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Mabie Farm Park - Biomass

According to the methodology, the analysis is divided into 2 parts: Anaerobic Digestion and Biomass Boiler.

Biomass Boiler

As mentioned in the methodology, there are three supply chain options for wood fuel: self-supply, contract locally or supply from an energy service company. For Mabie Farm Park, there is no wood fuel source available on site - even though it is surrounded by Mabie forest - because the purpose of the farm is for recreation and there is no forestry area belonging to Mabie farm.

Contracting locally seems to be the best option because, as mentioned earlier, Mabie farm is surrounded by forestry area which belongs to the forestry commission.

A biomass boiler is suitable for supplying space heating and hot water heating. The space and water heating demand for Mabie farm is shown in the table below. Graph 1 also shows the total energy demand for space heating and hot water heating in each month.  

 

Table 1. Space and Hot Water Heating Demand

Month	Energy Required for Space Heating (kWh)		Energy Required for Heating Hot Water (kWh)	Total Energy Required      (kWh)
	Visitor Centor	Outdoor Toilet
January	3852	910	43	4805
February	9157	1441	102	10700
March	8025	1289	182	9495
April	5781	790	326	6897
May	1573	0	653	2227
June	0	0	1539	1539
July	0	0	1580	1580
August	0	0	1266	1266
September	0	0	624	624
October	3951	645	182	4778
November	1983	499	42	2524
December	4170	991	43	5204
sum	38493	6565	6582	51639

 

Graph 1. Total Energy Demand for Space and Hot Water Heating

 

According to our methodology, after we define the energy demand we can then size the biomass boiler, calculate the amount of biomass energy supply and make an economic analysis. Graph 2 shows the boiler sizing analysis for which the conclusion is shown in table 2.

Graph 2. Boiling Sizing

Table 2. Woodchip Boiler Condition

Table 4 shows the fuel cost calculation. In this case study we used woodchip with 30% moisture content as the fuel supply (characteristics are shown in table 3).

Table 3. Woodchip Characteristics

Table 4. Fuel Cost Calculation

The outcome of the analysis shows that we can use the biomass boiler to supply 80% of all the heating demand. The boiler capacity required is 8 kW with a 1:3 turn down ratio which has a capital cost of around £3,280 (with the assumed operation and maintenance costs as 3% of capital cost). This biomass boiler will be installed to replace 80% of the energy supply by the conventional fuel system which in this case study is a kerosene boiler. Therefore, we can make an economic analysis and calculate the payback time for which the results are shown in table 5 below.  

Table 5. Cost Analysis

The full calculation spreadsheet can be download here