You may notice the smell of rotten eggs in Gibsons next week as Howe Sound Pulp and Paper (HSPP) starts a $37-million boiler upgrade that includes venting the odourous gases in its wood waste boiler.
"Typically, if you do smell it, it would be a very faint rotten egg type smell," said HSPP president and CEO Mac Palmiere, noting he is hopeful there won't be any noticeable odour in the Town of Gibsons. "Generally speaking, when we vented in the past, depending on the weather, occasionally you can get it and occasionally you don't. Really, we are subject to the weather on this, but I'm hoping people don't smell it."
The odourous gases are normally incinerated in the boiler, but during the upgrade, they will need to be released. According to Palmiere, the smell may be slightly offensive, but it is not a health concern.
"You smell it because of the sensitivity of the nose, but it is at such low concentrations it's not a health concern at those concentrations," he said.
The upgrade to the boiler starts May 31 and is expected to take 42 days to complete. During the upgrade, Palmiere said the bottom one-third of the boiler will be removed and replaced with new advanced technology that uses a fluidized sand bed to burn waste bark.
"What we use now is essentially a grate boiler. Very simply, if you look in a fireplace and it has a grate and you throw logs on that, that's basically what we've got in our boiler right now," he said. "Those work really well if you have very dry fuel going in, but of course being on the Coast, we don't have really dry fuel. So the new, what they call a bubbling fluidized bed, or basically a sand bed, is much more efficient at burning higher moisture fuel and that's why we're converting it."
The conversion will cost $37 million and will be paid for with money received through the federal Green Transformation Program.
As part of the project, HSPP will also install a device to capture heat produced in the boiler and use it for energy in other parts of the mill.
"After the work, the boiler will be cleaner, more efficient and more reliable. When combined with energy savings that we're also making, it translates into new green power for all British Columbians through our connection to the grid," Palmiere said.
In 2010 HSPP and BC Hydro signed an agreement under BC Hydro's integrated power offer that enables HSPP to sell extra power produced on site to the grid. The agreement makes HSPP more economically stable and gives BC Hydro more energy to sell to its customers.
Improved energy generation from the boiler upgrade, combined with internal power reductions, will result in enough energy to power 36,000 homes.
