Солтүстік Йоркширдегі биомассалық электр стансасы

Biomass power station in North Yorkshire

Opened in 1974 and extended in the 1980s, This work was completed in 2016 and a fourth unit was converted in 2018. The company planned to convert its remaining two coal units to Combined Cycle Gas Turbine units and 200 MW battery storage. However, those two coal units were shut in 2021 without converting them to biomass.

Drax was initially conceived by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in 1962 as the country's largest power station thus far, at about 3,000 MW. Subsequently, it was decided to use this opportunity as their first station to use the 660 MW turbogenerator sets which were planned to become the new standard, so the planning consents were revised to about 4,000 MW. Following the Selby Coalfield discovery in 1967 the Board would build three large power stations to use its coal. These were an expansion of the station at Ferrybridge, a new station at Eggborough, and Drax, which would be the largest. Costain constructed the foundations and cable tunnels; Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. laid the roads and built the ancillary buildings; Mowlem laid the deep foundations; Alfred McAlpine built the administration and control buildings; Balfour Beatty undertook general building works; and James Scott installed cabling. In both phases the boilers were made by Babcock Power Ltd and the generators by C. A. Parsons and Company. The second phase was completed in 1986. Construction of the power station entailed the demolition of a farm known as Wood House. Mitsui Babcock fitted flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) equipment between 1988 and 1995.

On privatisation of the CEGB in 1990, the station was transferred from the CEGB to the privatised generating company National Power, which sold it to the AES Corporation in November 1999 for £1.87 billion (US$3 billion). In December 2005, after refinancing, ownership passed to the Drax Group. Separate acquisition offers from International Power, private equity group Texas Pacific, and a private equity backed bid from Constellation Energy were rejected for undervaluing the company. The company's valuation subsequently increased to 2005 as a result of rising electricity prices, and on 15 December 2005 Drax Group plc floated its shares on the London Stock Exchange, issuing £400 million worth of shares, on a valuation of £2.6 billion. In 2009, Drax Group submitted a planning application for the 300 MW biomass Ouse Renewable Energy Plant next to the power station. Government approval was obtained in mid 2011. In February 2012 the company ceased planning development of the plant, citing logistics costs, and uncertainty concerning government financial support for biomass.

In 2006 Drax Power Limited, in response to a government consultation, stated they were sponsoring development studies into carbon capture and storage (CCS), but noted that it was not then commercially viable, with costs comparable with nuclear or offshore wind power. On 17 June 2009, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband announced plans that would require all UK coal fired power stations to be fitted with CCS technology by the early 2020s or face closure. In 2012 a CCS project at Drax was shortlisted for government funding. In 2013 the White Rose Carbon Capture and Storage project (formerly the UK OXY CCS project) was shortlisted for the UK government's CCS scheme and in late 2013 was awarded a two year FEED contract (Front End Engineering Design) for the CCS project. As of June 2014, Drax is engaged in a joint venture with Alstom and BOC to build a 626 MW oxygen fuelled combustion power station adjacent to the existing Drax site. National Grid would simultaneously construct a pipeline to transport 40 mile (64 km) to the Yorkshire coast for sequestration. In July 2014 the project was awarded €300 million funding from the European Commission. In September 2015 Drax announced it would not be making any further investments into the CCS scheme after completion of the feasibility study because negative changes to government support for renewable energy had made the project too financially risky, plus drops in the company's share price due to the same uncertainty had reduced Drax's ability to raise funds. Front End Engineering Design was expected to continue under Alstom and BOC with the project still being hosted at Drax. In late 2015 the UK Government withdrew its potential financial support for CCS projects – up to £1 billion of funding, reversing support promised in the governing party's 2015 election manifesto. As a result, Leigh Hackett, CEO of Capture Power stated that "[I]t is difficult to imagine its continuation in the absence of crucial government support". In May 2018, Drax announced a new carbon capture and storage pilot scheme that it would undertake in conjunction with the Leeds based firm, C Capture. The focus of this pilot will be on capturing carbon post combustion from the biomass burners as opposed to the coal burners. Drax will invest £400,000 into the project. The company, C Capture, is a side company of the Department of Chemistry established at the University of Leeds. This would yield about of stored per day from the process, which could be sold on for use in the drinks industry. The pilot scheme was launched in February 2019. The capture of carbon from biomas burners is known as Bio Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).

The main buildings are of steel frame and metal clad construction. The main features are a turbine hall, a boiler house, a chimney and 12 cooling towers. The boiler house is high, and the turbine hall is long. The chimney stands tall, with an overall diameter of , The chimney's dimensions, including the height, were dictated by a design total capacity of 5,100 m3/s of gases at 26 m/s. As the station was designed and constructed prior to the CEGB's commitment to Flue Gas Desulpurisation, extensive measures were made to limit acid attack from 'sulphurous condensate', namely the lining of the flues with a fluoroelastomer, and coating of the upper of the external surfaces with a mix of acid resisting tiles and said fluoroelastomer. The design life was set out in terms of number of start ups and operating "cycles", but with the presumption that the station would operate as a standard 2nd tier (nuclear stations being 1st tier) baseload generator in the pattern well established under the centralised state owned electricity system, it was summarised as "in the order of 40 years". The minimum requirement was for providing 'full load for weekdays, over a spell of 3 months' with an availability over 85%. Weekend operations were expected to be between 50–100% of full power. Despite this intent for baseload operation, it was designed with a reasonable ability for load following, being able to ramp up or down by 5% of full power per minute within the range of 50–100% of full power.

The main transport route to the power station for fuel (originally coal) is train via a long freight only section of the former Hull and Barnsley Railway, from the Pontefract Line at Hensall Junction. A balloon loop rail layout is used so that wagons of coal do not need to be shunted after being unloaded. Merry go round trains are used, so that wagons can be unloaded without the train stopping as it passes through an unloading house. On average, there are 35 deliveries a day, 6 days a week. The power station also has a jetty (see § Jetty) – imports via the jetty ended c.1980 – in 2004 the jetty was trialled for the import of Tall Oil by barge.

In its original form, the station had a maximum potential consumption of 36,000 tonnes of coal a day. This coal came from a mixture of both domestic and international sources, with domestic coal coming from mines in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Scotland, and foreign supplies coming from Australia, Colombia, Poland, Russia and South Africa. As of 2020, all coal was sourced internationally. Fuel and other bulk commodities were supplied via a 6 mile stretch of the old Hull and Barnsley Railway line off the Wakefield and Goole railway line. Rail facilities include a west facing junction on the Goole line, gross weight and tare weight weighbridges, limestone and gypsum handling facilities, including a handling building and control room for the FGD plant, FGD Sidings G and H, biomass offload (Track A), coal offload (Tracks A, B and C), bypass line (Track D), oil siding (Track E) and ash loading (Track F) and an unloading building and control room. When the station opened, most of the coal burned was from local collieries in Yorkshire, including Kellingley Colliery, Prince of Wales, Ackton Hall, Sharlston Colliery, Fryston Colliery, Askern Colliery and Bentley Colliery. Following the miners' strike in the mid 1980s, by 2006, all but Kellingley had closed. (Kellingley closed at the end of 2015.) UK Coal had a five year contract to supply coal, which ended at the end of 2009, from Kellingley, Maltby and, until its closure in 2007, Rossington. Coal was also brought from Harworth Colliery until it was mothballed, and was supplied by Daw Mill in Warwickshire. The foreign coal was brought via various ports by rail. In c.2007 GB Railfreight won a contract to move coal brought from the Port of Tyne, celebrated by the company naming one of their locomotives Drax Power Station in 2007. DB Cargo UK haul coal from the nearby ports of Hull and Immingham, and from Hunterston Terminal on the west coast of Scotland. In 2021, all coal supplies to Drax Power Station and commercial electricity generation from coal ended in accordance with the plan to end coal fired generation announced in 2020 which will see Drax transition to biomass ahead of the deadline to phase out coal from the UK energy system.

The station tested co firing biomass in the summer of 2004, and in doing so was the first power station in the UK to be fuelled by wood. The initial trial of 14,100 tonnes of willow was locally sourced from nearby Eggborough. Since the trial, the station's use of biomass has continued. It uses direct injection for firing the biomass, whereby it bypasses the pulverising mills and is either injected directly into the boiler or the fuel line, for greater throughput. The station burns a large range of biomass, mostly wood pellets, sunflower pellets, olive, peanut shell husk and rape meal. The majority comes from overseas. A 100,000 tonne pa capacity straw pelletization facility was constructed at Capitol Park, Goole in 2008, opened 2009. Construction of specialised biomass handling facilities began in 2009 at the Port of Tyne and at Drax.

In the 2000s Drax Group applied for planning permission to build a new 300 MW power station, fuelled entirely by biomass, to the north of the station; the Ouse Renewable Energy Plant was expected to burn 1,400,000 tonnes of biomass each year, saving 1,850,000 tonnes of emissions, and expected to create 850 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs created once opened, through direct and contract employment. Plans were submitted to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in July 2009 for review; if permission was granted, construction was scheduled begin in late 2010 and to take up to three and a half years. Two other 300 MW biomass plants were planned by Drax at the ports of Hull and Immingham. In 2012 Drax group abandoned plans for the discrete biomass plant development, due to changes in government subsidies for biomass energy production favouring plant conversions over newly built plants. It switched to a project to convert half of the units at its existing plant to biomass firing.

In September 2012 Drax Group announced the conversion to full firing with biomass of three of its six units. The first unit was scheduled to be online by June 2013, the second unit in 2014, and the third by 2017; initially a biomass supply had been secured for the first unit. The cost was estimated at £700 million ($1.13 billion), including modifications to fuel mills and boilers and the construction of storage structures and conveyors for the wood pellet fuel. Each unit will consume about 2.3 million tonnes of biomass yearly, requiring an estimated annual total of 7.5 million tonnes in 2017. This is equivalent to two thirds of Europe's entire energy biomass consumption in 2010, and requires of forest to supply on a continuous basis. North America was expected to be the source of the vast majority of the biomass, although some would be domestically sourced willow and elephant grass. Drax Group's decision was enabled by a new UK government policy, effective in April 2013, to award 1.0 tradable ROCs (renewable obligation certificates) per megawatt of power generation from coal power plants that are fully converted to burn biomass; CEO Dorothy Thompson stated the company intended to become a predominately biomass fuelled energy producer. By April 2013 financing for the scheme include £190 million through sale of shares, £100 million from Prudential/ M&G UK Companies Financing Fund, £50 million from the UK Green Investment Bank, and £75 million Friends Life (underwritten by HM Treasury), as well as a £400 million credit facility. As of 2013 there were plans to install 1 million tonne per year wood pellets pelletizing plants at Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, and Gloster, Mississippi, which would be shipped by road and rail to the port of Baton Rouge, Louisiana then shipped in 50,000 tonne cargo ships to UK. In the financial report for 2013, Drax announced that an additional 2 million tons pelletisation capacity was being considered, likely to be built in the US. In 2013 the company signed an agreement with Associated British Ports to develop handling facilities at the Hull, Immingham and Grimsby; construction of automated facilities began in 2013, creating capacities of 3 and 1 million tonnes per year at the ports of Immingham and Hull respectively, adding to the 1.4 million tonne per year Port of Tyne biomass facility built in 2009. In the same year a new design covered rail wagon with high volumetric capacity for transporting the low density biomass pellets was unveiled for use by Drax in the UK; 200 wagons of the type were ordered. At Drax pellets would be stored in domes, and transferred by a conveyor system before grinding to dust for use. The concrete dome technology was supplied by E & D Company, PLLC (trading as Engineering System Solutions, ES2) and Dome Technology LLC. By July 2013 one firing unit had been converted, and was reported to be functioning correctly; by 2013 the conversion of the second and third units was scheduled for 2014 and during or before 2016 respectively. The second unit was converted by May 2014, initially co firing an 85% biomass/coal mix due to limited biomass supply. In April 2014 Drax was awarded a renewable contract for difference (CFD) subsidy for biomass based power generation on another converted coal firing unit, but a third unit, which had been previously marked as eligible for CFD funding was excluded; Drax Group then legally challenged the decision, initially obtaining a ruling in its favour, which was overturned in the Court of Appeal. In July 2014 the High Court ruled in Drax's favour. Biomass conversion at Drax led to it requiring 82% of UK biomass imports from the US in 2014 (60% overall of all US wood pellet export), a large factor in a 40% yearly increase in biomass export from that country; US sourced imports represented 58% of Drax's biomass use in 2014, with 22% from Canada. A port facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was completed by April 2015. In mid 2015 Drax reached an agreement with Peel Ports to construct a 3 million ton per year biomass importation facility at the Port of Liverpool, estimated cost £100 million. The rail connected facility was to include 100,000 tonnes storage, and be constructed by Graham Construction. In September 2015 Drax Group and Infinis began a legal action against the UK government due to claimed insufficient notice being given about the withdrawal of a climate related tax exemption (see Climate Change Levy) – Drax claimed the change would reduce its earnings by £30 million. The claim was rejected by the High Court in February 2016. In December 2016 the European Competition Commission approved UK government subsidies for the conversion of the third unit to biomass burning. The Guardian reported, in December 2011, that the company intended to invest money with a view to doubling production of wood pellets by 2030.

The station started to trial the co firing of petroleum coke (petcoke) in one of its boilers in June 2005, To meet their concerns, emissions were constantly monitored through the trial, and they were not allowed to burn petcoke without operating the FGD plant to remove the high sulphur content of the emissions. The trial proved that there were no significant negative effects on the environment, and so in late 2007 Drax Group applied to move from trial conditions to commercial burning.

Coal is fed into one of 30 coal bunkers, each with a capacity of 1,000 tonnes. Each bunker feeds two of the 60 pulverisers, each of which can crush 36 tonnes of coal an hour. The station has six Babcock Power boilers, each weighing 4,000 tonnes. Each of the six boilers feed steam to a steam turbine set, consisting of one high pressure (HP) turbine, one intermediate pressure (IP) turbine and three low pressure (LP) turbines. Each HP turbine generates 140 MW. Exhaust steam from them is fed back to the boiler and reheated, then fed to the 250 MW IP turbines and finally passes through the 90MW LP turbines. The station also has six gas turbines providing backup for breakdowns, or shut downs in the National Grid. Their annual output is generally low, generating 75 MW and three of the units have been mothballed and are out of operation, but they could be refurbished. Between 2007 and 2012 the high and low pressure turbines were replaced by Siemens in a £100 million programme.

Water is essential to a thermal power station, heated to create steam to turn the steam turbines. Water used in the boilers is taken from two licensed boreholes on site. Once this water has been through the turbines it is cooled by condensers using water taken from the nearby River Ouse. Water is pumped from the river by a pumphouse on the river, north of the station. Once it has been through the condenser, the water is cooled by one of the natural draft cooling towers, with two towers serving each generating set. Once cooled, the water is discharged back into the river. A byproduct of the process is gypsum, with 15,000 tonnes produced each week. This goes to be used in the manufacture of plasterboard. The gypsum is sold exclusively to British Gypsum, and it is transported by rail to their plants at Kirkby Thore (on the Settle Carlisle Line), East Leake (on the former Great Central Main Line) and occasionally to Robertsbridge (on the Hastings Line). In 2023, Drax announced a full withdrawal from using coal power past the winter contingency agreement, Drax announced that it will now embark on a decommissioning process to remove coal related infrastructure from the site. This will commence with the removal of the flue gas desulphurisation plant that was built in the 1990s to remove 90% of the sulphur from the plant’s air emissions.

Pulverised fuel ash (PFA) and furnace bottom ash (FBA) are two byproducts from the burning of coal. Each year, the station produces about 1,000,000 tonnes of PFA and around 220,000 tonnes of FBA: all FBA and 85% of PFA is sold. The ash is also used in other parts of the UK. The unsold PFA is sent by conveyor belt to the Barlow ash mound, which is used for disposal and temporary stockpile. Three conveyors feed the mound, with a total capacity of 750 tonnes an hour. FGD gypsum is disposed of on the mound if it is not of a high enough grade to be sold. The mound has won a number of awards for its nature conservation work. In 2007 the station produced 22,160,000 tonnes of , making it the largest single source of in the UK. Between 2000 and 2007, there has been a net increase in carbon dioxide of over 3,000,000 tonnes. In 2007, in a move to try to lower emissions, Drax Group signed a £100 million contract with Siemens Power Generation to re blade the steam turbines over four years. This is the largest steam turbine modernisation ever undertaken in the UK, and will increase efficiency. Coupled with the co firing of biomass, this was part of a target to reduce emissions by 15% by 2011. Drax's annual report for 2013 reported that Drax's annual emissions were at 20,612,000 tonnes of This was a slight decrease from 2007 levels due to the burning of biomass. Drax remained the UK's largest single emitter of carbon dioxide up until 2016, when the power station claimed that its improvement programmes and conversion to burning biomass, had meant a drastic decrease in greenhouses gases being released into the atmosphere. Drax has opted in to the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) and thus is permitted to continue operating beyond 2015. The use of flue gas desulfurisation ensures that the limits on sulphur dioxide emissions are not exceeded.

On 31 August 2006, over 600 people attended a protest against the high carbon emissions. It was coordinated by the Camp for Climate Action group. At least 3,000 police officers from 12 forces were reported to have been drafted in for the duration of the protest, to safeguard electricity supplies and prevent the protesters from shutting the station down. Thirty nine people were arrested after trying illegally to gain access to the plant.

At 8:00 am on 13 June 2008, more than 30 climate change campaigners halted an EWS coal train en route to the station by disguising themselves as rail workers by wearing high visibility clothing and waving red flags. Stopping the train on a bridge across the River Aire, they scaled the wagons with the aid of the bridge's girders. They then mounted a banner reading "Leave it in the ground" on the side of the wagon and tied the train to the bridge, preventing it from moving. They then shovelled more than 20 tonnes of coal on to the railway line. The protest lasted the whole day, until several protesters were removed from the train by police that night. The station's management said that the protest had no effect on output. The action was coordinated by Camp for Climate Action.

On 18 June 2009, fewer than 200 contractors walked out of or failed to show up in a wildcat strike, showing solidarity with workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire where 51 workers had been laid off while another employer on the site was recruiting more staff. A spokeswoman said the strike did not affect electricity output.

In October 2011 a fire started by spontaneous combustion in a stockpile at the Port of Tyne biomass facility. Another fire occurred at the same facility in a conveyor transfer tower in October 2013.