory. This skid, scheduled to arrive the first week of August, will convert the mill’s waste heat to usable energy.

Organic Rankine cycle technology recovers waste heat from viable sources, such as combustion engine exhausts, furnaces, boilers, and kilns, and converts it into usable CO2-free electricity, which lowers energy costs as well as heat pollution, KGRA said.  The company said the technology is the primary power generation tool used in the low-temperature heat recovery industry, and has been deployed at more than 1,500 sites throughout the world.

KGRA says its systems are modular and scalable, providing the ability to produce power from smaller and lower-temperature heat sources previously deemed unsuitable for standard cogeneration.

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