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Chip Burning Power Plant ??

Started by g_man, November 21, 2013, 07:09:40 PM

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g_man

The powers that be are kicking around the idea of a 60 MegaWatt chip burning power plant in our area. How many tons of chips per day would that use and how would you convert that to trailer loads? I am mostly just curious. But it would be nice if it would raise the stumpage price a little on whole tree chips but that is probably to much to ask. For mixed wood would you use something like 2.25 ton per cord to convert tons to cords?  Thanks.

sprucebunny

MS193, MS192 and an 026  Weeding and Thinning. Gilbert Champion sawmill

Ron Wenrich

Rule-of-thumb is 10,000 tons per Megawatt, annually.  A 60 Meg plant would take 60,000 tons, with about 20-22 tons per load.  That's about 2700 load per year, or about 7-8 loads per day. 

I consulted on one of these plants back in the '80s.  We had a source to use our trash steam for industrial use.  That was important to make the project viable.  We also needed a good source of water.  Our competition at the time were coal fired plants.  Those are mighty hard to overcome.  We had PURPA laws that required electric companies to buy power at their production costs.  Without the steam customer, those numbers are hard to overcome.  We combined chips and sawdust to bring tonnage costs down.  We were buying mainly from sawmills and a few whole tree chippers.  The plant has converted to natural gas just within the past few years.

I think your cordage conversion is probably fairly accurate for softwood.  All hardwood would be closer to 3 tons.  I know our plant didn't bring up any prices on the stump, or even in the marketplace.  The constraints are the cost of natural gas and oil.  If natural gas prices go up, then there is less pressure to convert over from biomass.  If oil prices go up, that puts pressure on production costs by the loggers, if they are using stumpage.  We didn't have much competition for chips.  Most of the paper plants in the area had shut down.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Rocky_Ranger

Our local power plant is a 26 meg output, burning 40 loads per day - but that's green ~45% or so moisture and conifer.  They mostly burn woods waste (slash, breaks, undersize, etc.) - not whole tree chips.  They like to mix juniper into the recipe to boost Btu's at something less than half of the mix.  Ron, I think your numbers are bone dry tons.  For our plant, divide by 2 for BDT's...  Our plant is 10 years old too so it may not be as efficient.
RETIRED!

KBforester

I use 2.3 tons per cord conversion on mixed species biomass. Use caution when investing in chipping equipment. Even if it's comparable in price to pulp, it's likely to be more volatile. There one day, and gone the next. Unless you have a "clean" chipper (with debarked) you have a huge, expensive, high maintenance piece of machinery that is only good for processing your lowest valued, least stable market. That being said, I like having a chipper on my jobs. But if I were a logger, that would be the last thing I would ever buy. Unless things change dramatically.

Around here, we've been burning for a long time. The minute Natural gas becomes available however, the paper mills switch over instantly, shifting the market significantly. Low natural gas prices=death to biomass buying. Just FYI. I don't know if I biomass plant would consider such a conversion, especially if they are working on green credits or something.
Trees are good.

g_man

Thanks for all the good info. There is certainly seems to be a lot to that market and it's risks.
It was reported in our local news by the anti chip burning people that it would require 7 to 8 truck loads an hour thru town. That really got me curious. They must have gotten days and hours mixed up or they just figured it over one hour per day to make it look bad ( or good if you were a supplier ).
Thanks again.

Ron Wenrich

Rocky - we used green hardwoods, mill residue.  There was an area where things were dumped, and I'm not sure if they didn't use some of the trash steam to process the chips before they were burnt.  That would help bring up the Btus.  According to sprucebunny's article, the 10,000 tons/Meg works in New England.  I believe the disparity is in the type of material burnt. 

gman - 7-8 loads per hr might be accurate for the heaviest day of the year.  It depends on how long their receiving times are, and weather conditions.  You always want to run up a stockpile in the fall, especially with New England winters away from the coast.  There will be days when there are no trucks. 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

KBforester

Quote from: g_man on November 22, 2013, 07:42:26 AM
Thanks for all the good info. There is certainly seems to be a lot to that market and it's risks.
It was reported in our local news by the anti chip burning people that it would require 7 to 8 truck loads an hour thru town. That really got me curious. They must have gotten days and hours mixed up or they just figured it over one hour per day to make it look bad ( or good if you were a supplier ).
Thanks again.

I was in the scale house of a power plant last winter, and in the 15-20 min. I was in there, three trucks had their loads dumped. They were complaining they weren't getting enough loads. Granted, I don't think those loads were getting fed strait into the burner, but still, they can take a lot.
Trees are good.

Rocky_Ranger

Paying a little something less than $19.00/green ton delivered....... not much margin for profit.
RETIRED!

celliott

Quote from: Rocky_Ranger on November 22, 2013, 06:50:37 PM
Paying a little something less than $19.00/green ton delivered....... not much margin for profit.

Visited a job in the Adirondacks, they had a big Peterson chipper, told us it could burn 200 gallons of diesel per day  :o
Then the maintenance on those machines has to be crazy as well. Don't understand how money is made that way...
Using the most expensive machine to operate, to process your lowest grade and cheapest product. Hmm...
Chris Elliott

Clark 666C cable skidder
Husqvarna and Jonsered pro saws
265rx clearing saw
Professional maple tubing installer and maple sugaring worker, part time logger

SwampDonkey

From what I have seen here, the plant in Fort Fairfield, Maine pretty much has one supplier and a few others might trickle in with a load a day. So your not looking at 20 loggers supplying these outfits. The last price I heard was $29/ton green. Our pulp prices up here are $12-20 more a ton, and no chipping required. A whole lot less cost. Most of the volumes going to this plant is waste off crown lands here in NB. It's a Canadian owned plant. Must be 20 years running now. Natural gas up here hasn't been much of a concern, they have the distribution costs so high that it discourages enough customers to justify a pipeline. The McCain Food processing plant has to truck their natural gas from Saint John, a 3 hour ride one way. There is no such thing as cheap energy up here, our costs are higher at the source to get it to far off markets where it is actually cheaper. Everything ash backwards as usual. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

John Mc

g-man -

Not too far from you, Burlington Electric operates the McNeil power plant on wood chips.  It's a 50 MW plant.  Here's a blurb from their web site about what it takes to fuel it:

"The amount of wood used depends on the operating conditions of the plant. To run McNeil at full load, approximately 76 tons of whole-tree chips are consumed per hour. That amounts to about 30 cords per hour (there are about 2.5 tons of chips per cord of green wood)."
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

g_man

Thanks J_Mc - Thats a pretty good info in a nut shell for a Vt plant.

John Mc

Glad it was of help.  Running google search on McNeil Burlington electric will turn up more info.

I do view with some skepticism the claims made by some of these plants that they are run on "waste wood".  They'd like to give the impression that it's all leftovers from sawmills or construction waste or something, but that's generally not the case for a plant of any size.  Concerns have been raised in some areas about whole tree chipping removing too many nutrients from the surrounding forests.  I don't pretend to be up enough on the issue to say whether the concerns are well founded or not.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

KBforester

Quote from: celliott on November 22, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Visited a job in the Adirondacks, they had a big Peterson chipper, told us it could burn 200 gallons of diesel per day  :o
Then the maintenance on those machines has to be crazy as well. Don't understand how money is made that way...
Using the most expensive machine to operate, to process your lowest grade and cheapest product. Hmm...

Sounds like a clean chipping deal. In otherwords, flail debark-er built in, providing high quality chips for paper making, not burning. Was the contractor Seaway Timber by any chance? I worked with them in the ADKs a few years back.

Quote from: John Mc on November 25, 2013, 08:53:16 AM

I do view with some skepticism the claims made by some of these plants that they are run on "waste wood".  They'd like to give the impression that it's all leftovers from sawmills or construction waste or something, but that's generally not the case for a plant of any size.  Concerns have been raised in some areas about whole tree chipping removing too many nutrients from the surrounding forests.  I don't pretend to be up enough on the issue to say whether the concerns are well founded or not.

At $28 a ton at the mill, I'm not sure how you could afford to. The concern has been raised here and now I fill out ridiculous paper work to satisfy some whiners in Massachusetts. The requirement didn't change anything, it just proved the problem didn't exist. We chip tops (think material less than 2.5" in diameter), rarely branches. We will chip whole trees that don't make pulp spec if they were in the skid trail... if you bunch them, mind as well through them in the twitch.
Trees are good.

celliott

Quote from: KBforester on November 25, 2013, 02:35:37 PM
Quote from: celliott on November 22, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Visited a job in the Adirondacks, they had a big Peterson chipper, told us it could burn 200 gallons of diesel per day  :o
Then the maintenance on those machines has to be crazy as well. Don't understand how money is made that way...
Using the most expensive machine to operate, to process your lowest grade and cheapest product. Hmm...

Sounds like a clean chipping deal. In otherwords, flail debark-er built in, providing high quality chips for paper making, not burning. Was the contractor Seaway Timber by any chance? I worked with them in the ADKs a few years back.


Not Seaway, an outfit near Tupper lake, Paul Mitchell I believe.
I was under the impression those chips were being sent to Swanton VT, from which they are shipped by rail to the Burlington Electric plant- But I may be mistaken. That's a long haul from Tupper lake to Swanton, but I know there is contractors in the ADK's that make that haul.
EDIT: I remember at this job they were cutting white pine, taking the logs off the bottom, and chipping the rest of the tree- This would be dirty chips, since they are chipping all the limbs and needles, etc. correct?
Chris Elliott

Clark 666C cable skidder
Husqvarna and Jonsered pro saws
265rx clearing saw
Professional maple tubing installer and maple sugaring worker, part time logger

SwampDonkey

You'd be real surprised at how much wood is not marketable and considered junk. That was always a complaint for years by loggers, 'where do you take the junk'? You take a 70 foot fir that got over mature with a shell of sapwood and culvert inside. A white birch half dead because the over mature fir died off and the sun scald the birch. Aspen with conk all over it, still alive, but a lot of rot around the old dead limbs and up and down from that rotten limb.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

KBforester

Yup, if the branches and bark are being chipped and not coming off a conveyor on the side, then that would be dirty. Maybe its worth it for them if the pine "tops" are big. I'm surprised they are using such a big chipper for biomass though. We would occasionally chip [scotch] pine for OSB, but that would be a clean chip too.
Trees are good.

SwampDonkey

Had one logger here going around and chipping red pine plantations for the plant. The plantations would be no older than 25 years. The guy discovered that green red pine was as heavy as red maple, so got good tonnage.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

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