Poor quality installations reflect ‘poor knowledge’

A lack of knowledge is being reflected in poor quality installations. That’s according to the owner and director of bioenergy firm Re:heat, Neil Harrison. He told ELN: “There’s very low […]

A lack of knowledge is being reflected in poor quality installations.

That’s according to the owner and director of bioenergy firm Re:heat, Neil Harrison.

He told ELN: “There’s very low barriers of entry which means people are coming in with a very low level of knowledge.

“There’s not necessarily the support and mechanisms in place to help them increase that level of knowledge and that’s being reflected in the quality of some installations.”

Mr Harrison, who is also the head of the Quality and Standards Committee, said there are poor quality installations and “they’re the ones that are doing damage to the reputation of the industry”.

The director, who spoke at a biomass conference today, added: “This meeting is a desire of the industry to put its house in order and professionalise the biomass industry by investing in skills and training, guidance and standards.”

Professor Mike Bradley from the Univeristy of Greenwich agreed poor knowledge has resulted in below satisfactory results as he spoke about biomass installation.

He told ELN: “There’s a fundamental issue there that a lot of installers don’t even realise there is a challenge – they think they can just buy a box, put pellets in the top, they’ll come out of the bottom: problem solved. It’s not as simple as that.”

The professor said he thinks “the lack of education goes back to school” as handling gases, liquid and heat is “a fairly straight forward thing that we all get taught at school”.

He added: “We don’t get taught anything about bulk solids and how they behave and how you need to treat them.”

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