Aspire Eco Energy were asked to design and install a biomass heating system for HadFad Ltd in Tranent just outside Edinburgh. HadFab is a rapidly growing company that specialises in building electricity transmission pylons but is quickly expanding into other areas of steel fabrication such as wind turbine towers, and they take their responsibility to the environment very seriously.

They needed a heating system for their new steel fabrication facility at Penston. The challenge was to provide a system big enough to heat the 5200m2 building while keeping the foot print of the system to a minimum, as space on the site is a premium for materials storage. With this in mind the team at Aspire designed a completely bespoke solution based around a 40′ side opening shipping container with the fuel storage silos mounted on top. Adam and his team at M & J Products designed and fabricated the steel work necessary to make the idea work. The boiler room was constructed at Aspires premises in Clay Cross, Derbyshire and transported to site once it was ready.

At the heart of the system are 8 x RTB80 pellet boilers from NBE Productions in Denmark and supplied to Aspire by RTB-UK Ltd. RTB-UK are the UK’s distribution partner for NBE Productions. The boilers operate as a cascade which is controlled and monitored though NBE’s cloud based control system, Stokercloud. This allows the system to modulate between 23kW and 625kW, boilers are turned on or off as the demand on the system alters. This means there was no need for large buffer cylinders which is a crucial consideration for the foot print of the system. The neutral point in the system is a 50 litre low loss header between the boilers and the heating primaries.

The heating system in the building consists of 25 x VR3 fan coil heaters from VTS. These will allow controllable heat distribution to the whole of the building and can be turned up or down to suit the requirements of the staff working in different areas of the building.