That smoke you see rising out of the top of this building is actually steam. I've featured this building many times in the past, but always from a distance and refered to it as the 'smoke factory'. The purpose of this building is electricty, heating, and cooling. It burns 1000 tons of wood chips per day. It's fancy technology boils water very hot, creating electricity in it's turbine blades. The hot water is the pumped through underground pipes heating nearly all of the buildings in the downtown area. There is also a really fancy technology called a steam absorption chiller that condensed the steam vapor back into a liquid, cooling the water down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. This water is also pumped into the downtown area into air-condition units to keep the buildings cool in the summer months.
October 6, 2009
Turning Wood Into Electricity
That smoke you see rising out of the top of this building is actually steam. I've featured this building many times in the past, but always from a distance and refered to it as the 'smoke factory'. The purpose of this building is electricty, heating, and cooling. It burns 1000 tons of wood chips per day. It's fancy technology boils water very hot, creating electricity in it's turbine blades. The hot water is the pumped through underground pipes heating nearly all of the buildings in the downtown area. There is also a really fancy technology called a steam absorption chiller that condensed the steam vapor back into a liquid, cooling the water down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. This water is also pumped into the downtown area into air-condition units to keep the buildings cool in the summer months.
Is there a chimney or multiple chimneys on the roof?
ReplyDeleteWhat you are looking at is the chimney of the factory. It's the only one for the plant. The heart of the plant is below the surface, built into the side of the bluff.
ReplyDeleteHope that answered your question....