You can convert a smoke-tube Boiler into Gas/Diesel/LPG and Saw Dust but I doubt for bio-mass. You can only convert a Water-tube Drum-type Boilers into bio-mass with certain rustications as regards to the furnace area.

I converted one 35 Tph Water-tube Boiler to Briquette-firing with Agro-waste.

Since we bought this boiler off a ship and were going to field-erect, and since we had to make the furnace area anyway, we then designed the furnace area to burn wood/briquette's as well as supplementary oil-firing system. There were chutes with conveyors to switch over from wood to briquette-firing.

For the briquetting plant, we bought from Radhe-India.

You can contact:www.garioni-naval.com since they make boilers on bio-mass.

What about that for a biomass-powered boiler?

These are also know as "Loco" Boilers (short for lomotive).

I recall seeing 2 of them installed and 1 with its wheels cemented in the foundation.

No kidding.

Yes i agree this too is a bio-mass boiler.

You can convert a smoke-tube Boiler into Gas/Diesel/LPG and Saw Dust but I doubt for bio-mass.

Them my words and am going to eat them now.

Yes you can also covert packaged boiler to bio-mass.

This is how it is done:

You need to take off your burners & Chimney.

Next you need to make a Furnace Chamber in front of the Boiler ( 5 ft away)to burn the bio-mass fuel (wood/coal/briquetted etc). You need to install an Induced Draft (I.D) Fan (20-25 + Hp depending on the volume of hot gases to be sucked out)at the back of the Boiler. The chimney exhaust to be taken into a vertical cyclone and from the cyclone to the I.D Fan inlet. The Chimney taken off to be fitted on the outlet of I.D Fan.

Presto - You've converted the Packaged Boiler to Bio-mass.

The Furnace Chamber to have grill for ashes to fall down into trolleys which are pulled and replaced to empty while a new trolley takes its place. On both sides of the furnace will be small blowers 2-3 Hp.

The internals of the furnace to be with fire bricks.

Now a Duct to be connected from the furnace to the Boiler Combustion chamber(from where the Burner was taken out).

With the bio-mass burning, the hot flue is being sucked by the I.D Fan via the Combustion Chamber via the Boiler passes & tubes into the cyclone & exhausted out.

The choice of bio-mass is very important in energy consumption.

Loose Wood Chips/Bagasse/Bio-mass waste will be between 6-120 kg/m3 whereas briquetted will be 1200 kg/m3. Briquetting is cheaper since the calorific value will be nearly 4000 Btu . All Briquetted blocks/pellets coming out from the machine passing via an air drier to reduce moisture are automatically packed to safeguard moisture increase. The lesser the moisture the less the bio-mass used.

An entire Briquetting system to be fitted with a conveyor which is like a "Y" to take one side tho the Furnace Chamber and the other side to the automatic sacking machine for storage.

Now I'm tired and request leave .

recently Winrock International India has conducted energy audit in our plant and they suggested for conversion of existing furnace oil fired boilers.

Winrock International so so very right. Your Cost Saving/Ton of Steam will come down by over 70%-80% depending on the present rates of furnace oil (which am unaware) and the rates of available of various bio-mass agro wastes.

If you can send me all these different rates at my e-mail address:duconems@yahoo.com I can calculate the cost/steam per ton .

Nevertheless , the payback on your investment will be within 12-18 months.

Moreover, you can also save 15% to 30% on your Steam/Condensate System Pipelines with energy conservation measures(undersized mains, oversized mains, steam leakage, trap leakages, radiation losses, wrong traps, undersized traps, wrong pressure reducing valves, condensate return, boiler blowdown, de-aerator on feed tanks, boiler economizers, flash steam recovery, waste heat recovery, exhaust gas recovery of generators, etc.). These savings are additional and independent from what you can save with boiler burning conversion.

Take a joke - " After installing all energy saving gadgets in my plant and I feel now the oil company should to pay me".

Energy efficiency/ fuel saving/ reusable fuel is now the name of the game.

( I've over 300 Designed/implemented Processing Plants on Steam/Condensate Savings since 1984. The maximum I saved without the Boiler House was 55% per month, the minimum 15%. Replacing 20-years old Boilers with New Packaged 97% Boilers the Savings at Boiler House alone stood 25%. Replacing old 20-year Burners with New Packaged modulating Burners the saving stood 12%. Just returning condensate with condensate power pumps the saving stood 11%.

At an MDF Board with Bio-mass the Saving at the Boiler House exceeded 70%).

Moreover, you can also save 15% to 30% on your Steam/Condensate System Pipelines with energy conservation measures(undersized mains, oversized mains, steam leakage, trap leakages, radiation losses, wrong traps, undersized traps, wrong pressure reducing valves, condensate return, boiler blowdown, de-aerator on feed tanks, boiler economizers, flash steam recovery, waste heat recovery, exhaust gas recovery of generators, etc.). These savings are additional and independent from what you can save with boiler burning conversion.

I just noticed your are a Steel Company and if you are using steam from the boiler on steam forgeing presses where "bamm" the steam goes in slams the press and "whoosh" out as the press comes up then, the above does not stand valid unless the exhaust steam is thermo-compressed and cold-showered to recover as hot water to recycle as boiler feed.