Orsted: Biomass unit at Asnæs Power Station begins commissioning

Orsted announced July 5 that the biomass conversion of its Asnæs Power Station is nearly complete. The company said the first shipment of wood chips has arrived onsite and the project team is preparing to fire up the boilers with wood chips for the first time.

Conversion of the Asnæs Power Station kicked off in November 2017. The facility, located in Kalundborg, Denmark, was previously fired by coal. Information published by Orsted in 2017 indicates the station historically consisted of two coal-fired units. The first was built in 1961 with an electrical capacity of 193 MW and a district heating and process steam production capacity of 193 MW. The second was built in 1981 with an electrical capacity of 640 MW and a district heating and process team production capacity of 308 MW. At that time, Orsted said the new biomass-fired plant would be built as a separate unit in new buildings at Asnæs Power Station and connected to the electricity grid and existing district heating and process steam networks.

In an update released July 5, Orsted said the biomass facility is being prepared to fire up with wood chips for the first time. Commissioning is expected to take approximately six months.  “When the boiler pipes have been cleaned, we need to start up and trim the steam turbine. Subsequently, we’ll test the plant for several months, and then the plan is to start up commercial operation of the new unit at the beginning of next year,” said Henrik Boye Jørgensen, Ørsted project manager of the construction of Asnæs Power Station’s unit 6.

Once fully operational, the biomass unit will have the capacity to produce 25 MW of power and 129 MJ/s of process steam and district heating. It will supply process steam to a variety of operations, including Novozyme’s enzyme production plant in Kalundborg and Novo Nordisk’s insulin factory. In addition, the plant will, together with Kalundborg Forsyning’s large heat pump and Asnæs Power Station’s electric boiler, supply green district heating to the entire municipality of Kalundborg and support Denmark’s overall transition to climate-friendly power.

Additional information is available on Orsted’s website.