A Pratt & Whitney Power Systems company, Turboden, which manufactures Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerators, has developed ORC biomass-fueled Combined Cooling, Heat and Power (CCHP) plants at Heathrow Airport and British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).
A public satellite broadcasting company, BSkyB, which operates in Ireland and the UK, is the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK including more than 10 million subscribers. As an effort to reduce carbon emissions, BSkyB develops a 1 MW CCHP plant for its latest data, studio, and editing and transmission facility.
About 32 t of wood chips per day will be obtained from the local businesses by BSkyB’s main campus, located at Hounslow in West London. Further, these wood chips are incinerated at high temperature, over 1000 °C, for heating thermal oil systems that operate the ORC turbine. Subsequently, lower-grade heat is removed to produce cold water and residual heat is used to produce hot water.
As per the head of engineering projects and energy, BSkyB, one of the prime goal of the ORC plant was to compensate about 20% of CO2 emissions; however, it has compensated 40% of CO2 emissions since its installation in Decembegr 2011.
Turboden's second ORC plant is installed at the London Heathrow Airport, operated by BAA Airports. The plant will generate 1.8 MW of electricity using clean wood waste. In addition, the plant will produce only heat for Terminal T5 and 8 MW of thermal heat and cooling to Terminals T2a and T2b. Construction of the plant is nearing completion and anticipated to operate from this summer.