Construction and start-up of combined heat and power plant at the Julich sugar factory

With a view to the future, a new combined heat and power plant has been installed at the Julich sugar factory in order to provide a sure supply of steam and electricity for the production facilities. The greatest value was attached to making the generation of energy reliable, supportive of production, environmentally friendly and cost-effective in the long term. The use of brown coal as fuel in a plant of this size also signals the progressive development of this technology in industrial installations. Thanks to determined management and a team of experts, the project was executed in the record time of only 18 months from placing the order to start-up and of 10 months from application for approval to grant of the licence. The entire period of operation of the boiler in the 2004 campaign can be said to have been particularly successful and exceptionally satisfactory. At no point was it necessary to resort to the reserve heavy fuel oil boiler. The whole volume of beets of the 2004 campaign (about 1. 17 mn t) was processed with the steam from the boiler fired with brown coal. The boiler was out of action for only three hours and thus was available for 99.9% of the time. All problems could be resolved in the course of operation. In practice, the expectations for a boiler with travelling grate and fired with solid material, the slow grate movement and heat storage capacity of which make for particularly secure operation, were fulfilled.