The emissions created by the district heating and steam production of the city of Tornio, the locality of Haparanda and the Outokumpu company fell this year thanks to the fact that Tornion Voima, which produces heating for the area, stopped using heavy fuel oil.
“We abandoned heavy fuel oil primarily for environmental reasons. Natural gas is much cleaner than heavy fuel oil. The decision was also facilitated by the fact that, due to the investments made in the area, heavy fuel oil is a more expensive fuel than natural gas in terms of overall costs. In short, this is good for us and the planet,” says Aki Hakulinen, Managing Director of Tornion Voima.
The installation of Tornion Voima’s natural gas burners for reserve power boilers was completed at the end of 2018. Now all the reserve power boilers can be used with natural gas and coal gas, which eliminates the use of fuel oil and the resulting emissions. Thanks to the new burners, the reserve power boilers’ sulphur and particle emissions have been almost entirely eliminated and nitrogen emissions have been radically reduced.
Natural gas is mainly used in the company’s back-up boilers, which are used for reserve power and during periods of high consumption. The reserve power boilers account for about ten per cent of the company’s heat production. Tornion Voima uses coal gas from the Outokumpu steelworks, as well as wood-based biomass and peat more than any other fuel in its heat production. The company chose natural gas because it is readily available at the Tornio LNG terminal.
A similar change will also be made at the Kemi Mine
Emissions reductions are set to continue.
“We are going to turn two oil-fired boilers at the Kemi Mine into ones that use natural gas instead. We will do this by building LNG storage and evaporator stations for them and by converting the burners to ones appropriate to natural gas before the end of this year,” says Hakulinen.
For more information contact: Aki Hakulinen, Managing Director of Tornion Voima Oy, tel. + 358 50 386 2602
