Maintenance Inputs

Maintenance on a biomass installation is a key consideration because they have a significant number of mechanical parts, including motors, gearboxes, drive shafts, actuators and other complex moving parts which require regular servicing.

In order to service a biomass installation, it’s important that sufficient space is left around the system to give maintenance staff the ability to gain access.

All reputable manufacturers provide drawings with their brochures and other literature which sets out the minimum space which needs to be left around their equipment.

Installers should produce a set of scale drawings showing the arrangement of the principal items of plant and the fuel store as part of their design process.

Where insufficient space has been left for regular servicing tasks such as cleaning boiler tubes or the combustion chamber, then this creates problems in keeping the system running at an optimal efficiency.

Where consideration has not been given to longer-cycle maintenance operations, such as the removal, cleaning and replacement of turbulators or the stoker auger, then this can have major operational and cost implications.  Packaged biomass boilers which have been installed in modified shipping containers have proved particularly problematic in this regard, as boilers much above 100kW in size simply cannot be accommodated in within the confines of a container without encountering significant issues, often requiring holes to be cut in the walls of the container and then patched once the operation has been completed.