Sweden : a new biomass power plant fed by railway
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26/01/2016

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Fortum Värme, a Finnish energy production company, has recently inaugurated a new biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Sweden. The plant will be located in Stockholm-Hjorthagen and deliver heat to the existing district heating system in Sweden’s capital and electricity to the public grid.


This high-efficiency CHP will provide for significant primary energy savings when compared to a separate generation of heat and electricity from the same fuel. Fortum Värme’s plant will have a production capacity of 280 MW heat and 130 MW electricity. When the plant is in operation, 90% of the heat and electricity production will be based on renewable and recovered energy. By 2030 at the latest, this ratio is expected to be 100%. .

Fourniture par trains
The characteristic of this plant is that he will be only feeded by ships and by trains and not by trucks. For this, an ultra-modern stationary unloading station for WoodTainnerXXL, for trains and ships was built on the harbor of Värtahamnen, as show bellow :


This unloading unit was designed by the Austrian company Innofreight. It is fully automated. Chipped wet forest residues with 45 percent moisture, will to 2/3 be supplied by ships and to 1/3 by rail. Sea transport by coasters will arrive from many harbours around the Baltic see. Trains will come from Norway as well from the north and south of Sweden. Up to 120 000 m3 wood chips carriers with chips from Africa and America may also be accepted. The Innofreight Group has not only built the unloading station in the port, but also the two trains of Fortum. These trains consist of special containers for carrying wood chips, a concept which is familiar in Austria and Germany, where especially saw mills use Innofreight containers to transport wood chips. The particularity is that these containers can be unloaded by simple rotating, as shown the picture from Innofreight below :


The concept is used by Fortum with two trains of 30 wagons. The containers have an extra capacity due to the generous scandinavian gauge : they can load up to 58m3, or 24 tons of wood chips, instead 46m3 or 20 tons in the rest of Europe. The axle load can reach in Sweden 25 tons per axle instead 22 in Europe. That increases the load capacity to 20% and this makes railways so dynamic and competitive.


Traction privée
The other part of the railway concept is the pulling of trains. This task is carried out by Hector Rail, a private company. Fortum Värme has signed a five year agreement with Hector Rail for rail transports. The trains will be hauled by electric locomotives wherever possible. Electric locomotives are equipped with the latest technology, enabling conversion of braking energy to electricity which is fed back to the electric grid. To further minimize the environmental impact, the shunting in Värtahamnen will be done with a battery powered locomotive. However Hector Rail plans to use in the future the "last-miles" dual mode locomotives. Here is a beautiful example of a dual ecological concept. On the one hand, by the use of rail and of the waterway as transport. And secondly, by the supply of electric power using biomass. The cycle is complete ...