At a time when fuel oil prices where continuously rising, Brian Rickard, Lanoyce Nurseries, Saltash, Cornwall, approached us to look at the feasibility of installing a wood burning biomass boiler on his nursery. At that time, there was a great deal of negative press surrounding the use of biomass in the horticultural industry, which was largely related to the lack of biomass knowledge in the glasshouse industry and the lack of horticultural heating knowledge in the biomass industry. The only issue standing in the way of a successful installation was the extremities of operational flow and return temperatures that a horticultural glasshouse heating system works on, so we took our experience to the biomass experts, resulting in the installation of a 500 kW Binder wood chip boiler in November 2008. The system design was based on the detailed compilation of heating regimes formed from several years of comparable data downloaded from the nurseries environmental computer to ensure that the system would be a success. Brian Rickard’s brief was that he wanted to entirely replace his nurseries fuel oil consumption with that of biomass, providing the maximum cost and carbon savings. The system is designed to run virtually continuously during the cold winter months, storing heat during the day in its 60,000 litre heat storage accumulator vessel for use at night when both the stored heat and the boiler are used in conjunction with each other, providing a level of heat in excess of the boiler capacity alone. This concept of boiler use realises the shortest possible payback period on the smallest capital cost by reducing the overall peak load demand of the boiler. The fuel consumption at Lanoyce Nurseries has been converted from 150,000 litres of fuel oil per annum, to that of 500 tonnes of wood chip fuel and reducing the nurseries carbon footprint by approximately 108 tonnes. Biomass heating can be realised in many different forms and the biomass industry provides a vast range of equipment that will provide heat from different sources of fuel at varying levels of capital expenditure and payback periods. It’s true that biomass will not suit all, but it can be designed to suit many. EBTech Solutions Ltd have in-house biomass industry experience and work with several biomass equipment suppliers, enabling us to provide our clients with a truly independent view when it comes to equipment selection – something that we believe to be quite unique in the biomass industry at this time. Please contact Matt Blood at EBTech Solutions Ltd to discuss your biomass requirements. To see more about the biomass installation at Lanoyce Nurseries, please click here to watch a short introductory video