Greener Care at Royal Cornwall Hospital
With an excess of half a million patient attendances as well as visitors and staff entering through the doors of the Royal Cornwall Hospital each year, the demand for warmth and hot water is considerable. Prompted by the environmental and financial benefits of using woodfuel as a source of renewable energy, a 700KW biomass boiler was installed by Econergy at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske near Truro.
At the time this became the largest biomass boiler in any hospital across the country. The Frohling boiler, manufactured in Austria, provides the majority of hot water throughout the year, with a small additional gas boiler introduced at peak times to meet high levels of demand. The boiler runs off wood chip supplied by Forest Fuels, sourced as a by-product from a saw-mill within 30 miles of Tresliske, where local sustainable woodland is milled.
Forest Fuels ensure the chip is high quality with low moisture content to guarantee the fuel is highly combustible. The boiler consumes 2,000 tonnes of wood chip each year requiring four deliveries per week. Each month the boiler generates 300 MW of heat energy, supplying the hospital with hot water and heating. However, the Hospital is far from the sole benefactor in this process.
The wood chip from the saw-mill is essentially waste wood which would otherwise have been transported to a coal fired power station near Bristol. Instead a small regional market has been created benefiting the saw-mill and hospital mutually. Similarly, a number of jobs have been established which are assured for the next 15 years for which Forest Fuels has agreed to supply the woodchip, including hauliers as well as labourers to chip the waste wood. Likewise, a local retired farmer has rented out his derelict barn for the storage of the wood chip, providing himself a means of income. As with all renewable energy projects, perhaps the biggest winner in this relationship is the environment with 700 tonnes of CO2 being saved from polluting the atmosphere each year.
The Royal Cornwall Hospital has joined the growing number of businesses and organisations who have realised the substantial environmental and financial benefits of using woodfuel as a means of carbon neutral, cost effective heating where the advantages are felt across the region and not only in the wards’ radiators.