Nexterra, UBC, GE complete biogas CHP plant in Vancouver

Sep 14, 2012 - Canadian biomass gasification technology firm Nexterra Systems Corp, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and General Electric (NYSE GE) on Thursday announced the wrap-up of a biogas-fed combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Vancouver.

The facility, located at UBC's Vancouver campus, is the first commercial demonstration of a the combination of Nexterra's gasification and syngas conditioning processes and GE's high-efficient Jenbacher internal combustion engines. The plant will produce 2 MW of electricity, to cover UBC’s total power demand, and 3 MW of thermal energy, cutting the university’s natural gas consumption by as much as 12%.

The CHP plant, also known as the Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility (BRDF), will turn locally-sourced waste wood into biogas and then feed it into a gas engine. According to the calculations of the project developers, the system’s electrical efficiencies are 25% higher that these of traditional methods for biomass power generation at this scale.

The installation has passed through a comprehensive testing programme for reliability, capacity and emissions, and has been hooked to the local power grid. The project received financial support from the government of Canada, the province of British Columbia, Sustainable Development Technologies Canada (SDTC), the BC Bioenergy Network and FP Innovations.

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