DRALOD 2ND PROJECT MEETING AT ÖKOTHERM´S FACILITIES

On the 16^th of January, DRALOD Consortium has held the second project meeting. In this occasion, the project team met at Ökotherm´s facilities located in the Bavarian town of Hirschau in the Oberpfalz region of Germany.

At the meeting, the partners reviewed the technical progress achieved during 2018 and detailed our calendar of actions for the coming weeks. We also took the opportunity to visit Ökotherm laboratories where prototypes operating at nominal heat capacities in a wide range (from 50kW to 950kW) are tested to optimise their performance under use of a large variety of biomass types. Currently, Ökotherm´s R&D projects mostly focus on environmental performance, as part of their continuous endeavour to adopt innovative technologies to further reduce emissions, in the context of the EU Ecodesign Directive (2009/125/EC) setting the emission requirements for solid fuel boilers, with regulation 2016/2281 related to central heating products including requirements to be applied from 2018 and final requirements to be met by 2021.

The biomass heater is a crucial subsystem of DRALOD drying plant, as a sustainable, flexible and cost-effective auxiliary heat source to the solar heating. Ökotherm´s biomass heating systems offer major advantages in terms of high flexibility concerning both dynamic operation modes as well as type of biomass fuels and fuel quality. In addition, Ökotherm´s proprietary technology for optimal combustion behaviour and low emissions, ensure that their systems are in the forefront of optimised environmental performance.