Thunder bay generating station test-fires on imported pellets.

• Author: Lynn, Josh

The Thunder Bay Generating Station conversion from coal to biomass is on track for completion by year's end, according to Ontario Power Generation.

Brent Boyko, OPG's biomass business development director, said there's been a successful test-burn at the generating station and the first batch of specialty black pellet "advanced biomass" has arrived in port, which is a major piece of the puzzle.

"We've just received, literally with in the last couple of days, the first allotment of fuel that we procured to fire the facility up in the near future," said Boyko, during a break at the Canadian Bioen-ergy Association's annual conference in early September in Thunder Bay.

The 7,500 tonnes of black pellets were obtained from Norway's Arbaflame, one of only two suppliers of the product in the world. The other, Zilkha Biomass Energy, is based in Texas.

When it comes online, the Thunder Bay Generating Station will be the first total substitution of coal with black pellets commercially in the world. White pellets are the conventional, commonly used choice for biomass energy creation, but would have required a complex and expensive overhaul.

"The black pellets are, in all intents and purposes, a drop-in coal replacement," said Boyko. "It's a very new fuel; it's evolutionary fuel. That 7,500-tonne order is the largest they've given to any utility out there."

Despite the tricky logistics of acquiring the rare fuel, Boyko said adopting it made the generating station's conversion viable. OPG has been working to meet the timeline imposed by Ontario's regulatory commitment to get out of the coal- burning business by the end of this year.

Boyko compared the Thunder Bay conversion to the newly opened Atiko-kan Generating Station, retrofitted to burn white pellet biomass, to the tune of $170 million. The changes in Thunder Bay came with a considerably cheaper $5-million price tag.

"Basically, in Atikokan we built a whole new material-handling island, fast tracked it in a couple years' time. This conversion is going to be relatively (quick), three or four months of conversions to conveyors, safety systems. It's repurposing more of the original equipment."

Black pellets can also be shipped in a similar fashion to coal, and unlike their more established white counterparts, they can be stored...