Experiences on biomass cofiring in Finland. Biomass, a growth opportunity in green energy and value-added products

The largest consumption of biomass-based fuels occurs in the chemical forest industry, which in 1997 covered 69% of its fuel demand by wood based fuels from its own processes and 7% with peat and other wood fuels.The forest indusry's share of biomass-based fuels consumtion (7 Mtoe) in the whole country was slightly over 60%.The other large consumers of biomass are district heating and other process industries.Wood fuels include in Finland forestry fuels, industrial by-products and recycled wood fuels.Competitiveness of forestry fuels (branches, crown mass, small diameter trees and other low-quality small trees unsuited for industrial processing, by-products of commercial logging, and pre-commercial thinnings of forests) has improved significantly and the use of forestry fuels is increasing rapidly.Biomass is very seldom the only fuel of the boiler because of the limited resources but they are typically co-fired with coal, peat, sludges and other waste fractions.The capacity of wood-based power generation is more than 1000 MW in cogeneration plants.Technical concepts are described and long-term experience on co-combustion of wood in fluidized bed boilers of cogeneration plants are presented