KOTKA ECOPOWER IGCC-PROJECT, THE ATTEMPT TO TRANSFER THE BIOCYCLE PROJECT TO FINLAND

The Danish utilities Elsam and Elkraft planned to build a small (7 MWe ) IGCC-plant in Denmark, called Biocycle Project, based on the gasific ation and gas clean-up technology of Enviropower Inc. EU/THERMIE progr am committed to finance part of the investment. The project, however, was not feasible due to the difficulty of finding a suitable customer and sufficient amount of reasonably priced biomass. For this reason a new host and site was found for the Biocycle project. The new site was in Kotka, Finland, where Kotka Energy Ltd., the Energy Board of the C ity of Kotka acted as the main partner. The fuel of the IGCC project w ould have been sugar mill wood residue from Xyrofin Inc. During the fe asibility investigation (project definition phase) Xyrofin Inc. made t he decision to change the production process which eliminated the wood waste production. Without no-cost fuel and due to the low electricity price in Finland the small size IGCC power plant proved not to be fea sible. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.