NREL Plans a Net Zero Energy Facility

If any organisation can come up with ways of reducing their carbon footprint it should be a place like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and that's exactly what they are proposing to do with a new construction project that will give them a "net-zero energy" facility.

Plans for a new Renewable Fuels Heating Plant, a woodburning biomass plant, have been unveiled by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) which will be used to heat NREL’s South Table Mountain Campus laboratory buildings. Among these is the Research Support Facilities building which is expected to be completed in summer 2010.

According to the NREL the biomass heating facility will offset about 4.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide each year. The woodchips that will be used will come from trees lost to the region's mountain pine beetle epidemic and waste wood.

The Renewable Fuels Heating Plant meets Denver's strict state air quality regulations because the combustion process is ultra-efficient, burning fuel with a low moisture content at very high temperatures to the point where they are gasified. The wood gases are mixed with air for complete combustion in the heat recovery boiler. The ash and soot residue is kept to an absolute minimum.

It's a high-tech process that also deals with left-over particulates which normally get emitted into the air. In this case a separator deals with 85% of these particulates which are captured in dual cyclones that spin the dust particles from the gas where they are hurled against the wall of the chamber and allowed to fall into a hopper.