News from our cogeneration plant

New boiler for our biomass cogeneration plant

In 2008, TROGER HOLZ built and commissioned a climate- and environmentally friendly biomass cogeneration plant. The heart of the plant, the thermal oil boiler, was replaced on 11 May 2020. The following day, the new boiler weighing approx. 20 tons and manufactured by Kohlbach from Wolfsberg (Carinthia) was hoisted into the building.

Kohlbach is an Austrian family business and has been a partner of renowned research institutes at home and abroad for decades. With Kohlbach we have a strong and reliable partner, where all services from technology, boiler planning and engineering, production and installation to service come from one source.

With its biomass cogeneration plant, TROGER HOLZ follows the principle of full utilisation

We process tree trunks from coniferous wood into sawn timber. The residual sawdust is then used for further external processing - e.g. high-quality chipboard, pellets or wood briquettes. We use the wood chips and bark to fire our "heating house" and generate CO²-neutral heat for our own use and renewable green electricity.

Environmentally friendly heat and energy production

The combined heat and power plant operated by TROGER HOLZ is a heat-controlled power plant. The cogeneration of heat and power has the essential advantage that the biomass used is used extremely efficiently and sensibly. The heat of combustion is used twice, for heat and electricity.

This is how heat and electrical energy is generated from biomass

The biomass is hydraulically fed from the storage via push floors into the combustion chamber with the wheel loader. Here it burns at temperatures of up to 1000 degrees Celsius. The hot flue gases flow into the thermal oil boiler, which is located directly above the combustion chamber. There the flue gases heat thermal oil to a temperature of over 300 degrees Celsius. The hot thermal oil is now fed into an evaporator.

There it causes silicone oil to evaporate and is then fed back into the thermal oil boiler (thermal oil circuit). The silicone steam is fed into a turbine that converts thermal energy ("heat") into kinetic energy. In a generator, this kinetic energy is then converted into electrical energy, thus generating electricity.

In the condenser, the silicone oil cools down and liquefies. In the process it gives off its heat, which is used to operate our lumber drying chambers. The silicone oil is then fed back into the evaporator. The silicone oil cycle, the actual ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) process, starts again.