UPM takes to its beds: F-W's biggest biomass CFB, Scottish BFB

Wood and paper products company UPM is to develop a new CHP plant in a joint venture with Pohjolan Voima and local district heat firm Lappeenrannan Energia, owned by the town of Lappeenranta in Finland.

The new 244 million euro plant will be located at UPM’s Kaukas mill site in Lappeenranta and is due for start up in spring 2010.

The plant will generate 385 MWt of process heat for UPM’s Kaukas mills as well as district heating and electricity for Lappeenrannan Energia. The plant will burn bark, logging residues, stumps and small wood from thinnings as well as peat. The project will be implemented by a separate company, Kaukaan Voima, which is majority owned by Pohjolan Voima, itself 42% owned by UPM and 46% by Lappeenrannan Energia.

Foster Wheeler’s Finnish subsidiary, awarded a contract by Kaukaan Voima for the circulating fluidised bed (CFB) boiler island, will design and supply the boiler and auxiliary equipment, including a feed water system, flue gas cleaning system and the boiler house, and will carry out the erection and commissioning of the boiler island. The terms of the contract, the largest biomass-fired CFB ever awarded to the company, were not disclosed.

The new power plant will replace the 30 year-old steam power unit at Kaukas mills and most of the capacity of Lappeenrannan Lämpövoima Oy’s 30 year old Mertaniemi power plant.

The UPM-Kymmene Corp has also recently awarded a 2 million euro contract to Finnish consulting and engineering firm Pöyry for pre-engineering and implementation engineering, project management and procurement services on a new CHP plant to be built at UPM’s Caledonian mill in Irvine, Scotland.

The plant comprises a new boiler utilising bubbling fluidised bed combustion technology, an extraction-condensing steam turbine and new fuel handling systems.

The new boiler, with an estimated cost of 88 million euro, will use some 350 000 tonnes of biomass and site derived residues annually as its primary fuel once commissioned in the third quarter of 2009. The mill’s annual production capacity is 280 000 tonnes of LWC magazine paper.

The plans for the new boiler were first announced last December.