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Construction begins on Point Tupper biomass cogeneration facility

The Cape Breton Post reports that construction is underway on a $200-million biomass cogeneration facility that will see waste wood burned to produce electricity at NewPage’s Point Tupper mill site in Nova Scotia.

The project received approval from last fall. Since then, NewPage has been at work ordering the necessary equipment, most notably a steam turbine generator from Mitsubishi Power Systems which will weigh 180 tonnes, will be five meters wide and 20 metres long.

“Our objective is to get everything done this construction season so we’ve got everything weather-tight for the winter, so when the turbine comes in next spring we’ll be doing a lot of piping work and things like that in the turbine building itself,” project manager Donald Dodds told the paper.

“It’s being manufactured in Japan, so we’re trying to figure out the impact from the earthquake and tsunami, we haven’t worked our way through that exactly just what all that’s going to mean to us, but the turbine is supposed to be here second quarter of the year 2012,” Dodds continued.

“As far as delivery, that’s our long lead item so that was the first piece of equipment that we had on order, and then everything else supports that.”

That component and the supporting work, such as construction of a pump house that will take water from the Strait of Canso to the turbine, will cost about $93 million.

Improvements are also being made to the existing 27-year-old boiler, which NSPI bought from NewPage as part of the deal for $80 million. Efforts are also underway to ready the mill’s woodyard, including construction of a silo to hold wood chips, which will have a diameter of 30 metres, The Cape Breton Post reports.

A new transformer is also on order, which will allow the mill to supply electricity to NSPI’s grid.