Bioheat for the Hospital of Borgotaro, Parma Biomass Helps Local Economy and Mitigates Climate Change

www.agriforenergy.com Bioheat for the hospital of Borgotaro, Parma Biomass helps local economy and mitigates climate change BM_eng.indd 23 9-03-2012 14:40:07 Hospital of Santa Maria The Local Health Authority of Parma (Italy), with the support of the Province of Parma, the financial support of the Rural Development Programme 2007-2013 and the Pro- gramme for Integrated Rural Country (Measure 321, Action 3), installed at the Hospital Santa Maria in the municipality of Borgo Val di Taro (Parma province, about 400 metre above the see level) a modern boiler using locally produced woody biomass. It is integrating the existing thermal heating plant running on natural gas. The hospital hosts 121 beds and has a surface of over 18,000 square metres. Heating system zation of the phases of stand-by and less maintenance. Based on the average consumption of the previous years, The heating output with biomass has been set up with the has been calculated the heating loading curve and it was aim of covering with the woodchips the thermal base-load decided to install a generator with a thermal output of (in winter), main- 700 kW, equal to the average heating output requested in taining the already the more severe coldly seasons. existing natural gas The inclined mooving grate chip boiler has been placed system in order to in a space already existing and adapted. The woodchip is cover the peak-load loaded into the furnace with a hydraulic «pusher» system. in wintertime and The grid is divided into three separate sections character- the minimum loads ized by primary air feed rate and they are modulating. which occurs in The combustion chamber, very large and covered in refrac- summertime (main- tory materials is able to ensure adequate temperatures ly hot water). and residence times of the pyrolysis gases, is subject to In this way it is pos- injections of secondary and tertiary air to produce a suit- sible, on one hand, able turbulence and therefore a complete oxidation of the to reduce the invest- gases. ment costs as the Downstream of the heat exchanger the hot flue gases are generator has a low- filtered by a multi-cyclone. As reference this system emits er installed capacity a total amount of particular matter equal to that emitted and, secondly, the by ten traditional wood logs stoves. In a year of opera- woodchip boiler is tion (January 2011-January 2012), using woodchips were running more suitable, with some technical and manage- produced 1,539 MWh of 1,945 MWh of the total primary ment advantages: combustion is always optimized, minimi- energy entered, it means 80% of the winter heating load. Boiler Woodchips feeding system Multi-cyclone BM_eng.indd 24 9-03-2012 14:40:15 Woodchips storage COSTS AND BENEFITS ANALYSIS Investments cost It is located beside to the boiler room and it’s served Central heating, plumbing and electrical 502,700 by an appropriate accessibility for discharging the wood- accessories, technical planning, installation chips. The load runs from the top with a truck equipped Public subsidy RDL (67%) 337,216 with a tipping flap. The loading docks are two closed by Hospital net investment (33%) 165,484 two doors with mechanical driving system. The net storage volume is about 90 cubic meters. The Annual running costs discharging silos system is with sliding bar conveyor, Woodchips (1.539 MWh output x 36 €/MWh) 55,404 driven by hydraulic pistons, allows to exploit the entire Maintenance, management, 4,800 volume of the deposit. administration, electricity The consumption of chips over that period was 784 tonnes Total 60,204 (about 3,000 bulk cubic metres) with an average moisture Missing (avoided) costs content of 40%. Therefore, the primary energy supplied Natural gas as missing costs 92,340 was of 784 t x 2.81 MWh/t = 2,203 MWh, with an average (1,539 MWh x 60 €/MWh) conversion performance of plant of about 70%. Since the contract of purchase of woodchips is based on the heat metering, its water content is not measured, so the value of the efficiency of plant calculated here is Investment evaluation purely indicative. To assess the financial suitability of the investment has been used a typical projected financing cash-flows over Woodchips production a period of 20 years accounting real running costs and revenues. For the calculation of Net Present Value (NPV) and supply was used a discount rate of 7%. The pay back time is seven years with a NPV at the 20th year of 185,000 € The supplier of chips is a forestry consortium «Comu- and the internal rate of return (IRR) is about 23%. nalie Parmensi», an operational public-private body with more than 50 years of history, which manages nearly 7,000 ha of forest owned by 29 old «collective forest do- mains» and nearly 8,000 hectares of forest belonging to six Private Forest Associate Consortia. The woody raw material comes from forests located within a radius of 15 km from the boiler. After an intermediate stage of seasoning, woodlogs as such, are chipped and woodchips is delivered to the hospital’s plant. The Consortium of «Comunalie» has planned the realiza- tion of a biomasse trade centres, a logistics infrastructure – NPV Value Net Present that will allow in a short term to further improving the production and the quality of delivered forest woodchips. The woodchips supply contract is based on its energy con- Year tent, accounted by a specific metering tools which has been installed downstream of the boiler. The current sell- ing energy price of woodchips is 36 €/MWh intended as primary energy price. BM_eng.indd 25 9-03-2012 14:40:19 Environmental and socio-economical beneﬁ ts The introduction of the woodchips heating plant allowed to replace annually about 172,000 cubic metres of natural gas with 784 tonnes of wood chips produced locally. This has generated two important benefits: firstly a so- tonnes is overtaken. To try to reach the goal of mitiga- cio-economic, since 92,340 € that were previously “lost” ting climate-altering emissions, the EU countries should in terms of purchasing power. It means, this amount of aim for the target value of per capita emission of 2.7 t money were needed to pay a non-local energy source, CO2/year. now this amount remain largely “in hands” of local pro- Currently Italy emits about 3 times this value. As recen- ducers of woodchips, and thus also the owners of forest tly acknowledged by the IEA, in the absence of effective from which they come. The forests can now be mana- interventions in the short run on the model of deve- ged in a more convenient way, since the woodchips can lopment and production cycles, we pass on to future enhance wood products that previously could not find an generations serious problems related to climate chan- appropriate and economically allocation on the market. ge, some effects are already very evident. The wood The substitution value of fossil fuel in the next 20 years chip boiler at the Hospital Santa Maria helps to reduce amounts for this case of about 2 million Euro of which annually about 360 tonnes of CO2-eq (7,200 t in 20 55,400 €/year, or 1.1 million in 20 years «flow» into the years), or the amount emitted by 100 cars that run 2.6 primary local economy. It’s not to forget that Italy as a million km per year. whole “lost” every year about 60 billion euros for purchasing imported fossil fuels; in other words this is Italy’s annual global energy bill. The other benefit is the avoiding of climate-altering gases into the atmosphere which is normally expressed by Santa Maria Hospital the parameter CO2-eq. As we know, Europe set a specific Municipality of target for reducing these emissions to 2020 (-20%). The Borgo Val di Taro / Parma (Italy) European Council, in February 2011, stated that Europe should aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 to 95% com- pared to 1990 reference levels, in order to contain the rise in global temperature below 2 °C within 2050. At the global level, this means limiting by 2050 to 750 billion tons of CO2 emissions, but, as noted by the In- ternational Energy Agency (IEA) CO2 emissions in 2010 have reached a new record of 30.6 billion tonnes/year. So at this rate as early as 2035 the limit of 750 billion Authors Province of Parma Valter Francescato, AIEL Piazza della Pace, 1 - Parma (ITALY) Nicola Dall’Olio, Province of Parma www.provincia.parma.it Renato Maria Saviano, Local Healthy Unit of Parma Antonio Mortali, Forest Consortium “Comunalie Parmensi” Local Healthy Unit of Parma Strada del Quartiere n. 2/a - Parma (ITALY) Info www.ausl.pr.it AIEL Italian Agriforestry Energy Association Operational Headquarters: Consortium “Comunalie Parmensi” Agripolis - Viale dell’Università, 14 Via Nazionale, 54 - Borgo Val di Taro / Parma (ITALY) Legnaro (Padova) ITALY www.comunalie.com tel. +39 049 8830.722 fax +39 049 8830.718 [email protected] www.aiel.cia.it The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Euro- pean Community. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may result from the information contained therein. BM_eng.indd 22 9-03-2012 14:40:04.

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