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The Częstochowa investment carries extra meaning for her, as it’ s the city where she was born and raised.
Plant-wide evolution
The move from coal to biomass, however, takes much more than just switching fuels. The facility was originally designed for cofiring, with coal as the primary fuel. Kamila describes:“ We’ re retrofitting the main CFB boiler, upgrading the existing fuel handling system, building a new one, and improving key plant systems like the distributed control and main electrical systems.”
Biomass behaves very differently from coal when it enters the plant.“ Before, biomass made up about 35 percent of the mix while coal was still the main fuel. Running the main boiler on 100 percent biomass means we need solutions that fit its different physical and chemical properties, as well as its unique storage, transport, handling, and combustion needs,” Kamila notes.
Delivering those changes falls to a team led by Sebastian, whose career has come full circle in Częstochowa. After 25 years in the energy sector, he now manages a project involving the same boiler island he helped install and commission earlier in his career.
What looks like a simple fuel conversion on paper is, in practice, a plant-wide engineering program. Sebastian outlines:“ The retrofit covers most of the systems that feed fuel and additives into the main boiler, plus the systems that remove and recirculate the CFB boiler bed material.”
Switching the fuel mix meant rethinking the boiler’ s inner workings.“ Since changing the fuel also changes how we burn it, we adapted the combustion chamber grate for 58