Woody Biomass Demand Update

[Gary_C]

The Minnesota DNR publishes a news letter called "The Market Place" and the Spring 2008 issue has an update on biomass demand. You can read the entire issue here:
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/forestry/marketplace/marketplace_Spring2008.pdf
Note there are also instructions where you can have the pdf emailed to you every quarter.

There is also a link to a new Minnesota Wood Industry Website here:
http://forest.nrri.umn.edu

One of the large users of wood chips is now the District Energy plant in St. Paul that is using 40 loads of chips per day or 14,000 semi loads per year to provide hot water heat to downtown buildings.

Other plants being built are wood pellet plants and a new energy plant.

So you loggers may need to start looking for chippers.

[Ron Scott]

The logger's here have been parking their chippers due to the high fuel costs. Of course we don't have that kind of chip demand either.

[woodmills1]

chips are the driving force out here.

[PAFaller]

Wish there was something like that in PA. Too many gypsies doing firewood, scrap
markets are tight, heck we leave most of our tops and low grade in the woods. I
started logging in NH and Maine and know all about the chipping scene.  Its nice to have
it to fall back on, I never viewed it as a huge money maker but if you can chip enough
to pay your fuel bill for all your equipment every week you are doing pretty good. Plus
its one more thing to have lined up on a day to rainy to chop or skid.

[Rocky_Ranger]

When will it be that most tops and limbs make their way to a chipper and onto a conversion of some kind into energy?  Sure looks like the time is right, pellets are going crazy - 'course ever Tom, Dick, and Mary (used to be Harry but you know....) is getting into the milling process.  Down here it costs so much to fire brooders or heaters for chicken houses that there is a new pellet stove made for broiler (eating chicken) houses to heat for them.  I haven't heard what the offsetting cost is but LP at $2.65/gal it won't take long to make one pay out.  Chips are still moving well in first thinnings, landing slash, tops and limbs from the pull throughs are just being drug back into the planatations...

[Gary_C]

When will it be that most tops and limbs make their way to a chipper and onto a conversion of some kind into energy?  Sure looks like the time is right, pellets are going crazy -

That's the $64 question. There is no doubt the demand is up significantly, the only problem is most potential users claim they can't afford to pay for the hauling, let alone the cost of the product. And clearly the pulp and paper mills are nervous about this demand for fibre forcing up the prices for all pulp.

And how many loggers have the volume to afford a machine to chip\bundle their biomass let alone the fuel costs for one of those beasts?

I sure don't know where this biomass thing is headed. 

[WDH]

I don't either, Gary.  Trying to chip tops and limbs is too low volume for the capital invested in the machines to chip it.  To get the production to make it work, you will have to chip wood, not just tops.  We will see what happens .

[Rocky_Ranger]

I can see the economics of stand alone chipping of tops not making any money, but how about as an "add on" piece that might pay for fuel.  The skidders have to take the turns of limbs and tops back out into the plantation or pile em up at the landing.  Having a loader dump them into a tub grinder and onto a chip truck saves a turn on the skidder and might make some "rattling change".......

[Gary_C]

The skidders have to take the turns of limbs and tops back out into the plantation or pile em up at the landing.  Having a loader dump them into a tub grinder and onto a chip truck saves a turn on the skidder and might make some "rattling change".......

That is already being done on jobs that are cut with feller bunchers/slashers and large grapple skidders. They leave the tops at the landing and bring in a chipper or tub grinder and make boiler fuel. The loggers that did that were all in a marketing coop and one of the members had a chipper that was used on all the members sites. Problem was it would net very little at the prices the mill paid for boiler fuel and the coop fell apart when the mills cut back and the members fought among themselves over the remaining quota. I went to a demo last spring and took these pictures of that type of operation.

 

 

 



So the problem is with the very low returns now, if the pay prices do not increase significantly, there is no incentive to buy this expensive equipment. Plus the landowners are thinking big bucks to allow someone to remove the biomass. The MN DNR has already started a charge on some jobs for biomass chipping.

So unless some things change, this biomass thing is going nowhere that I can see.

[Rocky_Ranger]

Great shots of the operation!  But, yep, I agree with ya until the price offsets the costs it'll only be done on small scale.  My point/interest is what does it take or how much does the pay rate have to be before it gets profitable?  If someone can figure out a way to make 20 dollar bills slide along that conveyor things'll pick up.

[Greg]

Can someone closer to the reality, answer some basic questions about wood chips used as boiler fuel?

What amount of processing, by that I mean screening, drying, bagging etc. is necessary to produce acceptable boiler fuel.

Another reason I see chips as not terribly viable is the cost of drying them, esp if they come from green wood. I'd assume the chips are somehow kiln or air dried or else they'd either mold or even self combust??? Anybody got numbers on these costs.

It seems by the time woody biomass is usable for fuel, you'd put more energy (and dollars) into the material (due to chipping, shipping, drying, bulk handling, etc) than the consumer could get out by burning it.

In other words a net energy loss. Even if you ignore for the moment the expensive equipment/profitability issue, this doesn't seem a wise direction.

Thanks for educating me,
Greg

[Gary_C]

Greg

As far as I learned, there is no screening, drying, or bagging done on the boiler fuel. Sappi, a paper mill was the biggest buyer of these wet chips and they just stacked them for some time and sorta composted them so they would burn better. Perhaps turned them for better fermentation or to stop heating in the pile.

As far as what they are worth, good luck on finding that information. Those buyers of chips and boiler fuel consider that as very proprietary information and do not divulge any numbers. I know of one large operator who has a chipper anyway that refused to haul any chips to one buyer because they refused to even pay for trucking, and then later he started hauling to that same company. Never would say what was the new price.

The fuel for comparison in these boilers is coal and we were told that most long term coal contracts are now expiring. So the cost of coal is sure to go up, but again nobody will talk numbers.

[Greg]

I can understand the reluctance for folks to publish hard numbers, especially if someone figured out ways to it profitably! Just looking for some general data/experience.

I just know there is a pretty substantial difference in BTU for green vs. seasoned firewood, so I guess I (incorrectly) assumed the boiler fuel chips had to be dried as well. What you say make sense, perhaps by simple fermentation and the subsequent heat generated, that alone removes enough moisture to create useful fuel material.

My interest is not at the industrial level, but rather thinking about some low cost, low tech ways to take advantage of all the chip waste for my smaller residential/shop situation. I see many, many full trucks of chips around here generated by tree service cos, but to a much larger degree, utility company line clearing crews who always seem to be looking for a place to dump their load.

In order for me to do anything worthwhile at this tiny scale, I'd have to have access to free material. But there seems to be a somewhat ample supply of it (for now)

Thanks,
Greg

[WDH]

Most all boiler fuel is hogged (pulverized) so that it can be burned on a fluidized air moving grate in a power boiler.  I worked in the Power and Recovery Unit in a large Pulp mill for several years.  Power was generated via 900 psi steam thru a 35 megawatt turbine generator.  The boiler fuel was bark and sawdust from sawmill residues.  It was all hogged to a fine consistency.  The way most power boilers are operated, the chips would have to be hogged to burn the way the boilers are traditionally designed.  Also, we burned wood sawdust and bark that was green from the tree.  If it was too dry, it would result in uncontrolled burning in suspension rather than on the moving fluidized grate. 

The fact of the matter is that there was enough residue available at less than half the cost of chips so that it was not necessary and in fact much more expensive to burn chips.  It is a market thing.  Pulpmills set the price for chips to make pulp.  Chips are much more expensive than the sawmill residues used for boiler fuel.  The only thing that will change that is demand.  Right now, the demand is not there to drive up the price of residues.  I am sure it will happen, but it is probably 5 years away.  Then, and only then will it become economical.

[Clark]

I worked at the former Stora Enso mill in Wisconsin Rapids, WI for a bit.  The rough estimate in comparing coal vs. bark for power production was 1 ton of coal to 2 tons of bark.  By the time the bark made it to the boiler it was pretty dry, but I was still surprised that the trade-off was that good.  I fully expected it to be more in favor of coal.

Clark

[Rocky_Ranger]

I'm looking at a study I'm sort of associated with - or used to be anyway, showing a break even price of $32.00/ton of delivered biomass at 50% MC.  That is based on natural gas prices of $10.92/MMBtu's.  I haven't priced lately on gas to see how that is holding up.  National Renwable Energy Lab out of Golden/Wheatridge are up with some details, as are some private firms that carry proprietary informaton that's hard to get a hold of.......  We're closing in on profitability of biomass, $150/barrel oil will help grease the skids...

[Greg]

Good information guys, thanks for sharing.

I learned something pretty important already, that mill produced boiler fuel is pulverized - a very fine mix of dust, bark, etc.

That is clearly not the same as the shredded, mulch like material that comes out of the end of the chipper! Kinda important. Doh You can probably tell I sit behind a desk way too much...

The question now (in my head) is what equipment/burners, if any, are capable of dealing with the larger chipper material, as opposed the much finer hogged stuff. Additional processing of chips to dust would just add cost and complication.

I was envisioning a hopper like system that would slowly feed semi dry chips into a burning chamber (kinda like pellets) for a boiler, with a good size tank to store the heat when needed (for hot water, heating) etc.

As far as comparison of biomass to coal, I'd think the numbers might improve if it were practical to squeeze a good bit of moisture out of those chips first. My "profitability" measure is comparison to #heating oil, which is basicially diesel, or near $5 a gallon  .  Another factor is volume, I don't know if its practical in a residential/shop situation to have to move around a huge amount of this material in order to get a useful amount of BTUs out.

To be practical for me it would need to work similar to a pellet loader, I'd think. I think for those you can just add a load to the hopper once or twice a twice day. Obviously the chips would be alot less dense and take up more space.

Maybe this is a no brainer and somebody's already doing exactly this. Just seems ashame to be dumping trucks and trucks of chips on the ground, when people (like me) are paying out their noses for heating oil. I doubt it, most of my ideas, people look at me like I have three heads. Oh well, fun to think about.

Greg

[WDH]

One of the problems is that there is no infrastructure to capture woody debris that is throw-away to a land fill.  If there was a way to collect biomass like garbage and concentrate it for processing, I believe that a market for it would develop.  We need LEADERSHIP!

That is what is most lacking at this point in time.  Without a strong advocate high up in the political system, it is too risky for a private entrepreneur to tackle. 

[Ron Wenrich]

Chips are a little harder to handle than finer dust, and the dust will dry a lot quicker due to surface/mass.  The finer dust can easily be blown.

The problem with many stand alone projects is you need something to do with the trash steam.  Those co-gen projects work out pretty well.  I even had a few inquiries about burning sawdust at a hospital.  They would have needed 10,000 tons/year, if I remember correctly.  We could compete against $1/gal fuel oil at the time and city made steam.

I'm not sure if the PURPA conditions are still in effect.  Back in the '80s, the power company had to buy the electric from a producer at their production cost rate.  We put a 25 Meg plant in with a buyback rate of 8.9¢.  We bought a combination of dust and chips from mills and some whole tree chip for $12/ton. Trash steam was sold to a food processor.

These things work, but you need to be able to do lots of leg work.  The other thing needed is investment capital.  I spent many nights talking to bankers about the wood business and how we could guarantee enough product to make the project fly.  I also had to do a resource analysis and locate enough chips and dust.  The project was put in and is still running after all these years.

It took us about 3 years just to get all the analysis, planning, and permits before we got anything going.

Right now, we have too much electricity production in my area.  Several nuclear plants, lots of culm plants, a few trash to steam generators, and several gas fired that are all stand alone projects.  That would make the buyback rate fairly low.  I know the last time I talked to anyone at the electric company about buybacks they said they weren't interested.

[Rocky_Ranger]

Ron what's a culm plant? 

Canon City CO has done some chip burning with their coal powered plant and found a better return than expected.  Just like the wind power discussion on the "General" page it will take all kinds of notions and different technologies to wean ourselves toward energy independence.   

[Ron Wenrich]

Culm is the part shale/part coal that gets tossed out of the processing.  I believe its also called clinker coal.  It is mainly in the deep mine sections.  We have a few areas that are higher than the mountains. 

There isn't a high btu value, so it is hard to transport to any given location.  But, they work OK as a stand alone where the fuel costs are next to nothing.  They must be using the burnt stuff for fill or cinders. 

[SwampDonkey]

Right now the price for hog fuel hovers around $36/ton I believe and one small operator I know says he nets about $3-4/ton profit. One large operator sends about 200 loads a week to a 35 MWatt plant in Fort Fairfield Maine. These operations involve chipping large woody debris as well as the limbs of low grade wood.

The University, Forestry Centre and Hospital in Fredericton have been heated by hog fuel for years and I think the annual cost is about $3 Million compared to $24 million from stove oil. Those figures are 3 years old I think. All the residue comes from Irving's saw mill in Chipman and some from the Ranger School sawmill. Many mills here that still operate have cogen or are considering it, the electricty bill for a pulp mill on the grid is astronomical. I think some farmers are even using ashes from some operations down south. We don't use ashes on farm fields up this way because of potato production. Ashes will scab up the tubers. Nothing wrong with them, but you know how consumers are, the produce has to look perfect to sell.

[Gary_C]

The demand for biomass is growing rapidly and the supply is diminishing.

A local feed store that sells bagged dry wood shavings is now quoting deliveries eight months from now because of shortages of supply. Seems most of the dry wood comes from dropoffs from window manufacturers and the housing market downturn has cut that supply back.

Also the compost people are having a hard time finding wood chips for their compost piles.

And there are boilers that were fired with chips from the tops of trees that are having to shut down because not enough trees are being cut right now.

Are we going to see trees cut just for the biomass in the near future as there is growing demand that is not being met right now?

[Ron Wenrich]

Only if they're willing to pay the price.  A lot of those biomass burners were put in when the price of hauling and production was real cheap.  With the increase of energy, there is an increase in the cost of production. 

Penn State did a study a good number of years ago about growing biomass with hybrid poplar.  They showed it could be done, and you would be using an 8 year rotation, even in the colder regions of the country.  None of those plantations were ever developed due to lower costs from waste products.

In Europe, they use the understory to grow wood like beech and ironwood.  They only grow it to firewood size and are on a 20 year rotation.  They allow the overstory to grow with a much longer rotation than what we use.  If they can do it, I don't see any reason we couldn't do it. 

[SwampDonkey]

Western Europe has more intensive management of their forests and haul distance is short. Most provinces in Canada and some states are larger than most of those countries. A lot of unmanaged woodlots here, where over their some counties have a high participation rate. Most woodlots owners here make decisions on current needs with no long term goals. Just about every plan I've seen written, was used as a free cruise to bargain with loggers on price and volume. Incentives to do the right thing were used by owners to hire the next logger at lower stumpage to clearcut the rest of the wood. How do I know? Just work around a forest products marketing board, grab a box of plans (only board employees have access without owner permission)  and go for a ride. 

If you had 4 regional biomass plants here, you'd still get people hauling wood from this one to the one on the far end because the price per tonne was a couple bucks more.

One sawmill here has been feeding hog fuel to the heating plant for the University and Hospital needs for 25 years at least. Good chips go to their pulp mill. Needs to be more of those type projects. They said they save $millions on fuel from burning wood. There is other interests at play here though, when you have the largest oil refinery in the country losing sales to a big customer, government. Guess whose hog fuel is going to that boiler? The refinery owner's. That may have changed recently, since the saw mill has been shut down for a few months. They said they need more private wood to keep it going. But, most of us don't agree. They want more crown allocation so they don't have to harvest their own or buy from private if they can help it. They would get private if the price was fair. The largest NB forest company, paying the lowest price for wood tells me they don't need it. Doesn't supply and demand work for everyone?

[WDH]

In the market today, there is a balance between lumber production, chip production, and bark/sawdust production.  All the current by-products from sawing lumber are already spoken for in the market.  So bark/sawdust that is being produced today is not sitting around piling up in piles.  It is being sold already as boiler fuel and other products.

Therefore, woody biomass to meet new demand for energy production will have to come from new sources of supply, or take over the existing supply and drive the current users out of business.  New processes will be required, and sources of woody biomass will have to be explored. 

[SwampDonkey]

Very good point WDH. And you can't run a business based on these responses:

"I might cut some wood in September"

"I don't know when I'll start cutting"

"Maybe I'll cut some wood later"

.....from potential suppliers.

[WDH]

The Bio-fuel plants could use several hundreds of loads of material a day, so it is a logistical challenge.  Chipping tops from current logging jobs will be important, but that will not be nearly enough to fuel these facilities.  Other creative sources, like cull hardwoods, will be required.  Too bad they cannot use greenbriar and grapvines .

[SwampDonkey]

Add dogwood, choke cherry, mountain ash, willow, alders, cow shades and pin cherry to the list. 

I'm serious about those pin cherry especially, wouldn't get a faster growing tree and all within roadside reach. We get tree buts of 8-10 inches in 12 years here on road side berms and about 45 feet tall.

[Ron Wenrich]

But, you could add woody debris to the list.  That would include stuff that currently goes to landfills.  Housing debris, industrial debris, tree trimmings, etc.  For example, when they do roadside trimmings in my area, they just blow it on the ground. 

Shrub wood could be used as long as the economics support it.  Heck, we even import wood pulp to make paper.  If the price is right, you could import chips from tropical plantations. 

The biggest problem is how power companies price energy coming from biomass plants.  They price it below coal.  The economics go out the window unless you have a secondary steam user. 

[Cedarman]

In Oklahoma where we grind cedar air dried to about 12 per cent before it hits the grinder we get about 10 tons of fiber per acre.  Some acres produce 20 tons and in dense stands 50 tons per acre. Remember, we are hauling fiber at 12 per cent not biomass saturated with water. There are literally millions of acres of this stuff available in the plains states.  The only competition is with mulch and that market can be saturated quickly.  A 100 loads per day means 200 acres of clearing per day of just cedar.  If they took the junk hardwood then that would be 100 acres per day.  Forest service is paying 500 bucks per acre to do thinning in AZ with the companies taking the small wood (14" and smaller to sawmills, chipping and biomass)

There is a huge amount of material that is available away from the normal production areas.

[Ron Wenrich]

I think that too often when you start talking biomass, everyone immediately starts to think in terms of their relative area and their particular place in the industry.  There's a lot of potential in a number of areas.  But, sometimes you gotta think outside the box, or get a bigger box.   

[WDH]

Another thing to think about is location.  You cannot afford to transport green wood residue very far.  Maybe there will be a technology to efficiently dry it at the point of production, otherwise, having an abundance of biomass in an area may not be enough.  Using woody debris currently going to landfills really makes sense.  Maybe the landfills could accumulate the material and a chipping contractor could serve a number of landfills in an efficient manner.

[SwampDonkey]

Hard to get folks in some areas to separate cardboard boxes, let alone broken wooden pallets and tree limbs. 

[Gary_C]

Using woody debris currently going to landfills really makes sense.  Maybe the landfills could accumulate the material and a chipping contractor could serve a number of landfills in an efficient manner.

This is already being done some places here. The Minnesota Power Plant just south of Duluth has been accepting construction waste or any wood fiber that can be chipped. The largest source of material has been housing contractors that now have a place for the dropoffs and waste wood from housing construction rather than paying tipping fees at the landfills.

The major drawback has been that it all has to be chipped before you can deliver it to the power plant. However there is now a chipping operation near the power plant that will chip small loads so hopefully that will work out for the homeowners or remodelers.

[WDH]

That could create some new jobs.

[Woodhog]

There is a lot of "Biomass" used around here by the local paper mill.

They want all they can get.

They only forgot to pay for it...

They pay 31 dollars per tonne and the supplier has to pay the trucker 10.00 per tonne to haul it to the plant.

That leaves $21.00 per tonne to cut, forward to the landing..

What a joke.

The funny part is I see truckloads going in there from some poor  souls who must have failed  Economics 101...

[underdog]

They do not utilize it here. I guess??
There used to be local places to sell paperwood. They would put it on trains. All gone.
The last local place that took way wood just closed.
Now we have to haul a minimum of 50Mi to sell non sawmill  type wood.