Since winning the LAMMA 2011 award for best new product or innovation for their new range of biomass boilers, the team has been hard at work installing boilers from Exeter to Inverness. Now though, they face their biggest challenge yet – installing four boilers on a single site at a farm in Scotland, and connecting them up to run a very large continuous feed grain dryer! At the same time, another six boilers are also on their way to Scotland for other clients.
The boilers have been built at a new manufacturing facility in Whaplode where Lynx Engineers Ltd manufacture the boilers for GlenFarrow. The success of the range of biomass boilers has meant Lynx expanding to this dedicated boiler manufacturing facility to accommodate the demand. In all, the two companies have between them created ten new positions in the manufacture and installation of biomass boilers.
The boilers are a batch-fed system, burning waste or surplus materials such as wood, straw or cardboard to produce hot water or hot air and are highly efficient for this type of boiler, making the most of the fuel used. This makes them a great solution for users who produce surplus biomass as a by-product as it enables them to replace costly fossil fuels with their own surplus.
The variety of places GlenFarrow has been asked to heat really demonstrates the versatility of biomass heating. Projects to date include a play barn, toilet blocks on a caravan park, a log-drying facility, farm houses, a farm shop and even a conference centre. One of the more technically challenging projects involved designing a district heating system; using one boiler to heat three different farm houses on the same site.
GlenFarrow installed a biomass boiler last year for Hamish Watson to run the grain dryer on his 900 acre farm in Aberdeenshire. His grain dryer is powered by a single GF400 Biomass Boiler, fuelled with wood/straw.
Hamish said, “The whole system is performing well above my initial expectations. It’s saving me at least £18,000 per year in fuel and is doing a great job of drying the grain. The system fitted well into my existing setup and the GlenFarrow installation team were really easy to have on site.” The new grain dryer project will see four GF400 boilers linked together to run a continuous system, which the new owner anticipates will save in excess of £50,000 a year.
