CBD delivers pneumatic fuel conveying system to Lynemouth plant

The Lynemouth biomass conversion is one of a number of renewable energy projects financially supported under the U.K.’s electric market reforms. After 43 years of operation, the 420 MW power plant burnt its last coal in December 2015 and will reopen, burning wood pellets early in 2018. 

CBD, who have been supporting the conversion project with customer Sir Robert McAlpine and end-user Lynemouth Power Ltd. since late 2011, were chosen to deliver the pneumatic conveying systems due to the confidence of both SRM and LPL that the system offered will fully meet the performance requirements of the project and also the highly stringent availability requirements. 

The system utilizes state-of-the-art Clyde Bergemann Screw Injector and loss-in-weight technology, which will provide the plant with a highly accurate and flexible system. The technology utilized is uniquely placed in the market to offer a high capacity, highly accurate fuel delivery system that provides clients with flexibility in their fuel store locations with no adverse effect on performance. This technology is not only designed for wood pellets but can cater for a range of fuels from coal to waste derived fuels. 

Clyde Bergemann’s system conveys the wood pellets from each of the three new day silos to the inlet of the fuel mills, which are located—depending on the boiler—between 80 meters and 200 meters away.

The unique screw injector technology ensures that the pellets are delivered out of the pressure vessel and into the conveying pipe in such a way as to prevent pipe blockages before conveying the pellets to a filter/receiving hopper located on the feeder floor of the boiler house. The filter/receiving hoppers are designed to deaerate the pellets from the conveying air and to fast fill the loss-in-weight feeders located below. 

The loss-in-weight feeders are designed to operate continuously 24 hours per day providing a feed rate of between 9 metric tons per hour and 22 metric tons per hour per mill with no drop in accuracy. The design of the system with weighing and dosing at the mill feed end of the system not only ensures accuracy, but above all reliability and flexibility of the whole process.