Power Plants Try Burning Wood With Coal to Cut Carbon Emissions

Wood was “difficult to introduce in our combustion systems, if we don’t know what to expect,” he said. The feeder system had trouble handling the bigger chunks, he said.

The larger size of wood compared to coal is also an issue. A pound of wood can produce only about two-thirds as much heat as a pound of coal, and it is a lot bigger. So to produce the same amount of energy, companies must enlarge their fuel-handling systems. And coal-fired power plants are not used to fuel that can rot or grow fungus.

Small amounts of wood can be mixed in with coal and added to existing equipment that pulverizes coal into powder, which is then burned, but that limits co-firing to about 5 percent of fuel, and some companies say that their pulverizing equipment cannot handle the wood. Other companies have cut holes in the boiler and blown in wood, chopped into confetti-size pieces. That requires expensive modifications, but it allows wood to substitute for 15 percent of the coal, or sometimes more.

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