Italy-headed Turboden S.p.A, a group company of Japan-headed Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has announced that it has concluded a contract to provide the Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC), representing nine Indigenous First Nations in Saskatchewan, Canada, with an 8 MW Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power generation system that will use sawmill residual woody biomass as fuel.
Operating under the name of the MLTC Bioenergy Centre, the carbon-neutral power project will be located near Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan (SK) within the traditional territory of the nine First Nations of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC). The green power generation facility, being developed by MLTC Indigenous Services Inc. and Turboden partner WGL Engineering Group, is being supported with funding from the Government of Canada.
The facility will produce electricity from a Turboden 8.4 MWe ORC system with an Air-Cooled Condenser utilizing biomass fuel derived from residual wood waste from the adjacent, MLTC-owned NorSask Forest Products LP (NorSask) sawmill. The system is expected to produce 6.6 MW (net) of carbon-neutral baseload electricity to power approximately 5 000 homes.
The project is expected to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than one million tonnes over 25 years as well as significantly reduce smoke and other harmful particulate matter (PM), improving the local air quality conditions.
In addition to the generated electricity, the cogeneration system design provides up to 5 MW of process heat to the NorSask sawmill buildings as well as new high-efficiency dry kiln, which will reduce natural gas consumption and also improve the economics of Canada’s largest 100 percent Indigenous-owned sawmill facility.
