Author Topic: New Wood Pellet Plant (Read 7923 times)

Ken · « **on:** December 20, 2009, 09:32:58 pm »

Nashwaak Valley Wood Energy Inc, a community based cooperative owned primarily by woodlot owners and contractors has recently begun producing wood pellets for the residential market. The company was formed over 3 years ago when local pulp mills began to close. The plan was to provide a local market for low grade softwood pulpwood from local woodlot owners. I have tried to attach some photos but will try again if they do not show up.

Cheers
Ken

customdave · « **Reply #1 on:** December 20, 2009, 10:54:58 pm »

Nice pics , neat lookin setup, I bet it can pound out the pellets per hour..

Dave

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #2 on:** December 21, 2009, 06:44:51 am »

I'm sure Ken will provide some more info to the thread as time goes on. It's my understanding that many of the components in the pellet plant are fabricated locally. Ken can correct me there.

I know for sure that last year there was nowhere near enough pellets in the region. With the low grade wood we have on woodlots I'm sure more operations will spring up. You don't have to go far for the wood to feed these operations either. If I wasn't already on a reliable wood heating system and was in the market for a furnace style pellet stove, with good sized hopper, I'd be on it in a minute. I wouldn't even need an oil furnace with a good sized hopper on the pellet furnace. No reason why the government can't allocate some volume of public forest as a back up. The only thing in the way is the politics with the likes of Jim Irving.

thecfarm · « **Reply #3 on:** December 21, 2009, 07:33:49 am »

Looks like a new building.Had one open about about 45 minutes from me in Strong,ME,in an old wood turning mill.It's good for jobs.

Rocky_Ranger · « **Reply #4 on:** December 21, 2009, 02:34:55 pm »

This is way cool, got any more pics and/or information?

Ken · « **Reply #5 on:** December 21, 2009, 08:06:42 pm »

The plant is designed to produce 2 tonnes/hour. We are producing close to half of that at this time and are running 24/7. We have over 125 individual shareholders who have purchased anywhere from 1 to 300 shares. We used that share capital to leverage additional funds from traditional lenders. A board of 8 directors have donated thousands of hours to help get this project off the ground. As mentioned in my previous post the vast majority of the shareholders are woodlot owners or forest contractors who believed that this venture was a good idea. We have had tremendous support for this community owned cooperative. Shares are still available for sale for anybody who may be interested.

The building is 150' x 50' and was purposely built for this application. Most of the equipment was designed and manufactured locally. The exception to that is the furnace,rotary drum dryer and associated equipment that was sourced from a company in Kansas. Our pelletizer is a new double die design that was specifically designed to produce wood pellets.

Now all we need is some really cold weather. As a logging contractor cold weather was never really my friend except for freezing down roads and swamps but with a stock pile of wood pellets I am hoping for some frigid weather. I will try to post some more pictures over the coming days. We are all very pleased to finally be producing some product after working at this for over 3 years.

Rocky_Ranger · « **Reply #6 on:** December 21, 2009, 09:00:19 pm »

What sort of processor are you using to take the logs to dust? I can't read the bags, but are you doing softwoods only or a mix? Paying on weight coming in, how many folks does it take to run the place? It looks like a fantastic setup, I wish you all the best! I'd like to see these things become common in our forest related industries......... I used to have a pellet stove, wish I had one now. We burned a little over two tons/year in Leadville Colorado, we had three weather forecasts; just quit snowing, snowing, or just about to snow.

Magicman · « **Reply #7 on:** December 21, 2009, 10:21:20 pm »

Our Pellet Plant uses paper mill quality wood chips.....96% pure. The chips go through a hammer mill and then through an extruder to form the pellets. Moisture content is critical in forming the pellets.

Rocky_Ranger · « **Reply #8 on:** December 22, 2009, 11:48:54 am »

How can you justify your costs for the chips or do you guys not have much competiton for paper-quality chips? Is yours all softwoods too or do you use hardwoods? Chips from the sawmills or chipping operation in the woods?

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #9 on:** December 22, 2009, 12:01:06 pm »

The competition right now is much reduced since 5 years ago I would say. One of the reasons for the venture. Also, pulp price isn't all that great, might be starting to pickup recently. There isn't much wood being cut for mills in my area right now. One farmer cut 1 load of pulp the last few weeks around here. Just saw the truck go by yesterday. And it was a straight truck. Might have hired him to haul it as firewood is my guess.

Ken · « **Reply #10 on:** December 22, 2009, 12:48:16 pm »

Rocky Ranger,

To date we have only been buying softwood species. Our plans are to use some soft hardwoods in time to mix with our softwood. We do buy our wood by weight and although we have received a fair bit of spruce and fir a lot of our wood inventory is hemlock and white/red pine. We had anticipated trouble sourcing wood at the rates we are paying however to date that has not been an issue. We actually had to shut off deliveries throughout this month as we had too much inventory in the yard.

Although we are still learning, early results show that the species does not make a great deal of difference in pellet quality as long as we have a consistent moisture content coming out of the dryer. We use a Schutte Buffalo hammermill with a 5/16" screen to reduce the dry chips to the desired particle size. During the day when we are debarking and chipping our plant has 4 and sometimes 5 employees and at night the plant is operated by 2 people.

Cheers
Ken

Magicman · « **Reply #11 on:** December 22, 2009, 12:49:30 pm »

Quote from: Rocky_Ranger on December 22, 2009, 11:48:54 am

How can you justify your costs for the chips or do you guys not have much competiton for paper-quality chips?

Pellet mills simply give the chip mills another outlet to sell chips to. When the papermills cut production, as they have now, or go on a maintenance outage, the chip mill/suppliers would hurt worse without this buyer.

Rocky_Ranger · « **Reply #12 on:** December 22, 2009, 01:02:08 pm »

Ken

We're on a major N-S highway here but not an interstate, my guess is 50 - 60 loads of logs/day heading south to the paper mill about two hours on down the road. Some could be turning towards the OSB plant too, but I think it is down right now. Hardwood and softwood loads, some of the hardwood loads look like brush piles on wheels heading down the road. I guess 2 tons/ hour for a chip operation is just two loads per day, but seems paper quality chips would be too expensive. We've got a small (1 ton/hour) pellet mill just starting up, he takes sawdust and says he has all he can use right now. I hope this stuff really takes off, I was just wondering how the logs are being taken to the 5/16" size all at once? Must be a heck of a hammer mill.........

Ken · « **Reply #13 on:** December 22, 2009, 01:24:27 pm »

RR,

We actually reduce the logs with a 4 knife chipper after putting them through the debarker. We target a chip size of 3/8". The chips reach the hammermill only after being dried to around 13-14% MC in the dryer. In order for us to reach 2 mt/hr of finished product for a 24 hour period we will need somewhere around 120 mt of raw material. Around 3 trailerloads.

jason.weir · « **Reply #14 on:** December 22, 2009, 03:44:24 pm »

Quote from: Ken on December 22, 2009, 01:24:27 pm

In order for us to reach 2 mt/hr of finished product for a 24 hour period we will need somewhere around 120 mt of raw material.

So to produce 48mt it takes 120mt? That's 40% product - I assume the other 60% goes out as moisture and fuel for the plant. How much of the plant is wood fired?

Thanks,
Jason

Ken · « **Reply #15 on:** December 22, 2009, 06:22:36 pm »

Jason,

Although testing is still underway we suspect that we are using approximately 12-15% of our dried sawdust to fire the burner which creates the heat for the dryer. The remaining volume goes out the stack as steam. As our production and efficiencies increase we suspect the proportion of dried material required to create the nominal dryer temperatures will decrease. The remaining energy required in the plant, with the exception of blood, sweat and tears comes from the power company. It's too bad that those in charge of power plants and their operation are not looking more closely at renewable energy sources that we can sustainably grow right here at home.

Cheers
Ken

Quebecnewf · « **Reply #16 on:** December 22, 2009, 06:34:19 pm »

Ken

Very interestin posts. I have a few questions.

In this region over the next couple of years a large hydro electric project will start up. This will as usual mean flooding a certain area and of course this area is covered in spruce and fir. Would a pellet plant be one option that you could put in place along with pulp and saw logs to handle these (to be flooded ) trees. This product would of course be all "green" or wet.

Would it be feasible (money wise) to set up this type of operation based on so called (free) wood. They have to remove, or should I say can be forced to remove all the trees that are to be flooded and this would be one more thing that could force the issue.

They will try to say if past experence is any indication that the trees are not worth cutting so therefore we can let them be flooded.

Could you set this type of operation be set up for say a period of 10 years before the flooding starts and then be shutdown after all the trees are cut and still turn a profit or even break even.??

Quebecnewf

Ken · « **Reply #17 on:** December 22, 2009, 07:02:49 pm »

Quebecnewf,

I guess your question cannot be answered without knowing how much potential product may be flooded and if the significant capital costs for plant construction could be repayed over a certain period. It is kind of ironic that you ask this question as there was another company who recently shipped us a trailerload of wood from Goose Bay Labrador to test in our plant. It took a local trucker with 2 drivers over 4 days to land the wood in our yard. They are facing the same issue. A very large hydroelectric dam is planned for their area and they want to use the soon to be flooded wood for renewable energy. The testing done on the wood from Labrador produced very good pellets but the raw material was practically log quality.

Rocky_Ranger · « **Reply #18 on:** December 22, 2009, 08:06:17 pm »

Ken, do you presort or sort at the plant or do you just mainly take material suitable for chips instead of lumber quality? Also, do you take any dust from the local mills? How is you demand, seems if ya'll are running 24/7, must be a pretty good show right now. Having the investors and board is a smart move, did you get any Gvmt $ or is it all personal/investment capital? This is a cool story, I really enjoy this type of risk and biomass efficiencies ('course, I don't have any $ on the line), but I did when I owned the shavings mill - I know what it takes to make a go of it............<WORK>

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #19 on:** December 22, 2009, 08:20:11 pm »

I would think if one compares to last year's demand, no one will have time to sleep to fill the need. There are a number of businesses selling pellet stoves. I know one guy that was stocking up on pellets before fall came.

I don't think government invested much if anything, except some volume off crown land, if that went through. I remember the fabricators up in Nackawick had a few words for the government. At the time they (gov) were handing out money to pulp mills like it was Christmas. There's been lots of gossip and rumours about.

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Author Topic: New Wood Pellet Plant (Read 7923 times)