Wood pellets a growing business, wood consumer

[jpak]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2006/04/02/wood_pellets_a_growing_business_wood_consumer/

JAFFREY, N.H. --Charlie Niebling sees the closing of the Fraser Papers Inc. pulp mill in Berlin as part of a painful, but necessary shift from paper manufacturing to renewable energy development in the Northeast.

"Anything that grows ultimately can be turned into an energy-dense fuel that can be combusted cleanly," Niebling said. "I think there's a very bright future for the forests of northern New England as an energy source."

Niebling, long a spokesman for responsible forest management as former executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, and former policy director at the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, is now advocating for policies favorable to alternative energy as public affairs coordinator for New England Wood Pellet LLC, of Jaffrey.

The company, which makes fuel pellets from compressed sawdust, can use waste sawdust from lumber mills. But to feed growing demand, it is buying more hardwood logs and chips, which it grinds and dries.

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[jpak]

1. New England wood markets will shift toward renewable energy

and away from pulp and paper in the coming years.

Firewood, wood pellets, biomass power plants and biofuels....wave of the future.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/060403mill.shtml

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/business/stories/060328biogrant.shtml

[phantom power]

2. This won't end well for the remaining forests.

[OhioNerd]

3. Wood is a renewable resource.

We have MORE trees now than when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure they are using farmed trees, not old growth forests.

[phantom power]

4. It's renewable at a certain rate, for sure.

How many people get to use pellet stoves, before we start to burn it faster than we grow it? While still supplying paper and lumber?

I'm not really opposed to burning wood, but the number of people who can use it at a sustainable rate, as a fraction of 300 million people, must be rather small.

Already, we import a lot of wood and paper from other countries, who are now also staring massive deforestation in the face. I question the claim that we have more trees now than when you were born, but if we do it's only because we outsourced our deforestation to Asia and South America. That gravy train is coming to an end.

[OhioNerd]

10. Well the point is...

The point is that different energy sources are best suited to different situations.

Replacing every furnace in the country with a pellet stove is obviously silly. It also puts more carbon dioxide in the air. However, in many rural areas it is a good alternative, as are corn burners.

[Dead_Parrot]

11. Zzzt. Wrong answer...

:)
Wood pellets have the advantage that they take CO2 out of the air (while they are still trees) that is then released again when they are burned. So long as the wood supply is sustained (ie, managed forests), they are carbon-neutral.

Coal is introducing new CO2 into the atmosphere - which is why we're in the shit in the first place.

[OhioNerd]

12. zzzzt. RIGHT answer.

Growing trees takes CO2 out.

Burning trees puts CO2 in.

PERIOD.


If you want to look up the figures and tell me how much CO2 one ton of wood removed while growing and then how much that same ton put back in when burned, that's fine. But it doesn't change the bottom line: Combustion creates carbon dioxide.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. :-) We're actually agreeing...

Yes, burning wood releases the CO2 it took up while growing. But if your burning trees from a sustained forest, the overall effect on atmospheric CO2 is 0 (more or less): what you release is offset by absorption by the new trees. If you're not planting replacement trees, of course, the whole thing gets fubar.

The carbon in coal, on the other hand, has been out of circulation for millions of years, so if you're burning that, it's "new". Compared to our evolution, anyway.

[OhioNerd]

16. Well yeah, except for one thing.

You haven't demonstrated that growing a ton of wood removes as much carbon dioxide as burning it releases. My gut feeling is that you end up with a net surplus of carbon.
Don't get me wrong. I like wood stoves and I don't think the carbon they produce is all that much in the grand scheme of things. I just don't want to lie to myself.

[skids]

18. Where does the extra carbon come from?

Magical fairy land?

(There would of course be a carbon load associated with the transport and preparation process, but that's a different sector of the energy economy that would have to have a different solution.)

[OhioNerd]

25. It wasn't your intention, but you made my point for me.

Growing the tree removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Burning the tree put's carbon dioxide into the atmoshpere.

Those two things are absolute facts, beyond dispute.


Whether or not that leads to a net loss or gain of carbon dioxide is beyond the scope of the those two statements.

Under certain circumstances it might be a net loss. Under other circumstances it might be a net gain.


All statements of absolute fact, beyond dispute. No magical fairyland involved.

[jpak]

19. It's not possible to produce more CO2 from the combustion of wood

than what was fixed by photosynthesis to produce it.

CO2 + H2O -> CH2O + O2 (the CH2O is "wood")

just the opposite happens when you combust wood...

CH2O + O2 -> CO2 + H2O

If anything, LESS CO2 is released as the combustion process is not 100% efficient (i.e., not all the organic matter in the fuel is oxidized - some remains as unburned material).

When harvested on a sustainable basis, biomass energy is CO2 neutral...

[Dead_Parrot]

21. Well, it depends how you do it :)

In out simplified version, yes it does. All the carbon in the tree is extracted from the air, via photosynthesis (CO2 + H20 + light => CH2O + O2 is the easy version). When you burn it, that carbon is released back.

In fact if you get any charcoal lying around in your fireplace afterwards, you've managed a net reduction in atmospheric CO2: If you're really good, you can bury that carbon in the bottom of a coal mine and get it out of circulation. :D Me, I use it to light the next fire, but there you go.

What isn't in our simple picture are the related costs in turning the tree into a nice fire - a petrol chainsaw, diesel logging truck, and coal-powered sawmill all add CO2 before you've even found the matches. If you're just going out with an axe, you can cut this down a lot (so long as you don't breathe).

The best way, would be to go into a forest and just set fire to the trees. If anyone complains, tell them you're doing it for the good of the planet. :silly:

[OhioNerd]

24. Are you kidding?

The EarthFirsters would KILL me!

[skids]

20. Maybe, maybe not.

Factors to consider:

Pro wood:

1) Pellet stoves are much more efficient than stoves of old
2) A portion of the fuel is wastewood anyway and would just be landfilled
3) Forest maintenance preventing brush fires
4) Disruptive opportunity potential for HVAC system efficiency improvements --
that is, if you're switching furnaces you might also look to install solar hot water,
electricity micro-cogen, or geoexchange at the same time.
5) new system initial capital cost/carbon load

Anti-wood:

1) There are many more people now than there were.
2) It's hard to find good (honest) corporations these days to implement.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Out of interest...

How much energy does it take to make a pellet? It strikes me entropy should be playing a hand in this somewhere, and you'd do better to burn wood...

Of course, while pellets are made from milling waste this isn't a problem: but if pellet stoves really take off, wouldn't we end up felling trees just to make them into sawdust to make pellets?

While we're at it, what happened to the waste before we started pelletting it?

Sorry, I'm having a 'Curious George' morning. :)

[jpak]

6. Fuel pellets can be made from a variety of plant materials

hay, low grade wood, corn, grain straw, etc.

And the combustion efficiencies of fuel pellets are much higher than stick firewood.

In Maine anyway, biomass power plants solved a big problem - what to do with sawdust, bark and slab waste from lumber mills. In the good old days, this stuff went into the local river or landfill. Those practices are now illegal.

A few years back, several biomass power plants in Maine closed during the transition to a deregulated electricity market - to the great concern of the wood products industry. Others soon opened to take up the slack and that problem was solved.

~80% of wood used at Maine biomass power plants is waste from the forest products industry - the rest is chips from low grade timber and limbs (and some demolition debris).

New England's pulp and paper industry, however, is in for a long decline - the smaller mills are going under and the larger ones with gas-fired co-generation plants are going to be hit hard by the price and availability of natural gas (imported mostly from Canada).

The mills that will survive will be the ones that produce biofuels and chemicals along with pulp and paper.

The amount of wood harvested for pulp and paper in New England is currently several fold higher than wood harvested for firewood.

As fuel oil prices rise, the decrease in demand for pulp wood will be offset by local demand for fire wood, fuel pellets and wood-derived liquid heating fuels (in Maine ~90% of homes burn oil for all or part of their heating needs, so there will be a big demand in the near future).

Furthermore, the price of wood fuels will rise right along with the price of fuel oil - there will be ample economic incentive for fuel wood conservation/use efficiency (a large fraction of homes in Maine are >60 years old and there is a lot of room for improvement in that department).

I don't see deforestation as the end result of this at all - Maine ain't gonna be the next Easter Island...

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Thanks...

Good info. :) (although I still prefer a pile of logs and an axe. More satisfying...)

[jpak]

8. Wood warms you several times

When you cut it

When you split it

When you pile it

and when you tote it (and the ashes too).

My parents bought a Danish wood-fired furnace back in the '70's - and they supplied all of the wood from their land.

I did a lot of chainsaw and splitting maul work when I was young.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. I miss out the first one...

It turns up on a flatbed: Saves doing a Washington on my fruit trees. :D

[OhioNerd]

13. You're correct about entropy, but that's not the advantage of pellets.

The advantage of pellets is the ability to load a hopper and have it fed into the stove automatically.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Yeah, but I'm a luddite...

I like poking fire with a stick. Think I'm stuck in the neolithic, to be honest. :D

Point taken. :)

[OhioNerd]

17. You're not a luddite. You're a firebug. :p n/t

.

[Porcupine]

22. You coppice trees in the north and grow bamboo in the south....

A coppice with standards preserves biodiversity and allows repeated cuts of trees for fuel. Remember that fully half the tree is in the root system so an incomplete cut preserves that and promotes regrowth.


http://www.agroforestry.net/overstory/overstory47.html

Bamboo in Alabama has been proven to produce 28 tons per/acre/year on average. At $200+ per ton of wood pellots that's a pretty good crop.

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/hort/landscape/bamboo.html

[Dead_Parrot]

23. Ouch...

I read that in "Bamboo in Alaska..."

Either a premonition, or my glasses are dirty, or I need to lay of the booze.

I'd question how good an idea that is BTW, since it's presumably grown as a monocrop: In China, bamboo forests have a complex ecosystem around them (pandas included): You're not going to find this in AL, so it may get a bit screwy after a few years.

[hunter]

26. I'd like to float an idea again I posted previously....

The equipment to make pellets is compact enough to fit on a combine. Suppose you built a "pellet combine" that harvested some sort of woody fast growing crop just as a combine that harvests corn or wheat does.

The combine itself could be fueled by DME made elsewhere from these fuel pellets.

You could even have a combination combine that harvested grain into one bin and pelletized stalks and chaff into another bin.

Maybe I'm missing out on a big patent opportunity here... John Deere, are you listening?