Mise en place d'une chaufferie au bois (Installing a Wood‐fired Heating Plant)

Citation

Richardson, J. (2007), "Mise en place d'une chaufferie au bois (Installing a Wood‐fired Heating Plant)", Foresight, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 59-60. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2007.9.3.59.2

As the world burns its petroleum to extinction and hesitates scrupulously about consuming less than clean coal, we give perhaps too little thought to rationalizing wood as a fuel for the future. This is what general editor J.‐C. Pouët and a team of specialists, mainly from France's official alternative‐energy agency, ADEME, have tried to rectify in this intelligent, attractive and (almost) convincing volume. They are concerned primarily with the burning of wood for institutional or collective benefit: in factories or schools or large office buildings, or for entire apartment complexes, housing projects, multiple installations or even small communities in their entirety.

Wood, we tend to forget, is a totally renewable natural resource, a prime candidate therefore for the assurance of a sustainable environment. That is the message that this book, really a how‐to guide in this sector of ecological management, manages to convey under the longish subtitle of “Study and Installation of Automatically‐Fed Units”.

The team of authors ask pertinent questions and provide their replies to these:

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  Is the supply of burnable wood assured? Yes, especially in some world regions (e.g. the Nordic countries, Austria) forests are currently under‐exploited. Consumers everywhere, however, should insist with suppliers on fixed prices for firewood prices and their possible indexing in the future.

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  Is firewood competitively priced? Yes, in a properly managed wood‐burning unit and given a carefully regulated output, wood may cost two to three times less than fuel oil or natural gas.

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  Where wood as fuel is state‐subsidized, can such credits be expected to last? Not necessarily, because other fuel systems may prove, in time, to be more economical.

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  And besides being renewable, does energy from trees have other attributes? Indeed it does, using wood can stimulate novel forestry and agricultural products of much value to national economies and create new employment in the process.

France has long experience in using the heat generated by the burning of urban wastes, both industrial and household; the combustion of waste in two enormous incinerators today heats numerous public buildings (schools, hospitals, public offices) in the capital city alone. The authors devote space to the optimization of the processes involved (especially when there is co‐combustion with coal) to reduce smoke, ash‐dust and other pollution (pp. 67‐74), as well as how to maximize heat recovery.

Your reviewer would like to have seen more extensive treatment of the greenhouse gases produced by burning wood, but the book has five useful conclusions of a managerial nature:

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  Designate a prime contractor for the job to be conceived and executed.

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  Appoint a works manager for your wood‐fired project and set a firm budget. He/she will counsel regularly on the technicalities of equipment and materials available as they appears on the market.

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  Wood as a combustible can be, by its nature, heterogeneous; it is more capricious than liquid or gas fuels. Anticipate flexibility of system.

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  Maintenance and cleaning will be required daily. Personnel therefore must be trained and qualified for the tasks pertinent to the specific system installed.

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  Be sure of your wood supply, especially in terms of the structure of its subsoil (granulometry), its moisture content, and its impurities (with special references to metals and other minerals).

Corporate and municipal executives should benefit considerably from this volume.