How to Minimize Heating Costs: Waste Heating for Farms

Free heating is a myth, but not entirely, but only in cases where you do not have agricultural waste available. Large farms and agricultural enterprises can reduce the cost of space heating literally to a negligible minimum and organize heating with waste. Probably everyone has heard about the so-called agropellets. This is a fuel pellet made from sunflower husks, hay and other annually renewable raw materials that are not recycled and often remain in the fields.

Waste heating allows you to make heating almost free and burn garbage. This is implemented using the technology of volumetric combustion of torch pellet burners.

A feature of this type of fuel is that it is necessary to burn pellets only under certain conditions in order to obtain high efficiency. These conditions are provided by the FOCUS pellet burner installed in the door adapter of a solid fuel boiler. These are volumetric combustion technology with an extremely high level of heat release and pellet boilers.

Equipment

To organize free heating of farms with agricultural waste, you will need a pellet boiler and a line or granulator for the production of pellets. Functionally, these two types of production process can be combined into one as needed. FireBOX specialists who develop and manufacture TM FOCUS boilers will help you organize autonomous heating with automatic control and pellet supply.

Such a boiler house is controlled by a Polish microcontroller and allows you to connect several heat consumers. That is, having your own agricultural enterprise or farm, you can provide yourself with free heat and waste heating.

For these purposes, you will need:

• pellet boiler FOCUS in the required form factor;
• pellet production line.

For the manufacture of pellets, you can use hay, sunflower husks, leaves, fuel wood, which remains during the cleaning of forests and plots. Peat, lignin and even ordinary household waste are used for fuel pellets. Fuel from such raw materials will obviously differ in heat capacity and ash content.

Raw material

The "gold" standard is tyrsa pellets with a low ash content. They comply with the European standard and are approved for sale in the EU. It is believed that pellets with a higher ash content strongly pollute the atmosphere with combustion products, but only in pellet equipment, which is not designed for recirculation afterburning of flue gases.

The result of using high-ash fuel can be observed natively in the form of a layer of soot on the heat exchanger. Since the thermal conductivity decreases during deposition on the contact wall of the heat exchanger, the heater must be cleaned regularly. Beyond cleaning pellet boilers FOCUS are designed for complete afterburning of gases. This not only increases the efficiency of the boiler, bringing it closer to 100%, but also makes the FOCUS heating equipment invulnerable when using high-ash fuel.

Solid fuel and pellet boilers FOCUS allow you to burn waste, completely cleaning the flue smoke from harmful products and accumulating the combustion temperature according to the principle pyrolysis boilers. As a result, heating with waste becomes possible, but since the production of such a granule is unprofitable, it is cheaper to produce it on our own base.

Pellet boiler house of a full cycle (with the production of pellets)

Pellets after production can be automatically packaged, it is also possible to redirect the finished granule to the warehouse, from where it will automatically be fed into the pellet boiler using a screw. A similar project of a boiler house without a manufacturing line is shown in the engineering diagram. Our specialists are ready to develop a project for an individual full-cycle boiler house, including a line for the production of pellets from agro- and wood waste. Such thermal power plants are in demand in rural areas.

Pellet production includes the following processes:

• grinding;
• drying;
• additional grinding;
• humidification and pelletization;
• packaging.

In small farms, the production of pellets can be arranged using a granulator. For these purposes, already crushed agricultural waste and tyrsa are used. After production, they are loaded into a pellet hopper, from where they are fed to the pellet burner by auger. The automatic format of such a set of equipment is also supported, but during operation it will be necessary to regularly load the bunker with fuel pellets.

Pellet thermal power plants for settlements

Waste heating with sale of heat at a low cost to the population can be organized in rural areas and small towns, while processing part of the organic waste. For this purpose, it will be necessary to design and install a pellet thermal power plant based on FOCUS steam generators. The circuit diagram is shown in the figure.

The steam produced by the pellet steam generator enters the microturbine (turbine generator set), where they receive electricity up to 1000 kW. Primary steam can be used for heating, as well as technical hot water, which is utilized after the generator cools down. Two sources of hot coolant can be mixed and fed into the heating system of the village. This ensures complete autonomy and independence from external highways.

If you are interested in the FireBOX offer, please contact our specialists to get additional advice on the design of an individual boiler house and thermal power plant for cottage settlements. Ready-made equipment modules can be purchased in our online store.