- Success Story
Vantaa Energy, one of Finland’s largest city energy companies, chose SFW’s digital services for moving away from fossil fuels at their Marbio bioenergy plant in Martinlaakso, southern Finland. The transition was made possible by SFW’s three innovative digital IZANA products; Envelope, Bed Management and Fouling management – solutions that optimize a boiler’s operating capacity and environmental performance, enhance usability, and cut operating costs.
The primary goal was to ensure that the plant is equipped for moving away from using fossil fuels, such as coal and peat, and increase the potential for using a variety of non-fossil fuels, as Vantaa Energy progresses towards carbon negativity in 2030. How was this goal reached and what were the technologies that made it happen?
The collaboration started in 2019 as SFW modernized Vantaa Energy's oil and gas fueled boiler into a BFB (bubbling fluidized bed) boiler that uses biomass and recycled wood, raising the plant’s environmental performance and cost-efficiency to a new level.
In 2020, following the successful TMU (Technology, Modernization and Upgrade) project for the BFB boiler, SFW introduced the Envelope solution to further increase the operating efficiency of the plant and reduce the need to operate a coal-fired boiler simultaneously. When the demand for district heating is higher, for example during sub-zero temperatures, the bio boiler can cover a bigger share of the needed heat demand, resulting in less need to use the coal-fired boiler. In addition, the Envelope technology increased the fuel flexibility and production capacity of the boiler and lowered maintenance costs.
During the same year, SFW strengthened the service package for Vantaa Energy with another digital product, Bed management, to avoid boiler downtime caused by bed agglomeration and sintering. The product increased not only the boiler’s reliability but also its usability for burning more challenging biofuels, such as recycled wood. It also optimized sand use in the boiler, which meant less sand transportation to a landfill, reducing transportation costs.
In 2021 a third technology, Fouling management, was implemented at the Marbio plant to optimize boiler performance and efficiency and decrease maintenance costs.
The three products are a part of SFW’s wide-ranging digital services offering, which allows customers to pick and choose the most suitable modernization and decarbonization solutions for their needs.
Working with SFW has been a success story for both parties and we have been pleased with SFW's contribution in our cooperation. Both development and implementation of each product has been agile, fast and flexible.
It was not sustainable for Vantaa Energy to burn the boiler with gas, the modification brought the boiler back into continuous use. We are satisfied to have solved significant and extensive challenges for the customer by realizing a vast technical modernization at the plant, which was then replenished and complemented with three digital solutions.
One of SFW’s strategic targets for 2023 is to expand businesses and grow by focusing on TMUs, digital services and solutions for operations and maintenance to serve customers with market-leading technologies. The modernization that created the Marbio bioenergy plant is a fitting example of this. The co-creation continues, as Vantaa Energy and SFW optimize the Waste-To-Energy Plant’s operations by piloting SFW’s new digital solutions.
We have been concentrating on providing Vantaa Energy with digital services to continue optimizing the BFB boiler for using non-fossil fuels. The main target is to keep improving the environmental performance of the bioenergy plant. Next, we also get to test our new digital service at the plant’s waste-to-energy boiler.
For SFW, the customer is always our number one priority – our entire Digital services team was involved in this project.
We priced our services based on what the customer needed and truly benefited from. We want to thank Vantaa Energy’s representatives for their great cooperation and look forward to continuing providing and developing digital services at the Martinlaakso power plant and Waste-To-Energy Plant.