Biomass Boiler Blog

At this point it is beyond doubt, Climate Change is one of the most important problems humans will face in this century. The main goal of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement is to keep global temperature rise below 2º Celsius, mainly by significantly reducing the amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere.  Everybody has ideas about how to reduce carbon emissions and most focus on switching from fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal towards clean sources of energy. But while you constantly hear about wind, solar and geothermal, and sometimes and nuclear, one solution that is quite…

The positive financial impact of Thermal RECs is making biomass a preferred form of renewable energy in New Hampshire and Massachusetts for heating schools, commercial and industrial facilities, campuses, and hospitals. And Maine will have them soon. What Is a REC? A REC is a Renewable Energy Certificate. State laws, generally known as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), require electric utilities to generate a specified fraction of their total output from renewable energy sources. At this time, 29 states and the District of Columbia have RPS laws. Requirements vary from state to state but most states divide their RPS into different…

Hospitals, schools, factories, retirement homes, and other large buildings nearly always have redundant boilers—each fully capable of providing all heat needed during the coldest of winter days.  That engineered redundancy is a sensible and reliable way to make sure the chill of New England winters stays outside where it belongs. Facilities with redundant boilers typically burn just one fuel: natural gas, propane, or fuel oil. In most rural areas there are just two choices: oil or propane. Some smart facilities managers have set up their boilers to burn two different fuels. In such cases, the purchasing department can watch the…

The oldest and best-known use of biomass fuel dates back to the bonfires our early ancestors used to keep warm. Today, burning wood pellets, dried wood chips and green wood chips has become an established alternative to using coal, oil and other non-renewable petroleum products for heating throughout much of the world. Here we’ll take a look at a few of the many benefits of biomass fuel. According to the Department of Energy, “Biomass is any organic material that has stored sunlight in the form of chemical energy, such as plants, agricultural crops or residues, municipal wastes, and algae.” 1….

Empty Your Ash Containers Once a Week Of all the problem calls that we get, ash build-up is the #1 cause. Dump your boiler’s ash containers once a week! Do it on the same day each week. (Ash Wednesday?) If it is full to the top, check for ash build-up in the chamber behind the ash box(es). The above refers mainly to commercial applications where dozens of tons of wood pellets are burned each year. In residential boilers, you should check your ash container weekly so you get a sense of how frequently your boiler’s ash will need to be…

Starting later today: A series of Tweets containing advice from the @FrolingEnergy Service Department about keeping your biomass boiler running well. It goes without saying that in the extreme cold weather like we are having today (-3 with high winds in Peterborough on January 21–worse up North), having a reliable boiler is of utmost importance! As advanced as today’s wood pellet and chip boilers are, we must admit that they are fundamentally different than oil and gas boilers by the nature of using wood as a fuel. We must accept that these are solid fuels with only limited refinement. If…

After a long summer of work, our Biomass district heating project at UNH’s Thompson School area is nearing completion. PDCs were delivered and blown into the silo today. The big biomass boiler was fired up and now is operational! This is just in time–as buildings all across the campus are starting up their boilers in preparation for winter. We are now officially ahead of schedule!  But we still have a few more weeks of boiler adjustments and finishing everything up.

An extensive new heating project is underway at the Thompson School of Applied Science in Durham, NH which will provide biomass heat to Putnam Hall, Barton/Cole, the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and the Macfarlane Greenhouses. The district heating project includes the construction of a new central boiler house with an interior wood chip silo and the installation of new underground piping to each of the buildings. The boiler system features a new Viessmann Vitoflex 300-UF biomass boiler, two modern propane-fired boilers, and highly efficient circulation pumps to deliver the heat to all of the buildings in this small district. The biomass boiler…

Froling Energy held a Biomass conference that was specifically aimed at mechanical engineers wanting to learn more about state of the art biomass boiler systems. On May 3 and 4 over 50 engineers, energy, and forestry consultants, boiler representatives and folks from three state agencies attended our first Biomass Technology Conference for Engineers. Speakers at the various sessions included Bob Malmsheimer a professor at SUNY in Syracuse NY, Scott Nichols of Tarm USA, Dan Wilson or Wilson Engineering Services, Karen Cramton of NHPUC, Mila Schubert from Schmid (who traveled here from Switzerland), and so many others. Thanks to everyone who spoke!…

Another record was set at Froling Energy’s PDC production plant in Peterborough this past last winter. We produced and shipped 3509 tons of PDCs to customers from August 2017 through the end of April 2018. That means that our customers offset, with locally sourced wood chips, the burning of over 328,500 gallons of fuel oil in one year! We like to think of our region’s sustainably harvested forests as New England’s oil wells. Froling Energy and New England Wood Pellet are like oil refineries, making fuel that can be readily used by consumers. And the economy hums along in the…