Acharn biomass facility
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Summary
Clean energy for sustainable returns
Robertson Civil Engineering prepared the ground and created the infrastructure for a new biomass facility comprising combined heat and power (CHP) plant. The facility generates clean energy to be fed back into the grid and a sustainable rate of return for the customer.
Softwood was chipped and dried on site before being fed via conveyors into a series of 10 gasifiers. A superheating process creates the required gas to power turbines that feed energy back into the grid.
Preparing a hillside site
The first phase of the project was to construct an access road, junction upgrade and carry out clear felling of the timber growing on the hillside.
Initial earthworks involved a substantial cut and fill operation so that a platform on which to construct the facility could be built.
Due to the properties of the existing soils we had to carry out extensive lime stabilisation to improve the bearing capacity of the formation. In addition, all rock excavated from the site was processed and reused in the construction of the platform and on-site roads.
We constructed a series of 6m deep reinforced concrete bunkers to house hoppers for the dried, chipped softwood that is then fed into the gasifiers via conveyors.
As part of this project we built a 1,200m2, 13m high steel framed structure that houses the gasifier units and associated process plant along with a substation and all associated plant and equipment to support the facility.
