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VIBRAFLOOR USED IN THE LARGEST POWER PLANT IN THE UK by Vibrafloor, France
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he Drax power station in North Yorkshire, with 4,000 MW of generating capacity, provides seven percent of the UK’s electricity needs. Drax is both the name of the village that houses the power plant and the name of the company that operates the electrical production site, Drax Power Limited. Since 2012, this company has decided to progressively convert its supplies from being a coal-fired power station to biomass, and by 2020, its six boilers are expected to be fully pelletised. For the storage and distribution of pellets, on these industrial scale installations, their electricians have opted for Vibrafloor’s vibrating floor dome and total drain silos, designed and manufactured in France.
90 | April 2019 - Milling and Grain
A conversion under the guise of fighting climate change
The Drax plant, the largest in the UK, was also the second largest coal-fired power plant in Europe after Bełchatów in Poland. And just a few years ago, to produce 24 TWh a year on coal, it also emitted 22.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. After projects of new biomass generating units in the 2000s, many tests in biomass and coal co-combustion were carried out in 2004 in the existing boilers, with willow blister, sunflower and peanut shells. In the view of the government, the solution is to modify existing boilers to consume crushed and pulverised wood pellets that have been retained for large-scale conversion of the plant. In September 2012, the Drax Group announced the conversion of three of its six units into complete combustion pellets, each consuming about 2.3 million tonnes of granules per year. In 2013, the first of three planned units was successfully commissioned. In 2014, the second unit was, in turn, commissioned.