As part of the 2010 Halton Farm Tour we visited Brandelle Industries in Milton. This is the outside of their manufacturing operation. It looks more like a chalet than a creative engineering start up business. Brandelle Biomass Systems is the subsidiary company and the principals are Mike Brouwers, Gary Bot and Curtis VanderMarel.
The middle picture show the owners explaining to our group how this boiler works and why it is unique.
Although the developers of this boiler searched the world for a boiler that would use biomass for feedstock they were unable to find anything that would do the job. In the end they decided that they had to build something from the ground up.
The result is a heavy duty, industrial strength boiler that can custom burn
a variety of materials including corn, switch grass pellets, wheat shorts, etc.It was explained that each type of fuel requires different settings in order to avoid residues and off-gasing. However, they have met this challenge and the resulting boiler is highly mechanized and can even be computer controlled remotely.
The fuel pictured below is pelletized switch grass.
It was interesting to learn that there are farmers in Halton who are experimenting with switch grass as a crop specifically for the biomass market.
As part of the tour we were able to see one of these boilers operating. It is very quiet and produced a very small amount of ash.
This is brand new technology created without the benefit of government assistance.
It will be interesting to see where it takes us as these creative people move forward with their product.
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