2016 may biomass magazine

www.biomassmagazine.com

A GRIP ON WASTECity of Quebec MSW-to-Power Plant Saves BigPAGE 12

AND:Dong Energy's NewTrash-to-Biogas TechnologyPAGE 38

PLUS: EPA Deems C&D Wood, Railroad Tiesas Nonwaste FuelsPAGE 28

May 2016

A S T E C

FINAL PELLET MILL MAG BKCOV.indd 1 4/25/14 11:40 AM

MAY 2016 | BIOMASS MAGAZINE 3

INSIDE¦

MAY 2016 | VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 5

Subscriptions Biomass Magazine is free of charge to everyone with the exception of a shipping and handling charge of $49.95 for anyone outside the United States. To subscribe, visit www.BiomassMagazine.com or you can send your mailing ad-dress and payment (checks made out to BBI International) to Biomass Magazine Subscriptions, 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203. You can also fax a subscription form to 701-746-5367. Back Issues & Reprints Select back issues are available for $3.95 each, plus shipping. Article reprints are also available for a fee. For more information, contact us at 701-746-8385 or [email protected]. Advertising Biomass Magazine provides a specifi c topic delivered to a highly targeted audience. We are committed to editorial excellence and high-quality print production. To fi nd out more about Biomass Magazine advertising opportuni-ties, please contact us at 701-746-8385 or [email protected]. Letters to the Editor We welcome letters to the editor. Send to Biomass Magazine Letters to the Managing Editor, 308 2nd Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203 or email to [email protected]. Please include your name, address and phone number. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or space.

POWER 10 NEWS

11 COLUMNBiomass at a CrossroadsBy Bob Cleaves

12 CONTRIBUTIONOut With the OldAfter Quebec replaced its aging, ineffi cient cranes at its energy-from-waste plant, crane-related maintenance costs fell 80 percent.By Linda Graham

16 DEPARTMENTSponsor Spotlight: Hurst BoilerHurst Boiler recently completed its third poultry litter-fi red boiler installation and is ready to embark on more international and domestic waste-based power projects.By Anna Simet

06 EDITOR’S NOTEWhat's in a Name?By Tim Portz

08 BUSINESS BRIEFS

12

ON THE COVER:The City of Quebec hired Konecranes to replace two aged and ineffi cient cranes at its waste-to-energy plant, and is reaping signifi cant immediate and long-term benefi ts. The new cranes are equipped with hydraulic grabs that pick up more than twice the amount of garbage the previous cable-operated mechanical grabs could.

PHOTO: LINDA GRAHAM

PELLETS 18 NEWS

19 COLUMNUtilizing German Pellet Stove AshBy Karl Brunner

20 CONTRIBUTIONExport Industry’s Impacts on Southern Forests, MarketsGrowth in European demand for wood pellets manufactured in the U.S. South is not the sole driver of change in the region’s forest products industry.By Tracy Leslie

22 DEPARTMENTBiomass Boilerhopping in BurlingtonTour goers at the 2016 Northeast Biomass Heating Expo visited seven different biomass heating installations in the region. By Anna Simet

22

Customer: Palm oil plantation, Southeast Asia.

Challenge: Operate a critical stand-alone CHP system in a remote location.

Result: A ruggged Elliott steam turbine generator package delivers reliable, cost-effective electricity and process steam.

They turned to Elliottfor leadership and proven expertise.

The customer turned to Elliott for more than 80 years of steam turbine experience. Tens of thousands of rugged, easy to maintain Elliott YR steam turbines are installed and operating throughout the world. Who will you turn to?

C O M P R E S S O R S T U R B I N E S G L O B A L S E R V I C E www.elliott-turbo.com

The world turns to Elliott.


BIOGAS 36 NEWS

38 FEATUREA Wiser Way to Handle WasteDong Energy is constructing its fi rst biogas plant based on a technology that can treat unsorted household waste using enzymes.By Ron Kotrba

ADVANCED BIOFUELS & CHEMICALS 46 NEWS

47 COLUMNSecuring Advanced Biofuels’ Future Requires TenacityBy Michael McAdams

48 CONTRIBUTIONPreventing Production Problems in the LabAs biofuel producers up production, there is increased risk of failure, so labs will increasingly rely on new analytical technologies and new software solutions.By Trish Meek and Barbara van Cann

MAY 2016 | VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 5

THERMAL26 NEWS

28 FEATUREPlaying By the Nonwaste Fuels RulesA recent amendment to the U.S. EPA’s nonhazardous secondary materials rule holds some opportunity for the biomass industry, but largely left it wanting more.By Katie Fletcher

INSIDE¦ADVERTISER INDEX¦

Biomass Magazine: (USPS No. 5336) May 2016, Vol. 10, Issue 5. Biomass Magazine is published monthly by BBI International. Principal Offi ce: 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203. Periodicals Postage Paid at Grand Forks, North Dakota and additional mailing offi ces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Biomass Magazine/Subscriptions, 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, North Dakota 58203.

COPYRIGHT © 2016 by BBI International

TM

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts or samples before recycling

2016 International Biomass Conference & Expo 24-252016 National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo 344B Components, Ltd 40Advance Conveying Technologies 23Advanced Cyclone Systems 14Agra Industries 43American Pulverizer Co. 9ASGCO 46Astec, Inc. 2Biotec Energy 31D3 Max 27Elliott Group 4Hermann Sewerin GmbH 26Hurst Boiler & Welding Co. Inc 41IEP Technologies 32-33Iowa Economic Development Authority 51KEITH Manufacturing Company 36Methuen Construction 49Mole Master Services Corporation 42Morbark, Inc 45Orthman Conveying Systems 8Pellet Fuels Institute 44PHG Energy 52Rawlings Waste Wood Recovery Systems 18Siemens AG 35SWANA Solid Waste Association of North America 7Tiger Pellets 15Vecoplan LLC 10

38

6 BIOMASS MAGAZINE | MAY 2016

What’s in a Name?

Choosing an appropriate cover photograph for the waste-to-energy issue of Biomass Maga-zine always presents an informative challenge for our team. It is informative in the sense that for just a moment, on a very small scale, we confront a question that is an ongoing inquiry within the waste-to-energy sector: What is waste? Initially, the question seems rhetorical, but in practice, the

answers have significant impacts on the industry. In Associate Editor Katie Fletcher’s page-26 feature “Playing by the Non-

waste Fuels Rules,” she works to parse out what the recent amendment to the non-hazardous secondary materials means for energy producers utilizing construction and demolition materials, paper recycling residuals and creosote-treated railroad ties. While these materials might be described in layman’s terms as “waste,” the implications of that distinction within the regulatory context are significant. When largely homogenous streams of nonforest woody biomass are labeled as waste, the emission control burdens are prodigal. Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of the Biomass Power Association, tells Fletcher, “If we in the biomass industry were regulated as an incinerator, we would essentially be forced to implement and upgrade air pollution equipment and transform what is a simple biomass boiler to a waste-to-energy facility.”

Regardless of the regulatory complexity surrounding these materials, the sto-ries in this issue make it clear that they will continue to be produced in abundance, and continued innovation in their utilization for energy production is a must. Senior Editor Ron Kotrba’s feature, “A Wiser Way to Handle Waste,” examines Dong Energy’s newly commercialized enzymatic technology that turns the con-ventional approach to waste handling upside down. Kotrba describes how unlike typical approaches where inbound household waste is sorted before it goes into a reactor, Dong’s technology, which it calls REnescience, uses enzymes to begin breaking down the organic fraction before the inert and recyclable materials are removed. Dong believes this will ultimately increase the capture rate of recyclable materials and eliminate the need for source separation of waste, a practice that industry is struggling to get the general public to widely embrace and adopt.

Despite what we call it, or how regulatory bodies classify it, these materials aren’t going away, and the opportunities they provide this industry are well worth the considerable challenges they present.

TIM PORTZVICE PRESIDENT OF CONTENT & EXECUTIVE [email protected]

¦EDITOR’S NOTE

EDITORIAL

PRESIDENT & EDITOR IN CHIEFTom Bryan [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENT OF CONTENT & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Tim Portz [email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR Anna Simet [email protected]

SENIOR EDITOR Ron Kotrba [email protected]

NEWS EDITORErin Voegele [email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITORKatie Fletcher [email protected]

COPY EDITOR Jan Tellmann [email protected]

ARTART DIRECTOR

Jaci Satterlund [email protected]

GRAPHIC DESIGNERRaquel Boushee [email protected]

PUBLISHING & SALESCHAIRMAN

Mike Bryan [email protected]

CEOJoe Bryan [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONSMatthew Spoor [email protected]

SALES & MARKETING DIRECTORJohn Nelson [email protected]

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Howard Brockhouse [email protected]

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGERChip Shereck [email protected]

ACCOUNT MANAGERJeff Hogan [email protected]

CIRCULATION MANAGER Jessica Beaudry [email protected]

MARKETING & ADVERTISING MANAGERMarla DeFoe [email protected]

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Stacy Cook, Koda Energy

Ben Anderson, University of Iowa

Justin Price, Evergreen Engineering

Adam Sherman, Biomass Energy Resource Center


INDUSTRY EVENTS¦

International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & ExpoJUNE 20-23, 2016Wisconsin CenterMilwaukee, WisconsinThis 6th annual national event, produced by BBI In-ternational, will feature the world of advanced biofuels and biobased chemicals––technology scale-up, proj-ect finance, policy, national markets and more––with a core focus on the industrial, petroleum and agribusi-ness alliances defining the national advanced biofu-els industry, plus a networking junction for all biomass industries.866-746-8385 | www.fuelethanolworkshop.com

National Advanced Biofuels Conference & ExpoJUNE 20-23, 2016Wisconsin CenterMilwaukee, WisconsinThe 6th annual National Advanced Biofuels Confer-ence & Expo will take place June 20-23 at the Wis-consin Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Produced by BBI International, this national event will feature the world of advanced biofuels and biobased chemicals—technology scale-up, project finance, policy, national markets and more—with a core focus on the indus-trial, petroleum and agribusiness alliances defining the national advanced biofuels industry and networking junction for all biomass industries.866-746-8385 | www.advancedbiofuelsconference.com

SWANA’s WASTECON 2016AUGUST 22-25, 2016Indiana Convention CenterIndianapolis, IndianaWASTECON is the premier solid waste industry-focused conference that brings you the latest news, education, advancements and products to help you achieve success in your business, all in one setting. WASTECON offers opportunities to see what’s new in collection, processing, marketing and management of compost, recyclables and solid waste. Join thousands of industry professionals for training, technical ses-sions, exhibits and networking opportunities. Explore a variety of new topics and expand your knowledge of what’s happening in solid waste management.1-800-GO-SWANA | www.wastecon.org

International Biomass Conference & ExpoAPRIL 10-12, 2017Minneapolis Convention CenterMinneapolis, MinnesotaOrganized by BBI International and produced by Bio-mass Magazine, this event brings current and future producers of bioenergy and biobased products togeth-er with waste generators, energy crop growers, munic-ipal leaders, utility executives, technology providers, equipment manufacturers, project developers, inves-tors and policy makers. It’s a true one-stop shop––the world’s premier educational and networking junction for all biomass industries.866-746-8385 | www.biomassconference.com

New for 2016!Co-Located with


PEOPLE, PRODUCTS & PARTNERSHIPSBusiness BriefsACE Group launches dedicated environmental policy for renewable energy

ACE Group has launched ACE Re-newable Energy Environmental Protection, the first dedicated environmental policy for companies in the renewable energy industry in the U.K. and Ireland, as ACE continues to invest in its environmental risk capabili-ties. ACE Renewable Energy Environmental Protection covers the full spectrum of envi-ronmental risks faced by renewable energy companies, providing seamless coverage. It is available to energy producers in every re-newable sector, including solar, onshore and offshore wind, tidal, hydro, waste-to-energy, biofuel and landfill gas extraction.

Deinove awarded patents Deinove recently announced it has re-

ceived 10 new patent grant agreements. Pat-ent family PF7: “Bacteria and uses thereof ” received an initial agreement for issuance by the U.S. Patent Office. The patent pro-tects the production of compounds such as ethanol, proteins, enzymes, or drugs from Deinococcus bacteria. The company has also obtained new grant agreements for five families of patents already issued in other geographical areas. The Deinove patent

portfolio now includes 19 patent families protecting its technology platforms, devel-opment of selection methods for a wide variety of Deinococcus and related bacteria, their use in the production processes of var-ious biobased products of interest, and their industrial applications.

JBEI announces new leadership in fuels synthesis division

The Department of Energy’s Joint Bioenergy Institute has announced Aind-rila Mukhopadhyay will step into the role of vice president of the Fuels Synthesis Divi-sion. Mukhopadhyay, who joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2003, will continue to serve as director of JBEI’s Host Engineering group and as interim division director of LBNL’s Biological Systems and Engineering in the Biosciences Area. She leads a team responsible for the study of signaling and stress response in both envi-ronmental and engineered organisms. Her

research focus at JBEI is the development of robust microbial strains that show high tolerance and productivity during biofuels and chemicals production. Her team has conducted many discovery, strain engineer-ing and systems biology studies to explore the causes of growth inhibition and low productivity, and has developed strategies to improve these phenotypes. With her team, she has published numerous research papers on this topic, and holds patents on the use and optimization of cellular transport sys-tem to improve tolerance to final products as well as improve intake of carbon sourc-es. Taek Soon Lee has been named deputy vice president of the Fuels Synthesis Divi-sion, a position previously held by Mukho-padhyay. Lee joined Jay Keasling’s group at UC Berkeley and LBNL as a postdoctoral researcher in 2006, and since 2008 Lee has served as director of metabolic engineering in the Fuels Synthesis Division at JBEI. His research group focuses on the identification of potential drop-in biofuels and building and optimizing the metabolic pathways to produce these target fuels in microbes.

PanAridus awarded patentPanAridus LLC, an Arizona-based gua-

yule producer, recently announced the U.S. Patent Office granted the company its 10th

Orthman Conveying Systems is experienced in handling all of your bulk materials.

We specialize in heavy duty construction as a standard to reduce maintenance and extend the

life of all equipment. Orthman will design and manufacture complete systems using either standard or special parts to meet the customer’s exact needs.

877-664-2687 | Lexington, NE 573-443-2144 | Columbia, MO

www.or thman.com

MukhopadhyayLee


BUSINESS BRIEFS¦

patent, the first in the industry for guayule harvesting. PanAridus already holds nine patents for guayule plants, which yield a polymer nearly identical to tropically grown natural rubber.

Novozymes announces new corporate structure

Novozymes has announced the forma-tion of three divisions: Household Care and Technical Industries, Agriculture and Bioen-ergy, and Food and Beverages. The organiza-tional change aims to enhance the company’s ability to deliver more innovation to custom-ers with more speed and commercial impact. Each division will be led by a newly named executive vice president. They are: Agricul-ture and Bioenergy, Tina Sejersgård Fanø, formerly vice president of sales; Household Care and Technical Industries, Anders Lund, formerly vice president of sales; and Food and Beverages, Andrew Fordyce, formerly vice president of Business Operations.

The divisions will be supported by one

central Research, Innovation and Supply or-ganization led by Thomas Videbæk, chief operating officer and executive vice presi-dent. Benny D. Loft, chief financial officer and executive vice president, is head of Cor-porate Functions, and Peder Holk Nielsen will continue as CEO and president.

European Biogas Association elects leadership

The European Biogas Association has announced the reelection of Jan Štambaský of the Czech Biogas Association as presi-dent and Harm Grobrügge of the German Biogas Association and Franz Kirchmeyr of the Austrian Compost & Biogas Association as vice presidents. Stefano Bozzetto of the Italian Biogas Association, David Collins of the Renewable Energy Association-Biogas Group, Attila Kovacs of the Hungarian Biogas Association and Anderson Mathias-son of Swedish Gas Association will serve as board members. In addition, Susanna Pflüger has been appointed secretary gen-eral.

JetBlue joins RSB JetBlue Airways has joined The Roundta-ble on Sustainable Biomaterials. As the first U.S. airline member, JetBlue joins 100 other like-minded organizations in creating a mar-

ket and standard for sustainable biomass and biobased products. The RSB is an indepen-dent and global multistakeholder coalition that works to promote the sustainability of biomaterials. JetBlue will participate in dis-cussions relating to the aviation sector.

WSM announces WSM BioPrepWest Salem Machinery Co. has an-

nounced the WSM BioPrep Organics Pro-cessing System, a complete high-capacity system to convert green waste, food waste, and mixed organics into high-quality feed-stock for compost and anaerobic digestion conversion systems. The system includes bulk receiving and metering infeed, shred-ding, conveying, metal removal or detection, light fraction separation, screening, sorting, and grinding—the full set of tools to allow effective processing of incoming materials at rates up to 100 tons per hour.

Morbark announces acquisition

Morbark LLC has been acquired by an affiliate of Stellex Capital Management. The acquisition is focused on providing growth capital and resources to significantly expand the company in the future.


In March, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed legislation that doubles the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) while eliminating coal from Oregon’s energy sources. The measure also provides incen-tives for energy efficiency, small- and com-munity-scale renewable energy projects, and some existing biomass energy plants.

The new law expands Oregon’s RPS program from a previous requirement of 25 percent renewable energy by 2025 to 50 per-cent renewable energy by 2040. In addition, the law requires electric utilities to eliminate coal-fired resources from their electricity al-location by January 2030.

The law also includes a requirement that at least 8 percent of the aggregate electric-ity capacity of all electric companies that sell electricity to 25,000 or more retail consum-ers must be composed of electricity gener-ated by either small-scale renewable energy projects of 20 MW or less, or biomass facili-ties that also generate thermal energy for a secondary purpose.

If a facility using biomass to generate electricity also generates thermal energy for a secondary purpose, energy certificates (RECs) will be issued for the resulting ther-mal energy. The law indicates 3.412 million Btu will be equivalent to 1 MW for the pur-pose of REC generation.

PowerNews

Lockheed Martin and Concord Blue have begun the second phase of a 5-MW waste-to-energy project under development in Herten, Germany.

Concord Blue has awarded Lockheed Martin Energy a $43 million contract to pro-ceed with all engineering, procurement and construction for the project, with completion currently scheduled for next year.

The companies announced plans to build the facility in 2014. Since that time, plan-ning, simulation, supplier logistics and prelim-inary design activities have been completed.

The plant will process waste using Con-cord Blue’s Reformer technology, which con-verts waste to energy through an advanced gasification process. While the technology can take in nearly any kind of organic waste, the Herten facility will process forestry waste. When operating at capacity, the plant is ex-pected to process 50,000 tons of raw waste annually.

Oregon doubles RPS, goes coal-free

Lockheed Martin, Concord Blue WTE plant in Germany underway

Large utility RPSYear Renewable energy

requirement2011-2014 5%2015-2019 15%2020-2024 20%2025-2029 27%2030-2034 35%2035-2039 45%2040 and beyond 50%SOURCE: OREGON SENATE BILL 1547


There’s nothing better than low-priced natural gas, unstable renewable energy credit markets and a stalled Clean Power Plan to motivate the biomass power sector to flip over every rock looking for additional economic value from the organic material that others leave behind in the woods and fields.

Throughout March, my travels took me to Amster-dam to speak at the World Biofuels Conference. There, I learned and spoke about biomass displacing coal in the European Union, and what set of policies would be needed to use more pellets in the U.S. I also learned that companies like Stora Enso—once world leaders in the production of paper—are using fiber for all sorts of higher value new products like sugars, biochemical and other bioproducts. For that company, and many others, making pulp and paper is no longer the dominant part of their future.

The Amsterdam talks about innovation and invest-ment could not be timelier for a discussion on this side of the Atlantic about the future of our forest products industry. Here in Maine, we have lost five paper mills in 24 months. That’s direct and indirect job losses exceed-ing 5,000 in a state that has higher poverty rates than most areas of the country. It’s an economic collapse never before seen in Maine.

To learn more about the future of the bioeconomy, I was invited along with Sarah Boggess at ReEnergy to represent biomass power producers at a meeting in Lincoln, Maine, home to a now-closed tissue mill. Convened by Maine Sen. Angus King and his staff, the event, “Maine’s Forest Economy Roundtable: Strength-ening Maine’s Forest Economy Industry,” was an op-portunity for loggers, power plant operators, sawmills, and town officials—many of whom have lost almost their entire tax base—to come together and discuss a path forward.

Noting the accomplishments of George Wash-ington Carver in creating products from peanuts, King

urged the industry to find the “George Washington Carver of Wood.” We learned about the potential for small-scale combined-heat-and-power at Robbins Lumber, the work done by the University of Maine and Biobased Maine on promoting the use of biofuels, and the potential for thermal greenhouses at power plants. But we also learned from Maine’s logging community that the state’s biobased economy will become a whole lot harder if Maine biomass plants and the remaining paper mills close. An entire value chain of landowners, foresters, loggers and truck drivers is at risk of being lost forever.

States from Maine to California are currently wres-tling with strategies to keep biomass plants viable in the face of lower power prices. Frustratingly, it’s also at a time when limitless fiber from trees killed by drought or diseased by the pine beetle epidemic ie unused on millions of acres in the West. Regrettably, the debate sometimes reverts to a comparison with natural gas. But cheap natural gas doesn’t keep forests healthy, or solve a waste problem for sawmills, or create a market for residual or by-products, or provide a solution to the im-pending spruce budworm disaster now on the doorstep of north New England.

Like the paper industry, we will innovate. But fed-eral and state policymakers need to help make sure that the bioproducts of tomorrow are not jeopardized by the actions we take today. On May 11, Biomass Power Association members will be meeting with federal legis-lators in Washington, D.C., for our annual fly-in to make these points. We welcome all involved in the biomass industry to join us.

Author: Bob CleavesPresident, Biomass Power Association

[email protected]

Biomass at a Crossroads

POWER¦

BY BOB CLEAVES


The city of Quebec has achieved major cost savings by replacing its 34-year-old cranes with modern, automated versions.BY LINDA GRAHAM

North American energy-from-waste (EFW) facilities are at a crossroads. Built 20 to 40 years ago, most are operating with cranes that may be at

or nearing the end of their service life. The question these facilities face today is how to re-place or modernize their aging cranes without disrupting service to customers or the revenue stream from the energy they produce.

When the city of Quebec, Canada, built its EFW plant in North America in 1974, the facil-ity was designed to incinerate Quebec’s munici-pal garbage at the rate of 280,000 tons per year and generate a $10 million annual income by selling steam to a nearby pulp and paper plant.

Fast-forward to 2006. The primary tools of any EFW plant are its overhead cranes, and

Quebec’s two aging cranes were costing the city more than $400,000 per year to maintain. Designed before modern technologies such as load sway prevention were available, the cranes were difficult to operate and hard to keep run-ning. Critical components such as wire ropes were wearing out every two weeks, structural failure was rampant and downtime was escalat-ing. And when the cranes were down for repair, the facility was unable to receive, mix or burn waste.

According to Konecranes’ Joseph Botros, Quebec’s problems were not unique–they are shared by many older EFW plants in North America. “The growing focus in the industry is on these older facilities–and how they intend to move forward for the next quarter century,”

says Botros, Konecranes’ director for EFW, Americas and Asia-Pacific Regions. “Their big-gest concern is how to replace or modernize the cranes without interrupting production.”

Fortunately, there are solutions. In both Europe and North America, Konecranes has demonstrated its ability. As the City of Que-bec has discovered, the right cranes from the right supplier can actually pay for themselves over time.

Yves Frechet, Quebec’s principal design engineer, has been involved with Quebec’s EFW facility since 1991 and was instrumental in guiding the renovation process. “Our origi-nal cranes experienced 2 million cycles over their lifespan, and operators who needed to work quickly sometimes treated them roughly,”

Out With the Old

CONTRIBUTION: The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Biomass Magazine or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).

Built in 1974, Quebec’s energy-from-waste facility was designed to incinerate the city’s municipal garbage at a rate of 280,000 tons per year, and generate $10 million annually by selling steam to a nearby pulp and paper plant.PHOTO: LINDA GRAHAM


POWER¦

he says. “The fatigue of the cranes was under-standable, but it was a major problem for pro-ductivity.”

In addition, cranes operating without sway control were constantly colliding with the pit walls, damaging both the building and the structural integrity of the cranes themselves.

“The entire building was stressed from the movement of the cranes, and there was a lot of reparation needed on the structure,” Frechet sats. “We had to repair the concrete pit walls repeatedly because the swinging grab damaged them. It was a big problem for us, getting worse year after year.”

The old cranes had some rudimentary automation, an in-house retrofit by one of the facility’s employees. One of the cranes would receive a signal that it was time to feed the hop-per, and it would pick up a load of garbage and deliver it to the hopper for burning. While not a perfect solution, it got the job done. But for the renovation, Quebec wanted state-of-the-art, automated cranes that were integrated with their entire facility—technology with more to offer in terms of information and feedback, plus strategies to reduce maintenance and pro-long the life of the facility and its equipment. Frechet contacted crane automation company Konecranes in 2006 to talk about redesigning the lifting interface for the whole facility.

More With Modern CranesAccording to Botros, the solution involved

much more than two new cranes. It was a turn-key project that involved modernizing, auto-mating and rewiring virtually the entire facility and redesigning it for maximum efficiency and productivity. Quebec’s new, automated cranes do far more than their older counterparts. They manage waste reception, feeding and mixing to make it burn well.

Quebec’s crane and automation package was based on Konecrane’s technology that had been developed for and delivered suc-cessfully to several EFW facilities in Europe. Konecranes specified two new fully automated CMAA Class F AC-powered cranes with vari-able frequency drives for energy efficiency and an easier-to-operate hydraulic grab. The cranes are identical, 10-metric ton capacity with 2.5-ton auxiliary hoists, operating on a 55-meter runway. Each crane is equipped with a hy-draulic grab that picks up more than twice the amount of garbage as the previous cable-oper-ated mechanical grabs, and also has the ability to compress the garbage to hold more.

When it comes to safety and ease of op-eration, the difference is palpable. “The new cranes have a very soft start, accelerating and decelerating gradually, with no shock to the structure of the building,” says Frechet. Kone-cranes DynAPilot anti-sway technology has also reduced wear and tear on the facility by preventing collisions of the grab with the pit walls. “Since we replaced the cranes that prob-lem has stopped,” he says.

According to Frechet, the new cranes can operate manually, in semiautomated mode or in full automation, similar to a robot zone. “When we operate in automatic, nobody can enter the operation area, so it is extremely safe,” he says.

Automating the Tipping ProcessThe new cranes are able to “talk” to the

plant’s DCS system, which is the managing software of the entire incinerator. Konecranes installed the cranes and all the wiring in the building, along with sensors that function as the “eyes” of the cranes. These laser sensors detect the garbage trucks as they arrive on a platform with eight bays. Through a system of traffic lights integrated with the crane’s auto-mation, they direct the trucks where and when to dump garbage. Green indicates to drivers that dumping is permitted. Red lights signal drivers not to dump in a bay where a crane is active in the reception zone. “The truck opera-tors respect the lights, and there is good col-laboration with them—it is working very well,”

Frechet says. “We have cameras to watch the truck operators and they know that they are being supervised, so they respect all the proce-dures,” he continues.

New Crane Installation in a Live Facility Originally, the plant only had parking for

one of its cranes, with the other always posi-tioned over the pit, vulnerable in the case of fires. A major element of the redesign was the addition of a maintenance bay for the second crane. This new building feature made it pos-sible for the first time to use the facility’s two cranes equally, extending the service life of both. But even more importantly, it allowed Konecranes to replace the cranes without shut-ting down production. “It was a major chal-lenge for the facility,” Frechet says. “It was not possible to transfer the waste to a landfill—it was necessary for us to continue to incinerate the waste while changing out the cranes. We also had a client for the energy produced by in-cineration–the client was a paper mill near the incinerator. Our agreement required that we continue delivering steam to the mill without interruption. So we had to replace the cranes while operating the facility and continuing to deliver power,” he says.

Konecranes worked with Frechet to de-velop a strategy to replace the cranes one at a time. The city built the additional crane main-tenance bay adjacent to the refuse pit, which enabled one crane to be parked out of the way

MINIMIZING MANPOWER: Operating the plant’s old cranes required a crew of five over three shifts, with two operators working by day and one at night. The new cranes mostly operate in full automation at night, and during the day require only one operator per shift..PHOTO: LINDA GRAHAM

and replaced while the other continued to op-erate.

As part of the renovation, the plant re-placed all of the rails and support structures, and upgraded the structures to be compliant with new safety regulations. The new main-tenance bay gave Konecranes a secure area to perform the installation. The company in-stalled the first new crane, then removed the first old crane, which allowed the facility to op-erate with one new and old one crane. “After

that, we installed the second new crane, and then we removed the second old crane, prior to putting on the roof of the building addi-tion,” Frechet says. Konecranes installed both new cranes in a total of four weeks.

“We received and processed all the waste we needed to receive during that period,” Frechet says. “It was not our peak season for reception of waste–we did the job in Novem-ber and December, and during those months, we receive the lowest amounts of waste for

the year. We were able to receive all the waste the city sent to us and maintain complete op-eration of the plant during the crane replace-ment.”

Protecting InfrastructureOne important goal of the facility re-

design and crane replacement was to better protect people and infrastructure while im-proving throughput. A key Konecranes tech-nology known as “Protected Areas” is pre-programmed into the software controlling the cranes, to create no-go areas, as well as prede-termined destinations for loads of waste. For Quebec, the operator’s cabin, water stations and access stairways are some of the areas that are off-limits for the crane’s grapple. Other elements of this feature facilitate positioning so that loads of garbage destined for the hop-per end up inside the hopper, not next to it. The automation software actually prevents the crane from missing the hopper. “A grab can weigh somewhere between 2 and 8 [metric] tons, depending on its size and range,” says Botros. “To understand the magnitude of this issue, just imagine an 8-ton grab slamming into a concrete pit wall like a wrecking ball. Kone-cranes Protected Areas feature is designed to safeguard infrastructure. When the grab ap-proaches an approved destination, it slows down and then stops, with no load sway that could damage the pit walls or other important structures.”

The city of Quebec replaced its aging, inefficient cranes at its energy-from-waste plant with two identical, 10-metric-ton capacity cranes with 2.5-ton auxiliary hoists. Each crane can pick up more than double the trash as the previous cable-operated, mechanical grabs, and has the ability to compress the garbage to hold more.PHOTO: LINDA GRAHAM


POWER¦

Paying For ThemselvesAfter Quebec installed its new equip-

ment, crane-related maintenance costs fell 80 percent from the $400,000 the facility spent on its original cranes in their last year of service. In the nine years since, the improvement in crane maintenance cost has continued at this level. The facility’s enhanced ability to perform scheduled crane maintenance without impact-ing throughput is another benefit of the new maintenance bay and is expected to help the city of Quebec keep its cranes in top shape for a long time.

In addition to the maintenance savings, electrical consumption of the new cranes is significantly less. The facility’s contract opera-tor TIRU Canada logged a 12 percent drop in electrical consumption for the whole facility, immediately after the new cranes went online in 2008. “The old cranes were very heavy, and when you have something very heavy to move, it takes more energy,” Frechet says. Since 2012, Frechet has left the facility to develop a new anaerobic digestion plant to receive the Que-bec’s organic waste. This $100 million project will create a product akin to natural gas that can be utilized in the city’s trucks and busses.

Frechet’s successor Vincent Pouliot, city of Quebec engineer, weighs in on the con-tinuing cost savings attributed to the crane replacement and facility redesign. Pouliot re-lated that as a result of the changes, Quebec’s contract EFW facility operator TIRU Canada has become more cost-effective. When the op-

erator’s contract came up for renewal in 2008, TIRU was able to win the bid again with a tight, competitive proposal whose 16 percent reduction over their previous contract at least partially reflected how much the facility’s op-erating expenses had dropped. According to Pouliot, money formerly spent on maintaining the cranes now benefits other areas. “The cost savings was redirected to the other equipment, including the furnace, the boiler, the automa-tion system and all the other equipment in the facility,” he says. “The crane replacement generated significant benefit to the facility as a whole, as they use that money to do mainte-nance on other parts of the process,” he says.

Enabling Better Manpower UtilizationSavings have also extended to personnel

costs. Originally, a crew of five was required to operate the old cranes over three shifts, with two operators working each daytime shift and one at night. Now, the new cranes spend most of the time running in full automation at night, freeing up the operator to perform additional tasks. During the day, the cranes re-quire only one operator per shift, which has allowed TIRU to move two employees to sup-port other areas of the plant. Therefore, one direct benefit of installing modern, automated cranes is the annual cost of two skilled em-ployees.

According to Pouliot, when the Quebec facility first began operating in 1976, it ran three furnaces burning 10 tons per hour. To-day, it burns four furnaces in the summer, a 25

percent increase. Since Quebec’s crane opera-tors also typically manage the furnaces, auto-mating the cranes has provided the manpower to run the additional furnace and given the fa-cility redundant skill sets for both areas. “This is good news for all EFW operators,” says Botros. “Many older EFW facilities are run-ning barebones programs, so automating the cranes can enable them to redeploy manpower to other areas where they may be shorthanded. This helps the whole facility.”

Today, Quebec’s EFW facility is reap-ing the benefits of more efficient, automated technology and a safer workplace. Operational costs have dropped so much that, less than a decade after their installation, the cranes have already paid for themselves. The best news: The financial windfall generated by lower maintenance, electrical and personnel costs should continue to accrue for years on the city’s bottom line.

Frechet emphasizes how critical it was to work with a partner that had experience replacing existing cranes in a running facility. “The experience of the supplier was one of our principal requirements,” he says. “Reli-ability was another. It was very important for us that the cranes work, 24 hours a day, seven days per week, all year long. And, it continues to be important year after year.”

Author:Linda Graham Wordsworth Ltd.

[email protected]


Hurst Boiler is equipped with the knowledge, technology and drive to expand global waste-to-energy applications.BY ANNA SIMET

When Gene and Edna Hurst opened up shop behind their Thomas-ville, Georgia, home in 1967, they were acting on a vision that would

play out for generations. Nearly 40 years and 350 employees later, Hurst Boiler & Welding Co. Inc., now run by four Hurst siblings—Tommy, Hayward, Teri and Jeff—operates a 314,000-square-foot boiler manufacturing fa-cility in nearby Coolidge. There, a full line of solid waste, wood and other steam and hot water boilers and equipment are designed and made, a diverse variety of machines that has al-lowed Hurst to expand its reach to applications across the globe. Highlighting two projects completed stateside and south of the border,

Hurst stands ready to solve unique challenges posed by the utilization of waste for energy.

Global ReachOne of Hurst’s most innovative and

unique installations to date is in a town called Tequila. The Jalisco, Mexico, town is home to the country’s historic and renowned tequila producer Casa Herradura, a 140-year-old com-pany that still operates on the site of its origi-nal, 19th-century Hacienda, but has striven for technological innovation and sustainability.

Herradura installed the first reverse os-mosis plant in the country and two of its own wastewater treatment plants, as well as a series of projects to install state-of-the-art steam boil-

ers to generate energy from waste biomass and biogas. Working in cooperation with Hurst Boiler and Calderas y Proyectos Ochoa S.A., the Hurst distributor for Mexico, Herradura installed a Hurst Hybrid Biomass Steam Boiler that can be fired with either the biogas gener-ated via the wastewater treatment plant’s anaer-obic digester, or by burning the organic agave waste produced via their production process. Custom engineered and designed specifically for Herradura’s processes, the equipment con-figuration incorporates a grinder, three-pass stainless steel dryer and material conveyor sys-tem to deliver the processed agave waste to the biomass boiler combustion chamber, where it is burned to produce steam. Annually, the

SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT:Hurst Boiler


Hurst Boiler recently completed a poultry litter-fired biomass boiler project at Prestage AgEnergy in Clinton, North Carolina. The facility is scheduled for commissioning this summer.

PHOTO: HURST BOILER


POWER¦

boiler converts 81,000 tons of agave bagasse into process steam and more than 27,000 tons of compost, that can also be used in the agave fields and neighboring nurseries.

Additionally, Hurst and Ochoa installed two Oilon Burners at the site. They are also fuel flexible, as they can burn both No. 6 and No. 2 oil, as well as biogas. Herradura has been able to realize a fuel savings of up to 70 percent by switching to biogas and biomass fuels, and achieved the projected ROI on the boiler proj-ect in 13 months.

A more recent, equally innovative project Hurst highlights is its third poultry litter-fueled boiler project. Prestage AgEnergy of Clinton, North Carolina, is completing a 1600-HP in-stallation. From fuel receiving through emis-sions, it is Hurt’s first system in the U.S. that has been designed and engineered specifically to be fueled by poultry litter. This cogeneration facility is scheduled to be commissioned mid-year, the company expects, and will support Prestage Farm’s turkey operations.

Traditionally, litter has posed challenges to typical boiler systems, according to Charlie Coffee, solid fuel boiler sales for Hurst Boiler. “We are well aware of the many challenges and problems of litter as a fuel, which is why we spent an inordinate amount of time and re-sources making sure that we had measures in place to ensure success in the U.S. market,” he says.

To mitigate the challenges associated with using this type of fuel, Hurst boiler strategically considered each aspect of the process, which includes the way litter arrives at the facility, ma-terial handling equipment and emissions. “The greatest challenge with the combustion of lit-ter has been its low ash fusion temperature,” says Sam McLamb of Broad Energy Solutions, a Hurst partner. “Hurst manages the challenge of litter’s low ash fusion by utilizing enlarged furnace volume, two-stage combustion, and enhanced temperature controls throughout the boiler system. Additional features include up-graded soot blowers, increased grate area, water cooled furnace, and a two-pass, fire-tube boiler design.”

Hurst’s biomass boiler system allows fa-cilities like Prestage’s to take advantage of the many unique benefits poultry litter offers. For example, the ash from litter is particularly rich in available potassium and phosphorous. “By concentrating these nutrients in ash, these sys-tems can transform the potential risk of phos-phorous regulation into an economic asset for companies,” Coffee says.

President Tommy Hurst says that while the company has been carefully evaluating the potential to use litter in its boilers in the U.S. market, one of Hurst’s solid fuel boilers in

Guatemala began running almost three years ago on 100 percent litter, simply because it was the most cost-effective and reliable fuel. “Since then, two more systems have been installed and are providing steam to poultry facilities using only chicken litter,” he says.

McLamb adds that there are multiple projects in various stages both within and outside of the U.S., and drivers differ. “In the country, projects are largely driven by a combi-nation of environmental concerns, fuel costs, and nutrient recovery in the ash,” he says. “Outside of the U.S., the availability of poultry litter and high costs of other fuels has been the primary driver.”

Coffee shines some light on international development, pointing to the Southeast as an active region for these kinds of projects. “There are several litter-to-energy projects in development or under construction in the southeast,” he says, adding that while there is potential for an installation anywhere there is significant environmental concern about land application of litter, overseas markets have been leading the implementation of these types of power plants, primarily due to restrictive U.S. EPA regulations. “However, many states are beginning to enact energy policy mandates that require utilities to provide waste-generated power,” he says. “As the overall U.S. market now moves toward environmental sustain-ability and sees energy costs continuing to in-crease, companies and governments are both looking for viable alternatives to provide these solutions. It’s taken so long because we spent

a lot of time in development and researching different technologies to make sure that the ap-plication and technology we were using would be successful.”

Hurst is also currently engaged in securing funding for several jobs converting municipal solid waste to energy, particularly in Mexico and the Ukraine. “We are currently seeking ways to help bridge the gap between the viable projects seeking Hurst solutions, and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 tar-gets which were announced as part of a new universal Renewable Energy Agenda by the United Nations,” says Dennis Dauphin, Hurst international sales manager. “These efforts have culminated in the drafting of several pro-posals presented to organizations associated with the UN such as the World Bank Group and the International Finance Corp. In doing so, Hurst has encouraged environmental stew-ardship through research and the implementa-tion of new technologies for emissions control, energy efficiency, renewable energy resources, and other environmental and health concerns associated with these power generating plants and utility operations. This can reduce the op-erational costs of current facilities, and provide a return on investment from installation in new construction.”

Author: Anna SimetManaging Editor, Biomass Magazine

[email protected]

Hurst Boiler installed a hybrid biomass boiler system at tequila producer Casa Herradura’s plant in Jalisco, Mexico, that is capable of burning waste agave and biogas from the facility’s wastewater treatment plant’s anaerobic digester.PHOTO: HURST BOILER


PelletNews

In March, the Port of Tyne an-nounced it had recorded the largest cargo of wood pellets ever handled in a single shipment at the port. The wood pellets are destined for U.K.-based Drax Power.

The MV Agnes bulk cargo ves-sel delivered a record 57,845 metric tons of wood pellets from Virginia to the port. At 225 meters long, the MV Agnes is the largest wood pellet vessel handled to date at the Port of Tyne.

The ship was unloaded over six days. The pellets will be stored at the port and supplied to Drax on demand via the port’s direct rail terminal.

“The Port was the first to work in partnership with Drax in handling large volumes of wood pellet as it be-gan to convert from coal-derived elec-tricity generation to renewable energy in 2010,” said Steven Harrison, chief operating officer at the Port of Tyne. “The significant investments in the port’s infrastructure in recent years have enabled us to accommodate some of the world’s largest cargo ships, and the MV Agnes represents a milestone in terms of our ability to handle such large cargoes on the Tyne.”

Sumitomo Corp. has signed a contract to acquire up to 20 percent of Cosan Bio-massa S.A., a subsidiary Brazil-based Cosan S.A.Industria e Comercio that produces sugar-cane pellets for use in power generation.

Cosan Biomassa has developed a fuel pel-let made from sugarcane residues, including bagasse from the sugar mill and straw left over in the sugarcane field. The company has devel-oped a 175,000-ton-per-year production plant, which commenced a commercial production in December.

Through the agreement with Sumitomo, Cosan Biomassa is expected to increase its ex-ports to Japan and Europe, along with increased domestic sales.

According to information released by the companies, the Sao Paulo state of Brazil alone has the potential to produce 45 million tons of sugarcane pellets per year. The venture aims to produce 2 million tons by 2025 and up to 8 mil-lion tons longer-term, subject to market growth and a satisfactory return.

Sumitomo started importing biomass fuel for power generation to Japan in 2008. Its sub-sidiary, Summit Energy Corp., has been manag-ing a biomass power plant and plans to build more.

Port of Tyne records historic pellet shipment

Japan company invests in Brazilian sugarcane pellet production

Biomass Recovery Systems

Toll Free 1-866-ROCWEAR (762-9327)W W W . W A S T E W O O D H O G S . C O M

• Biomass and CoGeneration• Pulp, Paper, and Pellet Plants• Compost and Mulch Operations• Waste to Energy Plants• Sawmills• Vertical & Horizontal Models Available

Custom Biomass Recovery Systems- Sales - Parts - Service

SETTING NEW RECORDS: The Port of Tyne reported the NV Agnes delivered a record shipment of pellets in March. PHOTO: PORT OF TYNE


The rapidly growing number of pellet heating installations in Germany—from several hundred appliances in 1998 to nearly 280,000 pellet stoves and boilers at the end of 2012—il-lustrates an increased interest in environmentally friendly heat-ing systems. Although pellet boilers represent the larger part of pellet applications market share, pellet stoves are gaining signifi cance in the German marketplace.

Most of German pellet stoves are equipped with an au-tomatic cleaning system, which is the most appropriate choice for ash utilization. Today, residential wood pellet ash levels are very low, less than 1 percent. According to statistics, the amount of pellet ash produced in each German household is less than 20 kilogram per year. Of course, the amount of left-over waste depends on the intensiveness of pellet stove usage.

The majority of German pellet stove models provide an automatic ash removal function. As a rule, appliances are featured with devices that compress the ash in the ash con-tainer, which allows for emptying in several-month intervals. Depending on the size, the ash drawer must be emptied at in-tervals that vary between one and several weeks. Some models of wood pellet stoves are equipped so that the ash is also dis-charged via a screw from the heater in an adjacent, moveable ash container. In the process of pellet stove de-ashing, bottom ash and fl ying ash must be removed from the heat exchanger through the ash drawer.

An amendment to German regulations that concern the use of ashes from the incineration of uncontaminated wood now recognizes the material as a fertilizer in the country. This has resulted in the option of using pellet ash as a fertilizer in gardening, or disposing of it as household waste.

When utilizing ash, its quality must be taken into consid-eration. It should be high enough to prevent contamination. Most European countries, including Germany, have imple-mented legislative changes to control the recycling of biomass ashes for forests and agriculture. These laws mostly concern industrial biomass ash utilization; it would be ideal if the laws also defi ned a more coherent and smart utilization of pellet stoves ash, as this kind of installation is gaining traction in European households.

Apart from the abovementioned applications, pellet stove waste can be used in gardening. For the time being, ashes from wood pellet stoves are broadly used as a free garden amend-ment along with regular garden amendments such as coffee

grounds, potato peels, etc. However, there is a substantial dif-ference between wood stove ash and all other amendments used in gardening. Besides the fact that pellet stove ash con-tains a particular set of elements and nutrients—it is especially rich in potassium—that are favorable for soil, it can also help to correct and improve acidic soil. More than that, wood stove ashes are applied in order to control the amount of pests as well as compost supplement.

Ash should not be used unless a soil pH test has been done. In regard to acidic soil correction, wood stove ash as a garden amendment is a much more convenient means than the traditionally used ground limestone, bearing in mind that it is an absolutely costless resource. However, one should pay attention to the type of wood used, as well as the size of ash particles, as it infl uences the precise effect of wood stove ash on the pH level of soil.

Wood stove ash used for pest control is by no means a new tendency. For that, ash has long been used both in dry and liquid form.

One more application of wood stove ash in gardening and fertilizing is as a neutralizing ingredient in piles of com-post. Ash is extremely helpful in countering dry materials rich in carbon such as pine needles and sawdust, which are highly acidic. Furthermore, ashes by themselves have infl uence on the amount of carbon in the compost pile, thus, they can be placed in thin layers between other waste materials such as grass clippings and vegetable scraps, which are rich in nitro-gen. Wood stove ashes also have the ability to neutralize odors,

All in all, the best choice is for wood pellet ash usage is as a fertilizer. The combustion chamber of a pellet stove should always be free of ash residues, as an overfi lled ashtray leads to disturbances in the operation of the pellet stove. Therefore, the ash container should be emptied very one or two weeks, and the ashes can be used as garden compost or fertilizer, or simply bedisposed of it with household waste.

Author: Karl BrunnerMedia Partnership Coordinator

[email protected]+49 30 74692995

Utilizing German Pellet Stove Ash

PELLET¦

BY KARL BRUNNER


Forest2Market data disproves claims regarding the wood pellet export industry and its impacts on forest inventory and fiber prices. BY TRACY LESLIE

G rowth of the pellet export industry in the southern U.S.—from zero in 2008 to 3.6 million tons in 2014—has caused some to question the

impact exporting pellet mills are having on forest inventory and wood fiber prices. Claims that this impact is significant and disastrous are largely exaggerated, however. Forest2Market’s data indicates that these impacts are eclipsed by the effects of a range of supply and demand factors in the region, including increased de-mand from pulp, paper and panel manufactur-ers and supply restrictions.

Impact on Southern Forest Inventory Overall, forest inventory in the U.S. South

increased by nearly 1.2 billion tons between

2000 and 2014. Data shows that pulpwood harvests for export facilities are a small fraction of overall harvests when compared to harvests for nonpellet facilities. In 2014, pellet exports from the South to Europe were 3.6 million metric tons, or 40 percent of Europe’s 9 mil-lion-metric-ton industrial pellet consumption.

The data also shows that wood fiber re-movals for this demand represent a minor portion of harvests. In 2014, removals of pine pulpwood for export pellet production totaled approximately 3.7 million tons, compared to 117.7 million tons for nonpellet production (Figure 1). Pellet removals represent 0.3 per-cent of the total pine pulpwood inventory and just 0.09 percent of total pine inventory (pulp-wood and sawtimber).

Removals of hardwood pulpwood inven-tory for pellet production in 2014 totaled ap-proximately 2.4 million tons. Comparatively, all other consumers of hardwood pulpwood harvested 33.6 million tons (Figure 2). Pellet removals represented 0.2 percent of the total hardwood pulpwood inventory and just 0.06 percent of total hardwood inventory (pulp-wood and sawtimber).

What about the future? Many who believe that the export pellet industry is harming U.S. forests base that belief on an inflated view of how much demand from Europe will grow. Es-timates based on outdated announcements of new facilities and not on actual demand from Europe do not realistically take into consider-ation recent developments in Europe, includ-

Export Industry’s Impacts on Southern Forests, Markets



PELLETS¦

ing changes in incentives in the U.K. and increased scrutiny of biomass proj-ects by the European Union.

A realistic view of demand shows:

• Existing and under construction export pellet plants in the South have the potential to produce 7.4 million metric tons of pellets to meet demand from funded bio-mass projects in Europe.

• Applying the South’s current market share of 40 percent to the 8.5 million metric tons of increased incremental European de-mand would mean an additional 3.4 million metric tons would be supplied from the South.

• Adding 3.4 million metric tons to the 7.4 million metric tons of current production capacity, total South industrial exports of bio-mass pellets to Europe could rise to 10.8 mil-lion metric tons. To produce this additional supply of pellets would require an additional 7.9 million tons of wood fiber.

• The potential of 10.8 million metric tons of export pellets represents a total of 25.0 mil-lion tons of wood fiber, which is 1 percent of total South pulpwood inventory and 0.3 per-cent of all South inventory. By comparison, to-tal removals—for all consumers—in the South in 2014 were 250.2 million tons, or 3.3 percent of total inventory.

Change Drivers in the SouthThese inventory numbers expose a single

incontrovertible fact: Growth in European demand for wood pellets manufactured in the South is not the sole driver of change in the region’s forest products industry. The changes that are occurring are the result of the follow-ing:

• Land ownership change: The dives-titure of industry land ownership to financial and private ownership has resulted in stand-level management changes. The maximization of timber and land value has replaced the man-agement strategy of supplying mills with wood fiber.

• Sawmill ownership change: Sawmill divestiture has separated pulp/paper intercom-pany ties to residual chip supply, so sawmills are no longer operated to feed a pulp/paper mill.

• Decline in newsprint and print pa-per demand; increase in containerboard, fluff pulp and performance fiber demand: Declining demand for coated and uncoated pa-pers has resulted in the closure of 13 newsprint and paper mills and the conversion of several to pulp and performance fiber facilities. These

closures were market-driven, not export pellet mill-driven. The conversion has led to declin-ing demand for hardwood and increased de-mand for pine.

• Housing market crash and the Great Recession: A recession-driven decline in sawmill residual chip production resulted in heightened demand for pulpwood. Sawtimber final harvests also declined, increasing invento-ries and reducing pulpwood supply. OSB pro-duction increased steadily as production shifted from older, less efficient mills to larger, more efficient mills.

• Precipitation events: Strong devia-tions from average rainfall totals have caused pulpwood price volatility.

• Pellet mill demand: Demand from pellet manufacturers has entered the market.

All of these variables interact to influence forest inventory levels and market price.

Wood Fiber Price Effects of Supply, Demand

Over the past 15 years, demand for pine fiber in the South has increased, while demand for hardwood fiber has decreased. Our analysis, however, shows that disruptions in supply have had a greater impact on wood fiber prices. Dur-ing the housing crisis and economic downturn in the U.S., available pulpwood and sawmill re-sidual chip supply declined significantly in the South. In certain years, significant precipitation events magnified supply restrictions.

In a competitive market, when supply is constrained in this way, prices for pulpwood will naturally increase. A look at market prices for pine and hardwood pulpwood shows that price trends cannot be attributed to export pel-let demand, as similar price trends occurred in

regions with pellet mills and regions without pellet mills:

• For pine pulpwood, nonpellet mill de-mand has increased by 5.9 million tons (from 111.8 to 117.7 million tons) since 2008, while pellet mill demand has increased by 3.7 million tons (from 0 to 3.7 million tons). The South’s average pulpwood prices increased 4.5 percent annually (Figure 1). Similar price trends oc-curred in areas with and without export pellet mill influence.

• For hardwood pulpwood, nonpellet mill demand has decreased by 2.5 million tons (from 36.1 to 33.6 million tons) since 2010, while pellet mill demand has increased by 2.4 million tons (from 0 to 2.4 million tons). The South’s average pulpwood prices increased 7.4 percent annually (Figure 2). Similar price trends occurred in areas with and without export pel-let mill influence.

In this period of change—a recession that was particularly hard for the sawtimber market and an increase in demand from multiple con-sumers of pulpwood and residuals—the data shows exactly what the basic principles of eco-nomics teach us: Price is a function of supply and demand interactions. In the future, another principle of economics will also be manifest: Supply and demand will find equilibrium in markets where there is increasing pressure on price, and prices will normalize as a result. This will be true regardless of the size of the export pellet industry or any other new entrants.

Author: Tracy LeslieDirector, Forest Biomaterials and Sustainability, Forest2Market

[email protected]

Leslie


¦PELLETS

Biomass Boilerhopping in BurlingtonBiomass heating installations in northern Vermont are far from sparse.BY ANNA SIMET

In Burlington, Vermont, sustainable for-estry is a way of life. On a crisp spring morning in late March, participants of the Northeast Biomass Heating Expo biomass

boiler bus tour were able to witness that as-sertion firsthand, after observing a brilliant sunrise and a ride through region’s endlessly rolling, heavily-forested countryside that in-cluded a pass by Camel’s Hump, Vermont’s third-highest, most-recognized mountain that is featured on the state quarter.

Admirable are the region’s historic, well-preserved architecture and style (in fact, Ver-mont has 40,000-plus buildings of historical significance on the National and State Regis-

ters of Historic Places), and the trend of up-keeping and renewing old structures makes biomass heat a good fit as replacements of aged fuel systems, and a solution to satisfy de-sires to lower carbon footprints while using lo-cally sourced fuel. The seven systems that were featured on the tour were all specially designed to fit into each structure’s existing footprint and structural requirements, and meet unique, specific demands. They included: Norwich University’s two 400-horsepower (HP) Mess-ersmith wood chip-fired steam boilers; Granite Industries’ two 56-kilowatt OkoFEN autopel-let boilers; Montpelier District Energy’s two 600-HP, 20-MMBtu, AFS woodchip boilers;

the Montpelier Senior Center’s 60-kW pel-let boiler by SunWood Biomass; a private residence using a 26-kW Pellergy Alpha wood pellet boiler; the South Main Apartments us-ing two 100-kW wood pellet boilers; and the Green Mountain Club, which uses one 60-kW cord wood gasification boiler.

Tour guide Paul Frederick, wood utiliza-tion specialist at the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation, discussed the importance of forest sustainability in the state, and emphasized the significance of main-taining and growing the base of low-grade wood end users. “When we start looking at how much wood is used for fuel in the state,

DEPARTMENT

SUSTAINABILITY SPECTATING: Pictured are components of Montpelier's district heating plant (smoke stack top left, boiler system bottom center); Norwich University's biomass heating system (wood chip storage top right, conveyors bottom left), and a residential pellet boiler installation (bottom right).PHOTO: ANNA SIMET


171 Kings RoadKings Mountain, NC 28086p: 704-710-4001www.act.us.com

PUTTING THE BIOMASS INDUSTRY IN MOTION

Move Biomass Solid Fuels more efficiently with ACT. We have over 25 years of conveying technologies expertise in the custom design, fabrication, supervision and setup of bulk-handling belt conveyor and drag systems engineered to optimize every point in your production and shipping process:

We seamlessly integrate our conveyor solutions with other customer-supplied bulk-handling equipment including:

Contact ACT to see how we can help you eliminate waste while maximizing your available space, capabilities and budget.

roughly 30 percent of our total wood harvest in the state ends up as wood fuel in one form or another,” Frederick said. “The majority is residential fire wood. We estimate that 347,000 cords of wood every year go into residential heating in the state—that’s a little over 80,000 households using wood in one form or another for supplemental or primary heat.”

In addition, about 12 percent of house-holds are now using at least some pellets for heating. “That’s up from about 3 percent seven or eight years ago,” Frederick said. “There has been enormous growth in residential pellet heating. We’ve seen some growth in cordwood, but not nearly as much.”

A shift in Northeast forestry markets over the past 20 years has created a significant de-cline in the paper industry—many mills have closed or throttled back on production—and though one large-scale, wood-using power plant was built, much of the market for low-grade wood has been lost. “When we start looking at sustainability, we look at what we’re growing and what we’re moving annually—we currently grow more than twice what we’re harvesting and losing to natural mortality in the state of Vermont,” Frederick said. “To some extent, it varies from year to year with harvest and insect and disease outbreaks, but in general, over the past seven or eight years, it’s averaged over twice what we’re losing. Through some work with the Biomass Energy Resource Cen-ter, we estimate that we’ve got about 900,000 green tons of low-grade wood available [annu-ally], that could be used for energy purposes. That available wood is what we’re shooting for in our planning processes in our [state] com-prehensive energy plan, as a way of using more renewable fuel.”

Author: Anna SimetManaging Editor, Biomass Magazine

[email protected]

CLEAN CAPITOL: Montpelier's state capitol building is heated with wood chips via district heating.PHOTO: ANNA SIMET

PUMPING PELLETS: A Bourne's Energy pellet delivery truck demonstrates bulk, pneumatic pellet delivery outside of the South Main Apartment complex in Waterbury, Vermont.PHOTO: ANNA SIMET

WOOD PELLETASSOCIATION OF CANADA

LARGEST BIOMASS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD

U.S

. In

dustrial Pellet Associatio

n

ww

w .t h e u si p a .org


ThermalNews

Less than one year after construction began, the University of Maine at Farmington’s $11 million biomass district heating project is complete. The plant is officially online and has been sending heat to 23 buildings, or 95 percent of the campus since February.

The project, which is the largest single biomass heating plant in the state, was developed by Trane U.S. Inc., which worked closely with Dirigo Architectural LLC, according to UMF.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held March 13, during which the public was allowed to tour the facility. The plant’s 500-horsepower Messersmith Manufacturing biomass boiler is fired with locally sourced wood chips and is expected to reduce heating oil usage by nearly 73 percent, or about 390,000 gallons annually. It replaced approximately 40 aged individual heating plants throughout the campus.

The U.K. Green Investment Bank plc and Equitix, an infrastruc-ture project management and delivery company, have jointly acquired a biomass district heating plant in northern Scotland, with working plans to expand the network and build additional, smaller plants.

The £10 million ($14.18 million) transaction included the acqui-sition of Ignis Biomass Ltd., and the 3.5-MW combined-heat-and-power plant it has owned and operated in Wick, Caithness. The plant previously ran on fuel oil but was converted to wood chips in 2012.

The network currently provides heat and power to Pulteney Dis-tillery, and heat to Caithness General Hospital, Wick Assembly Rooms, residences owned by Cairn Housing Association, and approximately 200 other domestic residences. The upgrade and expansion will con-nect 150 new customers. Plans are in place to upgrade the heating in-frastructure at the plant and expand the district heating system with the aim serving new customers by March 2017.

UMF opens biomass heating plant

GIB, Equitix acquire, plan expansion for biomass heating proejct

HEATING UP EDUCATION: TThe University of Maine at Farmington recently celebrated the opening of its biomass heating plant. In addition to providing heat, the plant will also serve as a learning facility.PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AT FARMINGTON


POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SORTING: At a C&D facility, employees are trained to either pick out all desirable material (positive sorting) or to remove all mate-rial but wood fuel (negative sorting) and leave it on the belt. Both positive and negative sorting were approved under the NHSM amendment ruling. PHOTO: CONSTRUCTION & DEMOLITION RECYCLING ASSOCIATION


THERMAL¦

P L AY I N G B Y T H ENONWASTE FUELS RULESThree forms of wood waste got the green light under the U.S. EPA’s nonhazardous secondary materials rule, but the amended regulation’s impact appears narrow.BY KATIE FLETCHER

Our nation’s primary law gov-erning the disposal of solid and hazardous waste—the Resource Conservation and

Recovery Act—was passed by Con-gress in 1976 to address the problems the U.S. faced from the growing volume of municipal and industrial waste. Since its enactment, the programs and regula-tions under the statute have evolved, as have the types of waste produced and the way they are managed and disposed of. Undergoing the most recent evolution is the nonhazardous secondary materials (NHSM) regulatory program. In Febru-ary, the U.S. EPA finalized an amendment to add three sources of fuel to its cat-egorical nonwaste fuels list: construction and demolition (C&D) wood processed from C&D debris; paper recycling residu-als generated from the recycling of recov-ered paper, paperboard and corrugated containers; and creosote-treated railroad ties. The ruling became effective as of March 9.

Under the RCRA, the NHSM pro-gram is a legislative outlet under which the EPA could begin to differentiate fuels from wastes. The agency announced the regulatory program in March of 2011 to generally establish standards and proce-dures for identifying whether NHSMs are solid wastes when used as fuels or ingredi-ents in combustion. The rule was amend-ed in February 2013 to include particular

NHSMs listed as “categorical nonwaste fuels,” provided certain conditions were met. EPA also indicated that it would consider adding additional NHSMs to the categorical listings, and did just that in March 2014 by proposing the addition of the three sources in the recently passed amendment.

Industry Implications EPA finalized the amendment in an

effort to make it easier to comply with the NHSM regulations, as persons who generate or burn these NHSMs will not need to make individual determinations on their materials regarding their waste status. Burning these NHSMs does not require evaluation under the general case-by-case standards and procedures that would otherwise apply to NHSM used in combustion units.

According to the NHSM regulation, if material is a solid waste under RCRA, a combustion unit burning it is required to meet the Clean Air Act section 129 emis-sion standards for solid waste incineration units. If the material is not a solid waste, combustion units are required to meet the CAA section 112 emission standards for commercial, industrial and institutional boilers. “EPA needs to make a threshold determination whether a material is a fuel or waste and that has huge implications for our industry, because if the material is a waste then it’s really no different from


a regulatory standpoint than municipal solid waste,” says Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of the Biomass Power Association.

MSW needs to be combusted in com-mercial or industrial solid waste incinerators regulated by the Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration or CISWI rule. “If we in the biomass industry were regulated as an incinerator, we would essentially be forced to implement and upgrade air pollution control equipment and really transform what is a sim-ple biomass boiler to a waste-to-energy facility, which is a business that we’re not in. It’s a com-pletely different business model,” Cleaves says. “We were really pleased by this NHSM ruling because it essentially is a very clean and simple message to those who use these materials as fuel that they won’t be considered incinerators.”

Other than the positive regulatory impli-cation on the industry, there is a practical one as well. “In certain parts of the country, like in California for example, where forest biomass is becoming harder to source because of the clo-sure of sawmills and the like, biomass boilers have increasingly relied upon nonforest-derived biomass materials for their feedstock,” Cleaves says. “To be foreclosed from using these kinds of fuels would be a further challenge for the industry.”

In its comments filed with the EPA for the Clean Power Plan, the BPA urged the EPA to clarify in the final plan that nonforestry cellulos-ic materials—like urban wood, wood-derived C&D debris and railroad ties—be specifically included in the definition of “waste-derived feedstocks,” since these organic materials do not cause land-use changes and do not deplete carbon stocks. Waste under the CPP refers to

materials that do not have high value in the marketplace and would otherwise probably be discarded and landfilled. The three added mate-rials to the NHSM rule—C&D wood, railroad ties and paper recycling residuals—are these types of materials. “One of the important take-aways from the NHSM rule is EPA is aligning its rules under the Clean Air Act and federal solid waste laws with the goals of the Clean Power Plan, which, among other things, have encouraged the use of certain biogenic fuels as a way to mitigate climate change,” Cleaves says.

Defined as waste-derived feedstock in the CPP, these new material sources are now con-sidered nonwaste fuels under the NHSM rule. Apart from avoiding methane emissions when the material is landfilled, Cleaves states there are strong environmental reasons to use this mate-rial in biomass boilers, and that “one of them is clearly just more efficient combustion.”

Overall, EPA’s amendment to add these three materials is a positive to the industry, but there are many who can’t take advantage of the ability to combust these new material sources, as they are listed as categorical nonwaste fuels only if certain conditions are met. Prior to fi-nalizing the rule, EPA opened up a comment period and various stakeholders in the biomass industry responded. Some of the suggested changes were reflected in the final amendment ruling, but others were left out.

Tie TermsAccording to the Association of Ameri-

can Railroads, the U.S. Class I railways maintain nearly 490 million crossties, which does not even account for the more than 500 regional and short line railroads in the U.S. Millions of

these railroad ties are replaced every year in the U.S.—enough to fill an entire football field 70 stories high, according to industry estimates. One-third of these used ties are ground up for landscaping mulch, with the remainder sold as biofuel for creating electricity and heat. Ac-cording to BPA, its members alone use around 815,000 tons of railroad ties per year, distrib-uted among 13 facilities in seven states.

Most of the energy recovery with crossties is conducted through three parties: the genera-tor of the crossties (railroad or utility); the rec-lamation company that sorts the crossties, and, in some cases, processes the material received from the generator; and the combustor as third-party energy producers. One prominent reclamation company providing the link be-tween the railroad and the end user is National Salvage & Service Corp. Vice President Curtis Schopp says that each year, there are up to 23 million new ties installed, about 15 to 17 mil-lion of which are sorted for various uses. Na-tional handles around 7 million ties with about 1.5 million going to landscaping, approximately 200,000 landfilled and the rest turned into fuel.

While it’s clear that railroad ties are avail-able for use as fuel, and its inclusion as a non-waste fuel is positive, it’s not without limitation. One of the legitimacy criteria BPA focused on in its comments to the EPA was the designed-to-burn criteria that requires NHSM contami-nants to be at levels comparable to, or less than, those in the traditional fuel that the unit is de-signed to burn.

In the final ruling, the addition of creo-sote-treated railroad ties (CTRTs) requires that they are processed and then combusted in units designed to burn both biomass and fuel oil as

TORREFIED TIES: On behalf of the Coalition for Sustainable Rail, Natural Resources Research Institute performed lab-scale torrefaction tests on used railroad ties in pursuit of removing the preservatives through the torrefaction processes. The process requires that woody biomass be heated to approximately 500 degrees Fahrenheit in a sealed reactor, which drives liquid and volatile matter from the wood.PHOTO: CSR


part of normal operations and not solely as part of start-up or shut-down operations, and units at major source pulp and paper mills or power producers subject to 40 CFR part 63, subpart DDDDD that combust CTRT and had been designed to burn biomass and fuel oil, but are modified (e.g. oil delivery mecha-nisms are removed) in order to use natural gas instead of fuel oil, as part of normal opera-tions and not solely as part of start-up or shut-down operations.

BPA and others commented that treat-ing a railroad tie as a fuel if burned in a boiler capable of burning fuel oil, but waste when burned in the same exact boiler not capable of burning fossil fuels, is not defensible as a

matter of public policy. Some biomass boilers converted from fuel oil to natural gas; others converted from coal to biomass; and others never had the capability of cofiring with any fossil fuels. The fuel oil restriction eliminates 69 percent of the facilities, and as much as 78 percent of the fuel currently available for en-ergy conversion. Biomass producer ReEnergy Holdings LLC stated in its comments that the limiting boiler configuration would disqualify the company from accepting nearly 85 percent of its current CTRT fuel supply.

Also in BPA’s comments, biomass facili-ties that rely on the use of CTRT’s are located in states that have mandatory renewable port-folio standard programs (RPS). Michigan and

California have RPS programs designed to promote biomass and penalize the use of fuel oil. “The way that EPA treated railroad ties was a little disappointing to us,” Cleaves says. He adds that the ruling limits some, and it may even be a possibility facilities install a fuel oil gun simply to show the EPA they have the ability to use a fuel oil. Cleaves says that for facilities that do not meet the combustion cri-teria, he believes they can and will petition the EPA on a case-by-case basis to have CTRTs accepted at their facilities.

Schopp doesn’t believe it’s likely that plants will change out their boilers. “It’s just a matter of whether this fuel is something they can consider in their fuel mix—the cost

It depends on a number of critical factors.

How explosible is the material you are processing? Are your process vessels indoors? How are the upstream and downstream processes configured? What ignition sources could be present? Our engineers start by understanding your process, reviewing your DHA and testing process materials if necessary. Then we apply the right solution including a combination of suppression, isolation and venting systems.

Why risk an industrial explosion that could threaten your workers or shut down valuable processes. Count on IEP Technologies to provide the right solution. Just like we have done successfully for hundreds of industrial companies around the world.

Let’s develop a solution for you

Call the IEP engineering experts with the most experience in explosion protection at 1-855-793-8407 or visit IEPTechnologies.com.

P R O T E C T I N G T H E W O R L D ’ S P R O C E S S E S A G A I N S T E X P L O S I O N

HOW DO YOU STOP AN INDUSTRIAL EXPLOSION IN ITS TRACKS?

is prohibitive,” he says. Schopp adds that the ruling aids the company when promoting the fuel. “It lifts that cloud,” he says. “However, with the oil nozzle, it has affected some folks. It has greatly cut the field of perspective plants down and made it harder to find new ones to get permitted.”

Besides the limitation on boiler con-figuration, some are disappointed that only creosote-treated ties were included. According to the RTA, in 2013, 51 percent, or about 7.7

million tie purchases were creosote-treated. Creosote-borate ties made up 38 percent, or 5.7 million. According to Schopp, borate be-gan being added in the past few years to some railroad tie pretreatment processes to aid in longevity of the preservative.

An Aug. 21, 2015, letter from the Treated Wood Council requested that the agency quick-ly act on a categorical nonwaste determination on creosote-borate, copper-naphtenate and copper naphtenate-borate-treated railroad ties.

TWC indicated in the letter that these types of ties are increasingly being used as alternatives to creosote-treated ties, and that the ability to reuse the ties is an important consideration in rail tie purchasing decisions. According to EPA, these three tie types are candidates for categorical nonwaste listings and the agency expects to begin development of a proposed rule under 40 CFR 241.4(a) regarding these treated ties in the near future.

There is some activity regarding the com-bustion of used rail ties by removing the pre-servatives. The Coalition for Sustainable Rail in collaboration with the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Min-nesota-Duluth has performed lab-scale tor-refaction tests on used railroad ties in pursuit of removing the preservatives through the tor-refaction process. CSR is planning to run an industrial-scale test of railroad tie torrefaction within the year. “Future pretreatment options CSR and NRRI are pursuing may impact the current ruling and open up their use in other combustion systems,” says Don Fosnacht, as-sociate director with NRRI.

Lengthening the ListBeyond railroad ties, the finalized amend-

ment included C&D wood processed from C&D debris according to best management

SIZE SEPARATION: Initial screening of incoming construction and demolition material separates smaller material, often 8 inches or less, from large material before going into a picking room. PHOTO: CONSTRUCTION & DEMOLITION RECYCLING ASSOCIATION

It depends on a number of critical factors.

How explosible is the material you are processing? Are your process vessels indoors? How are the upstream and downstream processes configured? What ignition sources could be present? Our engineers start by understanding your process, reviewing your DHA and testing process materials if necessary. Then we apply the right solution including a combination of suppression, isolation and venting systems.

Why risk an industrial explosion that could threaten your workers or shut down valuable processes. Count on IEP Technologies to provide the right solution. Just like we have done successfully for hundreds of industrial companies around the world.

Let’s develop a solution for you

Call the IEP engineering experts with the most experience in explosion protection at 1-855-793-8407 or visit IEPTechnologies.com.

P R O T E C T I N G T H E W O R L D ’ S P R O C E S S E S A G A I N S T E X P L O S I O N

HOW DO YOU STOP AN INDUSTRIAL EXPLOSION IN ITS TRACKS?

practices. The exemption essentially allows the markets to continue as they have been, accord-ing to William Turley, executive director of the Construction & Demolition Recycling Asso-ciation. “There was some trepidation among end users on whether this material would get the exemption,” Turley says. “I think the end users to boilers are assured now that as long as they follow the steps outlined in the rule, the market is there and will continue to function as it has in the past.”

Turley says that for the most part, the best management practices outlined by the EPA in the amendment ruling are aligned with what the industry was already doing. These practices include sorting by trained operators who ex-clude or remove the following materials from the final product fuel: nonwood materials, and wood treated with creosote, pentachlorophe-nol, chromated copper arsenate (CCA), or other copper, chromium or arsenical preserva-tives. Best management practices must also be in place for positive and negative sorting, train-ing and written certification. “Our only real change there is the training of the operators be recorded and updated on a regular basis,” Turley says.

EPA also included that only de mini-mis quantities inherent to process limitations may remain of painted wood. “It’s important

EPA recognized that we are not able to get 100 percent of everything—CCA or painted wood—out of the stream,” Turley says. “In a 10,000-pound pile, a couple scraps are not go-ing to be a problem. The de minimis part is in there with no set level because they know we’re trying to get it out.”

There are a few states that ban the use of C&D wood as a fuel product, including New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Although Tur-ley doesn’t think EPA’s ruling will have much effect on states, treatment of C&D wood, he is hopeful that the ruling will eventually help expand its use across state RPS programs once the market for biomass improves. “Now that these states can—with a good, clean conscious—say EPA has examined this and exempted it, it can only help and remind the states this is a clean biomass product, with a high-Btu content,” Turley adds.

Minnesota-based Koda Energy LLC has burned some C&D debris in the past. Gen-eral Manager Stacy Cook says the addition of this material in the amendment is helpful, but when it comes to the other materials, unless a plant was already using the railroad ties or it was already set up to use the recycled paper material, “it really didn’t open up the capability for anyone else to do so.” The language in the final ruling reads that paper recycling residu-

als generated from the recycling of recovered paper, paperboard and corrugated containers and combusted by paper recycling mills whose boilers are designed to burn solid fuel are con-sidered a NHSM.

According to Cook, EPA lacked data to support the combustion of recyclable paper in anything other than a recycled paper plant that had a boiler already consuming wet re-cycle paper material. EPA identified 15 to 20 facilities in the U.S. that were already permitted to burn recycled paper material, and they were other paper recyclers. “It really limited the ap-plication of additional fuels to plants that were pretty much just those already doing it,” Cook says. “It didn’t really help expand the use of it.” He adds that on its face the NHSM rul-ing sounds like a wonderful thing, but its ap-plication is limited. “It was less helpful than it could have been, but it’s still a step in the right direction.”

Author: Katie FletcherAssociate Editor, Biomass Magazine

701-738-4920 [email protected]

THERMAL¦

For us, efficiency means generating the highest possible output without using additional fuel. The increasing demand for reliable base- and part-load supply, combined with environmental requirements, are all driving the need for greater efficiency and for reduced start-up times. That’s why we build a comprehensive range of steam turbines that make the best possible use of steam from diverse fuels and heat sources. Reheat technology and steam solutions for combined cycle conversion are both smart steps that boost efficiency.

The result: When efficient technology is required that is easy on resources, Siemens Steam Turbines are the first choice. Around the world.

Efficiency turns less into more. Siemens Steam Turbines. Powered by efficiency.

Siemens Steam Turbine ready for delivery to the cusomter’s concentrated solar power plant.

Siemens Steam Turbine SST-800 operating in a Swedish biomass plant.

siemens.com/steamturbines

Biomass Magazine Motiv: Efficiency / 21,6 x 27,6cm

TH 2

14

-15

07

50


BiogasNews

In late February, USDA Rural Development announced plans to support an anaerobic digestion (AD) project under development by Novus Energy LLC in Boardman, Oregon, with an $11 million loan guarantee awarded under its Biorefinery, Renewable Chemical, and Biobased Product Manufacturing Assistance Program.

The proposed facility is expected to process up to 750 tons-per-day of waste feedstock, producing 3.8 million cubic feet of biogas each day, or approximately 2.5 million standard cubic feet of pipeline-quality renewable methane.

Renewable natural gas produced at the plant will be injected into the pipeline. While the ultimate end use for the biobased methane has not yet been determined, Joseph Burke, president and CEO of Novus, said it will likely be sold into the transportation fuel market. Novus intends to register with the U.S. EPA to generate D3 cellulosic bio-fuel renewable identification numbers (RINs) under the renewable fuel standard (RFS).

Greenlane Biogas has announced it will supply a biogas upgrad-ing system and a carbon dioxide recovery unit to an anaerobic digester project in Surrey, British Columbia. The company has received a con-tract from Orgaworld Canada, an organic waste treatment company that is part of the Shanks Group plc, to supply the equipment to the city of Surrey’s Organic Biofuel Facility.

The project is currently under construction. Once complete, it will have the capacity to process up to 115,000 metric tons of organic waste annually. The resulting biogas will be upgraded into renewable natural gas with a purity of more than 97 percent methane. The resulting fuel will be used to fuel the city’s fleet of natural gas waste collection and operations service vehicles. The upgraded biogas will also supply the city-owned district energy system.

USDA awards $11M loan guarantee to waste-to-biogas project in Oregon

Greenlane to upgrade system at AD project in British Columbia

BUILDING ON EXPERIENCE: Novus Energy has 3.5 years of experience operating its demonstration-scale plant.PHOTO: NOVUS ENERGY


FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND: Dong Energy is building its first biogas plant based on the REnescience technology that can treat unsorted household waste using enzymes. The plant, depicted in this computer-generated model, began construction early this year. PHOTO: DONG ENERGY

¦BIOGAS


Near Manchester, United Kingdom, Dong Energy is constructing the first biogas plant using its REnescience technology that

treats unsorted household waste with enzymes. BY RON KOTRBA

A Wiser Wayto Handle Waste

Early this year, construction began on a unique plant at a 100-plus-year-old brown-fi eld site near the historic blue-collar city of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Project

owner Dong Energy calls it a “world’s fi rst.” Us-ing enzymes, the facility will produce biogas from 120,000 tons of unsorted household waste, equiva-lent to garbage from 110,000 residential homes. The fact that this waste is unsorted, meaning no prior separation of the digestible organics from recyclable inorganics, at the source (i.e., residents placing mate-rials in designated bins) or the plant, is what’s truly unique about this project.


AN UNPLEASING MIX: The REnescience technology treats “black bin” household waste, which can contain a mix of organics, such as coffee grounds and various food scraps, and recyclable inorganic materials like plastic bottles, bags and wrapping materials.

Corporate Half Page Vertical Ad - BM.indd 1 3/23/2016 2:48:08 PM

The process to be employed at the new biogas facility in Northwich, Chesire, is Dong Energy’s REnescience technol-ogy, which has been proven since 2009 at a demonstration-scale plant in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Dong Energy is based. According to Ulrik Falkenberg Lending, senior commercial manager for Dong En-ergy’s REnescience commercial division, the 1-ton-per-hour demonstration plant has logged more than 15,000 hours of run time, testing a variety of wastes from Euro-pean markets, at various settings using dif-ferent enzymes.

“The REnescience technology started its first development back in 2005, as a spin-off from the Inbicon technology—proprietary technology using enzymes with biomass also developed by Dong Energy,” Lending says. As in any proper scale-up, the REnescience technology was first proven in Dong Energy’s laboratory, followed by pilot-scale production prior to commis-sioning of the demonstration plant in 2009.

“With the REnescience Northwich Plant, the technology is now taken to a full-scale commercial level,” Lending says. He adds that important knowledge and im-provements have been gained from the lab, pilot and demo plants over the past decade. “The decision to build the first plant is a very important step in our roll-out of the REnescience biotechnology,” says Thom-as Dalsgaard, executive vice president of Dong Energy. “This is an entirely new way of treating household waste where we very effectively can ensure that we get as many resources as possible from our waste.”

The waste will be supplied by the U.K. waste management company FCC Envi-ronment, which already collects household waste in the region. “This is an exciting new technology for the disposal of munici-pal residual waste, which is potentially set to revolutionize our thinking as an indus-try of what can be achieved,” says Rich-ard Belfield, group development director with FCC Environment. “Not only does this technology convert waste into energy without the need for the combustion of the waste, it will, for the first time, be able to extract the valuable recyclable materials, which so far have been difficult if not out

¦BIOGAS


At this time, more litter is being produced than the industry is able to utilize e ectively. Currently, the primary use of poultry litter in the US is as fertilizer for pasture, hay, small grains, and corn‐producing � elds.Hurst is currently installing and manufacturing several invest-ment projects where Co-generation of steam and eletricity is being applied. � e bulk of the steam energy will be suppling

turbine driven generators producing electricity and sold on the local grid. � e excess steam will be directed to any plant

processing or contract leased to nearby outside facilities.

� e utilization of litter as a boiler fuel o ers many potential bene� ts on

investment and returns that can be shared economically with the local

community and poultry farmers alike.

55,000 tons of turkey litter a year to produce the equivalent of 95 million

kilowatt hours of electricity

GENTLE GIANT: The REnescience Northwich Plant will take in unsorted household waste and treat the materials gently with water, enzymes and enough heat for enzymatic hydrolysis. It will produce enough biogas to generate 5 MW of power.

SOURCE: DONG ENERGY

of reach in traditional municipal residual waste treatment processes.”

Lending says the plan is to subscribe to the U.K.’s Renewable Obligations scheme, “which is a subsidy paid to producers of green energy,” he explains. While much of the feedstock will be ordinary “black bin” household waste containing food, paper, plastics and metal, Lending says some of the areas from where FCC Environment collects have source segregated separate collection in place. In addition to the RO subsidy, Dong Energy will receive a tipping fee from FCC Environment when it re-ceives the waste, as is customary in the U.K.

“The solutions available on source separation have not delivered high recycling targets, even when combined with tradition-al material recovery facility and mechanical biological treatment technologies,” Lend-ing says. “In addition, the full solutions are overall fairly expensive.” Source separation solutions from high-rises in particular have not given good results, according to Lend-ing. This means untold tons of valuable re-cyclables from the most dense population centers are potentially headed for landfills, wasting precious resources and degrading the environment. For this reason, the abil-ity for Dong Energy’s REnescience tech-nology to take in unsorted household waste is vital.

The ProcessWhile no prior sorting is required, big,

bulky items such as “white goods”—re-frigerators, washers, dryers, air condition-ers—are screened out and will not be put into the system. Sorting of other recyclable material will eventually take place on-site,

¦BIOGAS


but only after the waste has been through the bioreactors. “Only big, bulky items are screened out prior to the waste being mixed with waste and enzymes,” Lending says. “All the remaining mixed organic and inorganic wastes go into the bioreactors.”

Here’s how the process works. The REnescience Northwich Plant will take in unsorted household waste and treat the mixed materials gently with water, enzymes and enough heat for enzymatic hydrolysis. “No shredding or cutting of the waste is

performed, and there is only slow, gentle movements in the bioreactors,” Lending ex-plains. This enables the solid fraction—the plastics and metals, for instance—to be sep-arated from the nonsolid or liquid fractions at the end of the bioreactors, where Lend-ing says all of the nonrecalcitrant biode-gradables are converted into a homogenous bioliquid. “This has two important results,” Lending says. “First, all the biodegradables can be used to create green power and heat, or the biogas can be upgraded by washing

out the carbon dioxide and injected into the gas grid. And second, the plastics and met-als come out very clean, now ready and eas-ily separated.”

In the ballistic separation process, the treated waste is separated into three com-ponents—a bioliquid fraction and two-di-mensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) solid fractions. The 2D fractions are mostly materials such as plastic wraps, tin foil and cloth or textiles. The 3D items are plastic cartons, cans, bottles and the like. The 3D fraction is transported to a washing drum, where surface residues are cleaned using re-cycled wash water.

After the ballistic separator, the 2D fraction is transported to a press, where liq-uid with organic fibers and residues is sepa-rated and mixed into the bioliquid stream. The 2D fraction is washed to improve stor-age stability and retain as much biomaterial as possible. After washing, a second press-ing takes place to increase dry matter con-tent. When the bioliquid exits the ballistic separator, it is mixed with bioliquid from the first pressing of the 2D fraction.

Lending says that compared to other types of mechanical biological treatment technologies and biogas processes, the steps taken in the REnescience plant are essentially reversed. “Instead of trying to separate the organics from the inorganics by tearing up the waste to sort it and then prepare the organics for anaerobic diges-tion, the REnescience technology dissolves and makes the organics ready for anaero-bic digestion and then the inorganics can be separated,” he says. This reversal of the process, so to speak, provides two main benefits in terms of recycling, according to Lending. “The biogas yield is high,” he says, “and the capture of recyclates is high, and they come out very clean providing for an attractive market value.” Inert materials re-covered from the process will be funneled to the secondary aggregates markets as road filling, for instance, and residual items of no value will undergo a thermal process such as incineration or cement kilning.

¦BIOGAS

Global ApplicationsThe REnescience Northwich Plant is

designed, financed, owned and operated by Dong Energy. Lending says capital expen-ditures to build the plant will be approxi-mately $90 million for this first-of-a-kind endeavor. The company would not disclose operational costs. On a cost-comparison basis to other biogas processes, the RE-nescience Northwich Plant is competitive, according to Lending, not only in the U.K. waste market where it will increase recycling performance compared to alternative solu-tions for household waste and contribute to the nation’s landfill diversion ambitions, but also globally. “We see the business being robust in different markets with different fundamental drivers and economic condi-tions,” Lending tells Biomass Magazine. “The application of the REnescience tech-nology can be structured and configured to meet different needs, depending on what the particular market interests are.”

He says Dong Energy is in the process of rolling out more REnescience plants globally. “The board of directors for Dong Energy sees the investment as an attractive investment, both standalone and for its po-tential to unlock a pipeline of coming RE-nescience plants in the U.K. as well as on a global basis.”

The plant is expected to produce enough biogas to generate 5 MW of elec-trical energy. Dong Energy is on track, ac-cording to Lending, to begin commission-ing early next year.

“REnescience is a brilliant new tech-nology and generates as many resources as possible from everyday household waste,” says Brent Cheshire, Dong Energy’s U.K. country chairman. “This new bio plant will see us handling waste in a much smarter way.”

Author: Ron KotrbaSenior Editor, Biomass Magazine

[email protected]

Visit www.pelletheat.org/pfi-annual-conference for more information

Key Topics: • Enhancing Pellet Operations • Preparing for OSHA Inspections• Exporting Pellets • Policies & Regulations Impacting the Industry • Pellet Fuel Standards

Who should attend:• Pellet Fuel Manufacturers• Industry Suppliers• Equipment Manufacturers• Pellet Buyers from International Markets• Retailers and Distributors• Federal, state, and local government biomass experts• Anyone interested in learning more about the densified biomass industry

For more information, contact PFI at [email protected] Pellet Fuels Institute, located in Seattle, Washington, is a North American trade association promoting energy independence through the efficient use of clean, renewable, densified biomass fuel. For more information, contact the Pellet Fuels Institute at (703) 522-6778 or visit www.pelletheat.org.

• Educational Sessions • Industry Exhibits • Networking Opportunities

Register Today

July 24-26, 2016The Omni Grove Park InnAsheville, North Carolina

CHIP STRONG. MORBARK® STRONG!

Morbark Strong. It’s more than a slogan; it’s a way of life for us. It’s our commitment to you that our heavy-duty equipment is built to withstand the rigors of even your toughest jobs.

All Morbark equipment is aggressive, productive and engineered to give you the power and features you need to maximize output, minimize downtime and enhance your profitability.

We custom-build your whole tree drum chipper to meet your exact specifications. Our dealers will partner with you to determine your needs — for now and in the future.

Our commitment to you extends beyond the sale with our ever-expanding dealer network, unmatched service and support teams, as well as expertise in helping you recognize and capitalize on potential business opportunities.

In short, our commitment to you is Morbark Strong!

Find your local authorized Morbark dealer at www.morbark.com/find-a-dealer

Track Options Cab & Loader Option MicroChipper Configuration Option Range of Sizes Available

Morbark Chip Strong-8-5x10-875.indd 1 3/28/2016 9:36:29 AM


AdvancedBiofuelsNews

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and U.S. EPA have entered a memorandum of understanding that allows the agen-cies to share renewable fuel standard (RFS) data and analysis. Under the agreement, the agencies agree to cooperate and coordinate on top-ics related to the implementation of the RFS program and the market for renewable identification numbers (RINs).

The CFTC and EPA intend to coordinate, cooperate and share information, including proprietary business information, in the pos-session of EPA with regard to the RIN and renewable fuels markets. The CFTC will use the information to advise EPA on techniques that could be employed to minimize fraud, market abuses or other viola-tions, and to conduct appropriate oversight on RIN and renewable fuel markets to aid EPA in successfully fulfilling its statutory functions under RFS regulations.

CFTC, EPA to share RFS data, analysis

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has updated its an-nual survey of U.S. nonstarch ethanol and renewable hydrocarbon bio-fuel producers. The report, titled “2015 Survey of Non-Starch Ethanol and Renewable Hydrocarbon Biofuel Producers,” provides an inven-tory of the domestic advanced biofuels industry as of the end of 2015.

NREL surveyed 114 companies last year. The questionnaire in-cluded topics such as facility stage of development, facility scale, feed-stock, and biofuel products.

The survey effort resulted in 61 facilities with sufficient data to be included in the report. This includes 27 cellulosic ethanol facilities, two algae-derived ethanol facilities, and 32 renewable hydrocarbon facilities. According to the report, 11 of the 29 nonstarch ethanol plants were operational last year, with five at commercial scale. In addition, 12 of the 32 renewable hydrocarbon facilities were operational as of the end of 2015.

NREL publishes results of annual advanced biofuel survey

Commerical-scale renewable hydrogen capacity as of 2015

Company Capacity (MMgy)

Operational year [anticipated]

AltAir Fuels 30 2015Cool Planet Energy Systems 10 [2017]Diamond Green Diesel 137 2013Emerald Biofuels 82 [2017]Fulcrum BioEnergy 10 [2017]KiOR 13 2013 (idled in 2014)Red Rock Biofuels 15.5 [2017]Renewable Energy Group Inc. 75 [2016]SG Preston (Ohio) 120 [2020]SG Preston (Indiana) 120 [2020]Sundrop Fuels 200 [2020]SOURCE: National Renewable Energy Laboratory


Once again, we enter spring awaiting the U.S. EPA’s proposal for the renewable volumes obligations (RVO) for the next year. After six years in this cycle, we know that EPA must propose a rule, take comments, and finalize the RVO by November 30, to comply with the law. This year, however, we have some new complicating factors, including pending lawsuits brought by the corn ethanol industry objecting to last year’s RVO, and other lawsuits filed by the oil industry that oppose lifting the biomass-based diesel pool without 14 months’ notice (and no proposed rule there either, as of yet).

In addition, for those trying to run a business and plan for the future, the fate of biofuels tax credits remains uncer-tain, with all set to expire at the end of the year, with little to no conversation about when or if Congress will extend any of them. At least most recently, we have seen oil make a 40 percent comeback to almost $40 per barrel, which some-what stabilizes the market and sends a short-term signal that perhaps the bottom has finally been found. So, where do we stand at this point?

I would argue that these factors have once again led to suspended animation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) and the future of the biofuels industry. This begs the ques-tion: What can we do? As a pragmatic optimist, I believe we must start by digging in and staying the course by producing quality biofuels, improving technologies and becoming more cost efficient. Although more complicated, we must also find ways to work with the government in the near-term to help drive our future.

Obviously, we are in a presidential election year. The immediate operation of the RFS program is dependent on the current administration. At the end of any administration, concern shifts to “legacy,” and focus tends to be redirected to fewer items. This may mean that some civil servants could seize an opportunity not to act on some programs until the next administration takes charge.

While sitting it out for a year may be an option for the government, it does nothing for the business community that must continue to make investments, run existing facilities and pay employees. Therefore, we must stay engaged with the government, as it has a responsibility to do its job. We must continue to explain the benefits of our fuels. We should en-sure that we not only comment on the RVO rules, but also continue to lobby hard for fixing the issues, such as the in-

termediate feedstock/colocation regulatory designations that limit our ability to bring more advanced fuels to the market-place. Similarly, we cannot allow the EPA to drag it’s feet on the simple plant registrations and the approval of new path-ways for technologies and feedstocks.

In an election year, we have the opportunity to meet the candidates who are asking for our vote. We must seize the chance to tell them about our industry and what we need the government to deliver. We must tell them that we need rules implemented with efficiency, and to maintain the overall health of RFS program. As for the lawsuits, we must let the courts run their course. For the current law in effect, however, we must engage both the agencies directly in person, through comments submissions, or by pushing your trade association to do both on your behalf. Individually, you are the face of the industry, and the more you directly engage with the can-didates themselves, the better they will appreciate how impor-tant it is for the government to work for and on behalf of the advanced biofuels industry to improve the lives and security of the people of this great nation.

This industry has grown immensely since the initial pas-sage of the RFS. We stand as the largest producers of renew-able biofuels in the world. But there is much more to achieve, and many more advanced fuels on the cusp of giving the world needed energy and sustainability moving forward. As the number of people in the world continues to grow, the number of airplane miles flown increases, and the amount of trade on our oceans swells, we must develop more sus-tainable fuels, if we are to protect our climate. Addressing climate continues to be one of the major reasons to support and develop advanced and cellulosic biofuels. Therefore, we must continue to remind politicians and governments around the world of this option for fighting climate change in the future. We have our work cut out for us to push through the roadblocks before us. Let’s make every day this year count for something moving forward, not only for the U.S., but also for the future of the people of the world.

Author: Michael McAdamsPresident, Advanced Biofuels Association

[email protected]

Tenacity Required to Secure Advanced Biofuels FutureBY MICHAEL MCADAMS

ADVANCED BIOFUELS AND CHEMICALS¦


PREVENTINGProduction Problemsin the Lab Increasing biofuel demand will require next-generation laboratory software solutions.BY TRISH MEEK AND BARBARA VAN CANN

Reduced oil prices have been bad news for oil industry profits. It hasn’t been easy for renewables, either. Despite damp-ened enthusiasm for renewables overall,

innovation continues in areas such as biofuel pro-duction.

In late March, United Airlines announced that it will use biofuel to help power flights run-ning between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with future plans to expand to all flights operating out of LAX. A small step indeed, but a positive sign that biofuel production remains viable for the future.

Now that United has publicly committed to biofuels, it must be able to rely on a steady Sup-ply. In this case, it will come from a Los Ange-les refinery operated by AltAir Fuels. The total mixture will be 30 percent biofuel, sourced from feedstocks that include algae, and 70 percent tra-ditional jet fuel.

The United announcement is part of a groundswell of activity across the transportation sector. From air to sea, to rail to over-the-road, major consumers of fuel are eyeing more afford-able solutions that also comply with mandates re-lated to clean air. The view appears positive, and the biofuels industry should be and is thinking about a future of higher production volume and greater quality. That means production efficiency and productivity, which puts biofuel labs back on the spot to demonstrate their critical enterprise value.

As biofuel producers refocus on a more op-timistic future, they will turn their attention back to the complexity of their processes. With the po-tential for increased demand comes the increased risk of production failure. Batch failure is magni-fied when production accelerates, so labs will in-creasingly rely on new analytical technologies and new software solutions that enable them to more closely monitor, analyze and report. This ranges from gas chromatography (GC), ion chroma-tography and fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to inductively coupled plasma mass

spectrometry (ICP-MS), all of which generate volumes of data.

Volumes of data can soon lead to mountains of challenges, from daily lab operations to more complex pattern recognition that could expose risks, such batch failure. Without a solution such as a laboratory information management system (LIMS), these mountains quickly become impos-sible to summit.

The LIMS brings discipline to an environ-ment with many complex, moving parts. Enter-prise-level LIMS, designed for integration across the lab and with other enterprise systems, can seamlessly connect with and work in harmony with other systems, such as a chromatography data system (CDS). In the next-generation bio-fuels lab, a CDS is critical to ensuring the quality of biofuels, which has everything to do with ad-herence to required gas and ion chromatographic methods.

As modern biofuel laboratories select equip-ment that is most suitable for specific analyses, they commonly choose from a variety of chroma-tography instruments from different manufactur-ers. Using a manufacturer-specific CDS for each instrument can lead to complications regarding efficiency, data handling, training, validation and compliance. The selection of a CDS with multi-vendor instrument control, including acquisition and data handling of MS instruments, overcomes these challenges. In addition, data storage and handling can be decoupled from instrument con-trol and centralized, a so-called enterprise of the client-server system, increasing the security and accessibility of the data. With all data from instru-ments in the same format and one common re-port for results, regardless of the instrument that was used to generate them, the efficiency gains and productivity increases are considerable.

A major requirement in production labora-tories is ensuring the highest instrument uptime to produce results at every time of day. Especially when running in a client-server system, keeping the laboratory fully up and running during a net-

work outage, planned or not, is a big challenge. Therefore, a CDS should allow operation inde-pendent of the network, so that even when the network is down, the CDS keeps instruments running, data accessible for processing, and even allows creation and running of new sequences, ensuring 24/7 laboratory uptime.

By guiding technicians through the execution of analytical methods, the CDS drives the labo-ratory processes related to all aspects of a chro-matographic analysis. Some CDS provide an even higher level of automation by encapsulating all of the unique aspects of a chromatography work-flow, like instrument control and data processing parameters, correct injection order and reporting parameters, and guiding the operator through the minimal number of steps required to run it. The operator simply selects an instrument, specifies the number of samples and the starting vial posi-tion in the autosampler, and begins the analysis. The software then runs the chromatograph, pro-cesses the data, and produces final results.

Take, for example, ASTM D6584 and EN 14105, the main quantitative quality control methods for the determination of glycerol and glycerides in pure biodiesel by GC. When bio-diesel (B100) is derived from vegetable oils, such as sunflower and palm oil, glycerol is created as a byproduct. Mono-, di- and triglycerides, created as intermediates or unreacted starting material, also occur. These methods test for the presence of glycerol and glycerides in the final product, which is important because of their negative impact on fuel efficiency and engine performance.

While both of these analyses differ in small ways, there are some common elements. Both methods require complex and time-consuming sample and calibration standard preparation. Samples are run in duplicate and compared to de-termine analytical precision. With only a few clicks in the CDS, users can create and start a run and data analysis according to the requirements in the ASTM methods is automatically performed.

The next step in the chromatography pro-cess, data processing and evaluation, is the most time-consuming step. Even with all data process-ing parameters correctly set up in the automated chromatography workflow, technicians need to decide if a sample requires re-analyzing, based on the results. Advanced features, such as intelligent run control, allow users to setup system suitability tests with pass/fail criteria, testing for acceptance criteria of the calibrations, checks and samples. The software can then respond to the outcome of these tests, such as failed sample replicates or standards, and without user intervention, take predefined, immediate action, such as reinject-ing the samples, performing a dilution or abort-ing the run. As this can even happen overnight,


¦ADVANCED BIOFUELS AND CHEMICALS


Preventing Production Problems in the Lab

productivity is increased and a source for errors removed.

Final results can be sent directly to the LIMS. A seamless integration between the CDS and LIMS ensures a quick response to all quality results. Any samples that fail to meet the speci-fications established by ASTM and EN are ap-propriately flagged as out of specification in the LIMS and preventative action can be taken. This level of automation across the laboratory pro-cess ensures product quality and boosts labora-tory productivity.

Conclusion

A LIMS is a proven workhorse in the bio-fuels industry, especially because it is uniquely suited to highly distributed lab environments with multiple instrument platforms, workflows and standard operating procedures. Although instruments perform discrete tasks and gener-ate data for specific purposes, data integration is vital and a LIMS is critical to achieving an end-to-end flow of information across the lab and across all processes. To ensure efficient, safe and profitable biofuels production, labs must be able to support continuous process monitoring and manage the data outputs in a way that is useful to stakeholders across the enterprise when, where and how they need it.

Third-generation biofuel production pro-cesses are dynamic and complex. It can take weeks for feedstock to break down, and finding a problem at the end is costly. Labs must be able to use even more sensitive analytical instruments and multilayer software infrastructure that en-ables instrument-, lab- and enterprise-level in-sight and decision-making across the production process.

Author: Trish MeetSenior Manager, Product Marketing Informatics

& Chromatography SoftwareThermo Fisher Scientific

Co-Author: Barbara van Cann

Software Product Marketing Specialist, Informatics and Chromatography Software Company

Thermo Fisher Scientific www.thermofisher.com

Integrating LIMS and CDS allows the lab to effectively remove eight manual processes, giving you one streamlined automated process – leaving only one manual process – putting the sample into the instrument and hitting the “GO” button.


Biomass Magazine Marketplace

BROWSE CATEGORIECATEGORIECA S BROWSE COMPANIECOMPANIECOMP S

cleaning| FIND

Adhesive compounds withstand:• Acids • Bases • Organic Solvents

[email protected] ∙ +1.201.343.8983

Experience & Innovation Working for You

mseco.com501-321-2276

From the feedstock handling to the final emission controls, let us utilize our expertise and 46+ years of experience to engineer solutions for your specific needs.

CONTACTUS TODAY

Atlanta - Boston - California - North Carolina

AREAS OF FOCUS• Renewable/ Alternative • Efficiency• Agriculture• Water

SKILLS• Engineers• Sales• Industry Experts• Operational Support

Additional areas of focus/skills/searches atHTPROFgroup.com/H.T.PROF-Clean-Tech

Recruiting ‘KEY’ individuals since 1997

Contact - Todd [email protected] 844-448-7763

WEBINAR SERIES

GAIN MAXIMUM EXPOSURE& CONTACT INFO

L i v e + O n D e m a n dwww.BiomassMagazine.com/pages/webinar

� Website� All emails� Advertisements� Webinar page on

BiomassMagazine.com� OnDemand material� Attendee Information

Sponsor Featured On:

Contact us today for more information [email protected] or 866-746-8385


WHEN WE SEE A DISCOVERY, WE SHARE IT.

Cleanly Convert WasteTo Renewable Energy

615.471.9299 www.phgenergy.com

Community-scale disposal solution for wood waste, tires and sludge

Delivers clean-burningfuel gas for electricalgeneration or thermal use

Extends landfill life andreduces carbon footprint

Proven Gasification systems with over 50,000 commercial operating hours

2016 may biomass magazine

Documents