Wood processing turns heat into value twice over: it dries timber, veneer and sawdust, and it presses panels at a platen temperature that has to stay even over the whole board. At the same time the mill produces bark, chips and dust that must go somewhere. Boiler plant fired on those residues covers both sides of the balance and takes fuel cost out of the product.
What a wood processing site asks of its boiler house
Heat is one of the largest cost items in panel, board and paper production, and it is also a quality factor. A platen that is a few degrees uneven shows up as density variation, loss of bending strength and warping, while a dryer that swings in temperature cracks veneer and match stock.
Continuity is the second demand. Presses, dryers and paper machines run in shifts without gaps, and an unplanned stop scraps the material in the line as well as the shift output. Plant is selected with redundancy, automatic fuel feed and margin for wet fuel batches and cold spells.
- Even surface temperature
- Platen and dryer temperature uniform over the whole area, with no hot or cold zones.
- Fuel from the process
- Bark, sawdust, chips, offcuts and pellets fired directly, with gas or oil as backup.
- Wet and mixed fuel
- Staged combustion that burns damp bark and fines with little carbon left in the ash.
- Dust and fire safety
- Fuel handling, ash removal and dryer circuits designed against dust build-up.
- Emission limits
- Ash handling and flue gas cleaning matched to the limits in your operating permit.
Turning residues into the mill's own energy
A mill that fires its own residues closes the loop twice: it stops paying to move waste off site and stops buying the same energy as gas or oil. Staged combustion burns the organic fraction out with low ash carryover, and screw and conveyor feed doses fuel to the current load.
The same principle applies at mill scale in pulp production. Black liquor and bark firing returns process energy and cooking chemicals to the cycle, so furnace geometry, the screen circuit and floor design are drawn around complete burnout and reliable smelt run-off.
Equipment for panel, timber and paper duty
Most wood sites need two or three carriers at once, and the plant is easier to run when they share one control system.
Thermal oil for presses and dryers
MAGMA to 10 MW and CRUX to 10 MW hold carrier temperature up to 300°C in a liquid-phase circuit at effectively atmospheric pressure. That gives uniform platen heating without the leak risk of high-pressure steam, and the absence of phase change extends loop life from boiler to press. EXPAND and STORE carry expansion and drain volume.
Steam for cooking, evaporation and drying
TOR and TRIPASS cover the steam header to 0.7 and 15 bar, HERO adds high pressure in compact form, and PULSE supplies saturated steam to 180°C. MIRA X water-tube plant covers mill-scale trains from 25 to 220 t/h, and PHOENIX or ECHO recover heat from gas at up to 600°C.
Hot water and hot air
CORE, SLIM, CORE DUO, TRINITY, BASE and MEGA heat workshops, glue lines and stores. ZEPHYR, KENO, LUMO and ROCK feed chambers and kilns with air heated through an exchanger, so no soot touches the material; MODUL and GUST cover temporary duty, and ROOK or WARD put the boiler house outdoors.
Carriers, outputs and operating limits
These are platform limits of the series; the working point comes from your pressing and drying balance.
- Thermal oil
- Up to 10 MW, carrier to 300°C, liquid phase with no pressure in the circuit.
- Steam
- 0.6–154 MW, up to 45 bar, saturated or superheated to 450°C, up to 220 t/h.
- Hot water
- Up to 50 MW and 16 bar, flow temperature to 115°C, for heating and utilities.
- Hot air
- Up to 1500 kW, direct or indirect, for chambers, drums and workshop heating.
- Waste heat
- Up to 30 MW from gas at up to 600°C, as steam to 25 bar or as hot water.
What keeps the plant in service
Biomass firing is demanding on the furnace and the fuel path. Grate and refractory design, ash removal and soot cleaning are matched to the fuel you actually have, and the fuel store, screws and conveyors are sized for the moisture range you see through the year.
On the water side, DEGAS deaerates feed water, BUFFER returns condensate and DRY handles blowdown, with dosing set from a water analysis. In oil circuits, surfaces are sized for high velocity to hold film temperature down. CONTROL panels modulate output so the boiler follows demand instead of cycling, and Digital Twin telemetry flags drift in efficiency or fuel quality early.
How we work through a project
The first stage is a heat balance built from your presses, dryers and buildings, with an honest picture of the residue stream available as fuel.
- Input data
- Press and dryer loads, carrier parameters, residue volumes and moisture, backup fuel and space.
- Selection
- Series, output and redundancy compared on capital and running cost, including the biomass and backup split.
- Design and manufacture
- Boiler, fuel handling and skid drawings to EN 12952 or EN 12953 and PED 2014/68/EU.
- Works testing
- Hydraulic tests, control loop checks and functional trials under ISO 9001 before dispatch.
- Commissioning
- Burner and fuel feed tuning across the load range, safety chain proving and operator training.