Andritz has successfully received the Final Acceptance Certificate for a biomass handling plant at Eldorado’s Onça Pintada site in Três Lagoas, Mato Grosso do Sul.
This plant is part of the first thermoelectric power plant in Brazil to consume eucalyptus stumps and roots.
The plant will be able to generate 50 megawatts of electricity from an innovative source – eucalyptus stumps and roots, the parts of the trees not used in the pulp manufacturing process. This expands the capacity to generate energy from waste material originating from reforestation crops that are maintained by the company itself in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo.
The daily processing capacity is 1,500 tons of material that formerly went to waste in the forest – enough to generate the electricity needed to light up a city of 700,000 inhabitants in a fully sustainable way, and this power will also be fed to the Brazilian national grid.
ANDRITZ has played a key role in the project – from the EPC model to design and supply of the unique solutions and technologies required to implement a generating system for renewable energy. Among the innovations are the truck dumpers designed to receive the chips for feeding the boiler. These chips are delivered by large-capacity vehicles.
The receiving system consists of two truck dumpers coupled to respective hoppers. There is a belt conveyor to receive the material from these hoppers and transport it to the pile. A stacker-reclaimer with a capacity of up to 40,000 m³ has the functions to form the pile and feed a second belt conveyor, which is responsible for transporting the material to the power boiler.
The project is a pioneering one and the first to use residues left over from pulp production. It promotes sustainable power generation initiatives, drastically reducing the impact on the environment and encouraging energy generation and pulp production that respects the boundaries of natural resources renewal.