Industrial heating with donated wood

Client name : Bernard Bélanger Entrepreneur électricien inc.
Location : Sherbrooke, in the Eastern Townships region of Québec
Applications :
  • Heating for the company buildings
  • Hot water for domestic use
Biomass source :
  • 4-foot waste logs supplied by local forestry contractors
  • Clean production waste, supplied by a local company
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« By heating with biomass, we should be able cut costs by about 45%. Our calculations are based on the prices in 2016, when propane cost $0.40 a litre. »

- Luc Bélanger, 
President, Bernard Bélanger Entrepreneur électricien inc.

Results

Bernard Bélanger Entrepreneur électricien inc. is based in Sherbrooke, in the Eastern Townships region of Québec, and specializes in the commercial, industrial and institutional sectors.

“Our building is 110 feet by 110 feet, with a 22-foot ceiling. With the mezzanines, that’s almost 16,000 ft2 of floor space. Initially, this building had a propane heating system. But the high heating costs forced me to explore cheaper options,” explains Luc Bélanger, company president.

Sequoia’s Blue Sky energy generator is a hot-water heating unit that runs on biomass fuel (wood). The fire heats a fluid that transports the heat through tubes to the fan coils. At Bernard Bélanger Entrepreneur électricien inc., several different fan coils are used to efficiently heat both small and large spaces.

“I store my wood inside the building, in front of one of my Dragon Vert heating units. So, on top of heating my warehouse, the unit dries out the wood, so which then gives me even more BTUs when I burn it,” confides Mr. Bélanger.

Certified for indoor installations, the Blue Sky energy generator is also located in the warehouse. A stainless steel hood extracts any fumes that escape from the combustion chamber during loading. In addition to a heat exchanger that produces domestic hot water for the entire building, the company’s Sequoia system is equipped with a certified energy meter that provides several advantages. This new feature lets them track the boiler’s performance on a computer screen, tablet or mobile phone. It records the data over a 13-month period, and then presents it as a table and a graph in Microsoft Excel.

“By heating with biomass, we should be able cut costs by about 45%. Our calculations are based on the prices in 2016, when propane cost $0.40 a litre. In 10 years, propane will be even more expensive than it is now. But all signs point to the price of wood staying more or less the same. Twenty years ago, a semi-trailer of wood cost $2,000—basically the same as it does today,” adds Luc Bélanger.

At Bernard Bélanger Entrepreneur électricien inc., the energy generator runs on 4-foot logs but also what’s known as “donated wood”—small wood offcuts from a local factory that would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it. Instead, they give their scraps to Luc Bélanger for free, on the simple condition he pick it up.

“With our old heating system, we were miserable. Each time we opened a garage door, the cold came rushing in, and we had trouble heating the space up again. But now, with our Dragon Vert heating units, it’s a whole different story. In addition to saving us money, we get to work in a comfortable space,” concludes Luc Bélanger.

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