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Understanding the positions of those opposed to the wood pellet industry is critical to overcoming and reconciling differences.  

The Ideological Divide

BioPower Sustainable Energy acquires Atikokan pellet plant BioPower Sustainable Energy Corp., a subsidiary of True North Timber, has acquired the assets of the former Rentech pellet plant in Atikokan, Ontario. The company plans to sell both commercial pellets and residential heating pellets. True North Timber agreed to acquire the assets of the Atikokan plant in December. The acquisition was completed Jan. 22. According to BioPower Sustainable Energy, the purchase allowed 25 local jobs to be maintained. Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in December indicate the base purchase price for the Atikokan assets was CAD $3.2 million. The facility began operations in late 2014. At that time, Rentech said the nameplate capacity of the facility was 100,000 metric tons (MT). The facility supplied 45,000 MT per year to Ontario Power Generation. Northern Forest Center wins industry award&nbsp; BBI International and Biomass Magazine named its annual industry award winners at the 11th International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo in Atlanta, Georgia, in mid-April, naming the Northern Forest Center as recipient of its Excellence in Bioenergy Award. The Excellence in Bioenergy award recognizes dynamic leaders in industry, academia and public policy that are fundamental to the growth of the bioenergy industry, demonstrating the drive and effort to help clear financial, technological or political hurdles that stymie expansion of the bioenergy industry. The Northern Forest Center has been instrumental in expanding modern wood heat in the Northeast U.S., with forest health and sustainability as the cornerstones of its work. Over the past 11 years, the NFC&rsquo;s programs have helped to secure and leverage $189 million for projects that benefit the region&rsquo;s communities, economy and forest stewardship, including support for 150 automated wood pellet heating systems. Accepting the award on behalf of the NFC was Maura Adams. Pinnacle enters new off-take contracts with Japanese customers On May 2, Pinnacle Renewable Holdings Inc. released first quarter 2018 financial results, reporting it generated record first quarter revenue, and announcing it has entered into new off-take contracts with customers in Japan. During the company&rsquo;s accompanying investor call, Robert McCurdy, chief executive officer of Pinnacle, discussed three contracts Pinnacle entered into during the quarter with customers in Japan. The first is an off-take contract with Ube for 70,000 metric tons per year (MTPY) of industrial wood pellets, with deliveries scheduled to begin in late 2019. The second is a long-term, take-or-pay contract that was signed April 23 with Tsusho Corp., a group member of Toyota. Under the Tsusho contract, Pinnacle will supply 30,000 MTPY of industrial wood pellets beginning in late 2021 for use in a Japanese power generation plant. Also on April 23, Pinnacle entered into a long-term, take-or-pay contract with Sumitomo Corp. for the supply of 75,000 MTPY of industrial wood pellets beginning in late 2022, for use in a Japan thermal power generation plant that is being converted to run on biomass. Michigan Wood Fuels joins PFI The Pellet Fuels Institute announced it has welcomed pellet manufacturer Michigan Wood Fuels back to the association. &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t be happier that Michigan Wood Fuels has made the decision to reengage with the Pellet Fuels Institute,&rdquo; said PFI Executive Director Tim Portz. &ldquo;If the PFI is going to be successful in its efforts to grow the market opportunity for our members, we have to have as many producers on board as we can.&rdquo; &ldquo;Michigan Wood Fuels is delighted to join the PFI,&rdquo; said Ben Rose, CEO of Michigan Wood Fuels. &ldquo;We look forward to working together with PFI to expand the market and educate the public about the benefits of pellets and their many uses.&rdquo; Michigan Wood Fuels is a fully integrated, hardwood pellet production facility located in Holland, Michigan, with an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons.

The NFCâ€™s Maura Adams, left, accepts the Excellence in Bioenergy Award from Anna Simet, editor of Biomass Magazine.

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Business Briefs

As many pellet manufacturers are likely aware, ISO TC 238 is the International Standards Organization Technical Committee through which numerous countries around the world are working together to develop standards for solid biofuels. While the efforts of ISO TC 238 are ongoing, they are greatly accelerated each year during the annual plenary and working group meetings, which are being held in Espoo, Finland, May 28 to June 1. This year, the U.S. will be represented by three delegates, including Scott Cedarquist, administrator of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers&rsquo; U.S. Technical Advisory Group (ASABE is the direct representative of ANSI), Georgia Biomass&rsquo;s Ritu Linhart, who is active on multiple ISO TC 238 Working Groups, and me, Chris Wiberg of Timber Products Inspection/ Biomass Energy Lab, and chairman of the U.S. TAG. These efforts are being sponsored by the Pellet Fuels Institute, as well as the employer of each delegate. While there are always projects at different levels of development within ISO TC 238, this year, there are some projects of significant interest. An issue has been raised with the test method for determining fines content&ndash;ISO 18846. This method has been challenged as not being representative of the true amount of fines in the sample tested. The reasons behind this challenge are complicated, so it is anticipated that this method will be reviewed in detail, and could be altered, and/or a new method created, which could change the way fines are measured. We are expecting this to be a significant point of discussion and debate within the assigned working group. This issue is of particular interest to wood pellet producers who supply export power markets, due to an emphasis on fines content as part of contractual requirements. This project is expected to be jointly led by the U.S. and U.K. A U.S.-led project of interest is a New Work Item Proposal for the determination of water sorption, and its effect on durability in thermally treated biomass fuel pellets. For biomass thermal treatment technology initiatives, a common selling point is that the material becomes water resistant and can be stored outside. This test method is designed to determine how much water sorption occurs in thermally treated biomass fuel pellets when immersed in water, and also assesses the durability of the product both before and after immersion. A weathered durability index is calculated as the difference between the durability of the as-received sample and the durability of the wetted product. Additionally, the amount of fines created as a result of immersion is reported as &ldquo;weathered fines.&rdquo;&nbsp; This project is in its very early stages. Also in development is a test method for hardgrove grindability in thermally treated biomass. The coal industry has long since had a test method for hardgrove grindability index, which is used to assess the hardness of coal and how much energy is required to grind it to a certain particle size. This test method has been of little use for the biomass industry due to the fibrous nature of biomass, which does not pulverize under pressure as coal does. The biomass industry is still in need of a similar test to determine grinding energy, and years of effort have not been fruitful&mdash;until now. This method has been proposed by Germany as a new work item, and is applicable to thermally treated biomass, as it has properties similar to coal.&nbsp; Yet another initiative that will be discussed is a test method for ash fusibility. This method has been in development for several years, and with successful validations over the past year, it is finally taking shape. Ash fusibility (the melting of ash into slag) is very complicated, and it is worth noting that when the European method for ash fusibility was published in 2006, it was published as a technical specification, and not as a complete standard.&nbsp; This was due to issues with repeatability/reproducibility. This new method brings consistency to the measuring process, and has gone through great effort to assure consistent interpretation by computer systems and analysts in the laboratories. It will likely be another year before final publication, however, this method is well on its way to publication. The project is being led by Austria. There are several other initiatives in the works, including a simplified sampling method proposed by Germany for small-scale applications, a French proposal for modifying the wood chip specification standard (ISO 17225-4) to include a table for industrial grade wood chips, and several safety standards that have been developing over the past few years, some of which are now approaching publication. In conclusion, there is a lot going on within ISO TC 238. The U.S. Technical Advisory Group currently has approximately 50 members and is administered by ASABE. We are always looking for interested individuals to join our efforts in reviewing these standards as they are developed, to ensure they are well-thought-out, and reflective of U.S. interests in the global solid biofuels industry.&nbsp; If you would like to join the TAG, please contact Scott Cedarquist at ASABE (cedarq@asabe.org). Author: Chris Wiberg Manager, Biomass Energy Laboratory 218-428-3583 cwiberg@tpinspection.com

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While the efforts of ISO TC 238 are ongoing, they are greatly accelerated each year during the annual plenary and working group meetings, which are being held in Espoo, Finland, May 28 to June 1. 

Busy Time for  ISO TC 238 

In April, at the International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo in Atlanta, I participated in my first biomass industry association roundtable to discuss the relative strengths of our industry segments, and the news of the day. I was joined onstage by colleagues from the Biomass Power Association, American Biogas Council, Biomass Thermal Energy Council and the Renewable Thermal Coalition. The panel provided me another opportunity to talk about Operation 100k, the Pellet Fuels Institute&rsquo;s strategic initiative to reestablish 100,000 as the annual floor for heating appliance sales. As I was preparing my notes that morning, I wondered if it would be possible to calculate what the market would look like had Operation 100k been launched a decade ago, and been successful. Very quickly, I had a spreadsheet open, and was populating cells with sales figures that I found in the June 2017 issue of Hearth &amp; Home Magazine. I then built a formula that would calculate the overage and shortfall each year. Incidentally, pellet appliance sales eclipsed the 100,000 unit mark just one time in the past 10 years (141,208 in 2008). Even with 2008&rsquo;s overage, the industry missed a 100,000-appliance-per-year average from 2008-&lsquo;17 by nearly 350,000 units. From there, I went to work on quantifying the annual impact of those missed sales. To better understand the impact of our fuel manufacturer members, I calculated an estimated lost demand by assuming pellet consumption for each of those appliances at 2 to 3 tons per year, giving me a range of 700,000 and 1.05 million tons. At the average wholesale price of $185 per ton, that represents between $129 and $195 million in revenue, to say nothing of the $40 million to $60 million dollars of margin that our downstream retail partners would have generated (calculated from the average retail price per ton, less the average wholesale price per ton). Together, the total falls somewhere between $170 million and $250 million in lost revenue per year. Our industry cannot afford to let another decade of lackluster appliance sales pass. Our journey toward 100,000 annual pellet appliance sales seems daunting in the face of the numbers from the past decade, but nevertheless, shoring up demand by focusing on appliance sales is priority one. Our members operate businesses that need to run as near to their production capacity as possible to maximize their profit potential. Operation 100k recognizes that, and puts market expansion right in the middle of what the PFI dedicates itself to. The most obvious challenge we&rsquo;ll have to confront as we work to turn demand around is our lack of touchpoints with consumers when they are making home and space heating decisions. Pellet manufacturers get involved in heating the homes of consumers only after they have decided upon a pellet-burning appliance. If a consumer selects an appliance that uses a nonpellet fuel source, wood pellet demand is unaffected. As an industry, we&rsquo;ve got to figure out a way to get the value of pellet heat in front of customers earlier in their decision-making process. This is the challenge that PFI has resolved to overcome. The good news is that our members have strong relationships with the specialty hearth retailers in their markets. If our industry has any chance of meaningfully impacting the demand side of this business, we&rsquo;ll have to revisit those relationships, and develop a strong argument for why and how retailers should and can move more pellet-burning appliances. We don&rsquo;t know all of the answers, and we&rsquo;ll be the first to admit that, but the more that we think about this question of &ldquo;How do we grow the market for our product?,&rdquo; the more certain we are that it is the right one to be asking. Author: Tim Portz Executive Director, Pellet Fuels Institute tim@pelletheat.org www.pelletheat.org

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The most obvious challenge the pellet industry will confront as we work to turn demand around is our lack of touchpoints with consumers when they are making home and space heating decisions.

Mathematics of Demand

Biomass&rsquo; carbon neutrality and forest sustainability have been two topics of heated debate, especially over the past decade, as the global wood pellet industry has flourished. Largely, there are two starkly different viewpoints, either pro or antibiomass, with seemingly little room for compromise. When Senior Editor Ron Kotrba proposed writing a balanced article detailing both sides of the argument, we knew it was important to do just that&mdash;balance, as objectively as possible, both sides of the equation. As an advocacy trade journal, that can be tricky to do, without much bias. Our readers are mostly the people who work on this topic and in the trenches of this industry every day&mdash;scientists, foresters, appliance and equipment manufacturers, plant managers, etc.&mdash;and along with their passion for biomass energy and wood pellets comes a great deal of frustration, when someone on the outside doesn&rsquo;t understand, or&mdash;particularly when it&rsquo;s a member of the media writing a flashy headline&mdash;portray industry dynamics. I believe Kotrba hit the nail on the head, when it comes to thoughtfully presenting both viewpoints. For his page 11-feature &ldquo;The Ideological Divide,&rdquo; Kotrba spoke with a number of sources on each side, including the Dogwood Alliance, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Nebraska Forest Service, Enviva, Spacial Informatics Group and more. In it, Thomas Buchholz, a senior scientist who leads SIG&rsquo;s forest and agriculture team, pointed to one of the biggest challenges the biomass industry faces with this argument&mdash;its size, and the fact that there will always be some poor examples to point at, even though there are many, many great examples to highlight. &ldquo;With biomass, we can point to horrible examples from sustainability and carbon perspectives, down to other systems that are no-brainers in terms of carbon friendliness and sustainability,&rdquo; he said, adding that, acknowledging these kinds of cases&mdash;instead of ignoring or denying them&mdash;and hard-lining against them as an industry, may be best way to exemplify what it really stands for. As Kotrba writes, &ldquo;Closemindedness, particularly when affixed to hardline positions and unbendable philosophies, cannot bridge ideological gaps. Sometimes, nothing can.&rdquo; Also in this issue, we have included a broader piece on wood pellets and their role in the growing Asian bioenergy market, and a story detailing a promising biomass dewatering technology, as we have tied feedstock logistics into this sustainability theme. They go hand in hand, after all, and the industry can&rsquo;t continue to grow and succeed without being smart and innovative about both.&nbsp; Author: Anna Simet Editor asimet@bbiinternational.com

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Biomass' carbon neutrality and forest sustainability have been two topics of heated debate, especially over the past decade, as the global wood pellet industry has flourished.

The â€œSâ€� Word, Points and Counterpoints

There is no doubt that Asia&rsquo;s demand for biomass is growing rapidly, but a big unknown is how much of a role wood pellets will play in meeting the emerging demand, and where will those pellets come from. Wood pellet imports into South Korea and Japan have grown exponentially in the past few years. In 2017, South Korea imported 2.4 metric tons (MT) of wood pellets, 20 times what was imported in 2012. Japan is currently a smaller market, but its growth has also been impressive. Japan imported over 0.5 MT in 2017, a seven-fold increase from 2012. South Korea&rsquo;s biomass demand has been supported by its renewable portfolio standard, which requires all energy companies with an installed capacity exceeding 500 MW to obtain an increasing share of their electricity from renewable energy sources. To satisfy their RPS requirements, generators can either produce their own renewable energy, or purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) from other renewable energy generators. Failure to meet the RPS target results in a fine of 1.5 times the traded price of RECs. A handful of independent power producers (IPPs) have begun producing power from biomass to earn RECs, and sell them to generators obligated under the RPS. The RECs are weighted depending on the technology. For example, producing power in a dedicated wood pellet or woodchip-fired biomass plant would earn 1.5 RECs per megawatt-hour, whereas using palm kernel shells (PKS) would earn 1 REC/MWh. Cofiring of any biomass fuel earns fixed support of 1REC/MWh. However, much uncertainty currently surrounds the Korean subsidy system. The government is considering changing the REC weightings of certain technologies including wood pellets, which could mean their value is significantly reduced. This would almost certainly jeopardize several IPP biomass projects. An announcement on the new values had been expected in April, but was delayed. As of early May, a new date is yet to be set. In Japan, the market has evolved differently from South Korea, and instead has been supported by a feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme that provides a 20-year subsidy to firms producing renewable energy. Biomass, specifically under the general wood category, has proved hugely popular. By March 2017, almost 12 GW of biomass projects had been approved under the FIT scheme, far exceeding the quantity envisaged under Japan&rsquo;s Best Energy Mix 2030 scenario of 2.7 to 4 GW. The huge scale of this potential growth in biomass demand has, understandably, drawn a lot of attention. Biomass producers and users worldwide are looking keenly to Asia, and wish to understand how the growing market may impact existing global trade flows. The outlook for Asian biomass demand is far from certain, however, and a wide range of variables could feasibly constrain its growth. Hawkins Wright therefore wanted to establish the true nature of the emerging biomass market. Over several months, we carried out extensive fieldwork, site visits, meetings, quantitative and qualitative analysis. This research has provided us with unique insights that are published in a new, multiclient report, &ldquo;Strategic Assessment of Asian Pacific Biomass Demand and Supply out to 2030.&rdquo; An important part of that study was identifying viable sources of available biomass that could meet the needs of this new market. We wanted to determine not just how much biomass will be needed, but where it will come from. Currently, a lot of the region&rsquo;s biomass demand is from coal-fired power plants cofiring wood pellets. But looking ahead, a growing proportion of the new demand will consist of dedicated biomass plants. Those dedicated plants will utilize circulated fluidized bed boilers, which are much more fuel flexible then pulverized coal boilers, and therefore not restricted to using just wood pellets. It could be assumed that generators will therefore source more local, cheaper alternative biomass such as PKS or wood chips, however, we have concluded that wood pellets will continue to play a very important role. We see great potential for wood pellets to fulfill the growing demand, and we predict a large percentage will come from North American suppliers. One major factor fueling our prediction is that many of the dedicated plants in Japan and South Korea will be developed by IPPs funded by debt. If a project developer intends to finance a power project with debt, lenders will almost certainly want a secure feedstock supply contract to be agreed with a bankable counterparty. Conversely, a project financed by a parent company&rsquo;s balance sheet, or a utility intending to cofire biomass with coal at fairly low rates, may deem a long-term fuel contract unnecessary or too expensive. From our research, we have identified a number of companies that could be deemed bankable, but none are currently in Southeast Asia. Therefore, Asian buyers looking for bankable supply may need to source wood pellets from North America, where there are creditworthy, large-scale producers with a reliable track record. That trend is already evident in the high interest that Japan has shown in western Canada. But at the point where all affordable supply in Canada is utilized, the Japanese will start to look elsewhere in North America. The U.S. South is an obvious choice, given its 8 MT of installed, industrial-grade nameplate capacity. Already, U.S. wood pellet producer Enviva has secured contracts with Japanese buyers. However, challenging logistics and high transport costs will be a barrier to producers in the U.S. South wanting to export to Asia, and how well those challenges can be overcome will influence how much supply can be secured. Meanwhile, some South Korean IPPs planning dedicated biomass power plants could follow a similar train of thought to their Japanese counterparties. However, it is unlikely the five South Korean gencos will change their purchasing habits. They cofire wood pellets at low rates (3 to 5 percent) at a few of their coal-fired stations, and are obligated to purchase via a tender system. This system has favored low-cost supply, with no importance put on security or quality, and has helped establish the SE Asian supply market, specifically Vietnam&rsquo;s dominance in the region. Vietnam accounted for 62 percent of South Korea&rsquo;s imports in 2017, sending over 1.5 MT. Another factor likely to encourage demand for wood pellets is the high level of competition for biomass supply in SE Asia. From our experience in the pulp and paper industry, it is clear that wood chip supply is under pressure in the region, and although there are abundant resources of PKS, transportation limitations and its current use by palm oil mills will severely limit exports. There will be a role for SE Asian wood pellet suppliers, too, especially once a more liquid spot market emerges in the region, though that is not to say long-term contracts will not be signed with SE Asian suppliers. In the near-term, however, as the large pipeline of Asian projects work toward securing financing, we predict more contracts will be signed with North American suppliers. Time will show whether suppliers in SE Asia are able to demonstrate sufficient creditworthiness to increase their contracted supply volumes. For a more detailed analysis of the Asian Pacific market, including demand forecasts, in-depth analysis of feedstock resources (including pellets, chips and PKS), biomass supply costs and paying capabilities, contact Hawkins Wright to learn more about our new report. &nbsp; Author: Rachael Levinson Biomass Research Manager, Hawkins Wright Ltd. rachael@hawkinswright.com www.hawkinswright.com

South Korea and Japan 2017 wood pellet imports.

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Historic biomass demand in Japan and South Korea, 2015-â€˜17.

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There is no doubt that Asia's demand for biomass is growing rapidly, but a big unknown is how much of a role wood pellets will play in meeting the emerging demand, and where will those pellets come from.

Wood Pellets in the Emerging Asian Biomass Market

In the bioenergy sector, the most promising of concepts can be incredibly challenging to successfully scale, and many end up in the proverbial graveyard of innovative ideas. But for Sweden-based Drinor, the light at the end of the commercialization tunnel is visible. And, in their opinion, it&rsquo;s very bright. Drinor&rsquo;s patented technology, which squeezes water out of biomass via a mechanical process involving a pair of rollers and a perforated steel sheet, has been evolving the past seven years. It&rsquo;s a simple concept&mdash;perhaps nearly too simple to believe without skepticism that it will make the incredible difference in operational costs that Drinor believes it can. Sefan Sobota of Switzerland is the man behind the initial concept, having realized the idea after seeing large stacks of residuals in Swedish Forests. The intention wasn&rsquo;t always to focus on the pellet industry&mdash;at the beginning, the impetus was to figure out a way such that the V&auml;rmland region&rsquo;s robust pulp and paper industry could save money, beginning with a team of engineers, economists and forestry experts, and resulting in development of Drinor AB. &ldquo;The idea began as a way to reduce transportation costs, allowing a wider transport range,&rdquo; explains Alexander Thelander, sales executive. &ldquo;In Karlstad, everyone breathes pulp and paper, and biomass.&rdquo; &nbsp;&ldquo;The pellet [sector] doesn&rsquo;t have big profit margins, and there is a demand for a solution to increase profits,&rdquo; he continues. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hoped that the dewatering press will be able to contribute to this in particular&mdash;we think it will be most effective here. Our goal for past three years has been to prove, with a full-scale industrial machine installed in a pellet mill, that it works.&rdquo; Proving the Concept Traditional drying methods draw water out of biomass via heat, Thelander says, but with Drinor&rsquo;s technology, material is pressed at about 13,000 psi in a roller nip, allowing for about half of the water to be squeezed out, prior to sending it to the dryer. He compares the technology to hanging a saturated rag out to dry, versus tightly wringing it out, then setting it out to dry. At its R&amp;D headquarters in Karlstad, a pilot continuous dewatering press (CDP) is available for testing, and tailor-made trials.&nbsp; And using a Swedish Energy Agency grant of SEK 4 million ($467,000), the small team at Drinor&mdash;just three, for now&mdash;implemented a large-scale demonstration unit at a pellet plant, Rindi Pellets, and has results to share. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a 70,000-ton-per-year mill, and we installed it in February,&rdquo; Thelander says. &ldquo;The goal was to make sure we covered their needs, by processing about 20 tons of material per hour, and reaching the low 40 percent moisture content range.&rdquo; Testing, which is being done in partnership with Karlstad University and the Swedish Energy Agency, has indicated moisture ranges as low as 37 percent, and the machine is now running continuously. &ldquo;When you put a new machine into place, you think there might be a lot of problems&mdash;there always are when you go from very small-scale to much bigger&mdash;but we have had great results so far, and we expect a lot from the trials,&rdquo; Thelander says. What might be of particular interest to producers located in regions that experience harsh winter conditions is how the machine has handled frozen material. &ldquo;We weren&rsquo;t sure how it would test,&rdquo; Thelander says. In -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), with an efficiency loss of only about 3 to 4 percent, the water still leaves the material. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s great for regions where things are difficult in the winter, and they experience a loss in capacity,&rdquo; he adds. Talking Numbers Overall, Drinor believes that, when retrofitting an existing pellet plant with a CDP&mdash;removing 55 to 60 percent of moisture&mdash;operational costs can be reduced by about half. At least, for a typical pellet plant in Sweden. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s mostly with the dryers&mdash;that energy use that goes away,&rdquo; Thelander explains. &ldquo;The energy need for our machine is almost nothing, which makes a big difference in the numbers,&rdquo; Thelander says. The machines have a small footprint&mdash;about 25 square meters&mdash;and another benefit is that once material has been processed, it&rsquo;s much softer. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re doing trials with hammer mills right now, to study the effects,&rdquo; Thelander says. &ldquo;The operational costs we talk about are all across the process&mdash;including the dryers, hammer mills, and material handling, as it gets lighter.&rdquo; Pellet tests and comparison between dewatered and nonprocessed sawdust have been performed, and so far, results show equal or better quality and performance in comparison to conventionally dried biomass&mdash;in particular, ash content. Pellets made from material processed by the CDP have tested at a 20 percent reduction in ash content. &ldquo;We wondered why that was initially,&rdquo; Thelander says. &ldquo;But it became obvious&mdash;if you dry saltwater, the salt is still left there. Since we squeeze the water out, a lot of stuff comes out with the water, the things that usually become ash, so now that&rsquo;s handled in the water stream.&rdquo; An additional benefit of installing a CDP in a retrofit situation is upscaling capacity, according to Thelander. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s much faster, pressing the water out, so you can upscale your dryer and almost double the capacity.&rdquo; For a new build, the capital costs&mdash;considering the smaller space requirements, less handling of equipment, and reduced expenditures for RTOs and thermal dryers, Thelander says a 50 percent cost cut in capital costs could be achieved&mdash;about $30 million in cost savings on a $100 million plant. &ldquo;If you put the press first in the whole [supply] chain, it will affect all of the process steps,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;A question that we got recently was, how could this affect the actual cost of pellets&mdash;we think it could be up to 30 percent, which would have a great effect on the market, especially private markets&mdash;we&rsquo;re not only focusing on industrial use. If the costs can be cut like that, perhaps it will have an effect on demand for pellets, as a result.&rdquo; And the pellet market isn&rsquo;t the only industry the CDP could have implications on. Besides chips, sawdust has been successfully tested, as well as bagasse, and Drinor sees sawmills, biomass contractors, heat and power plants, as well as ethanol and biogas plants as other potential markets. The combination of force and pressure&mdash;resulting in a much softer material, as aforementioned&mdash;affects materials in such a way that it makes it particularly suitable for&nbsp; enzymatic treatment before biomass is processed into industrial sugars or biogas, as the enzymes or other additives have access to the core of the material, and the cracked cell structure will increase the process yield, Drinor believes. The water pressed out of the material contains carbohydrates, the level of which depends on the chosen process, and the water itself can work as an substrate for biogas production. Jonas Berghel, an environmental and energy systems professor at Karlstad University, has followed the technology for the past several years, and believes in it. &ldquo;Drinor has moved the border of possibilities for mechanical dewatering of biomass,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure this will be a difference-maker for energy use within a couple of years.&rdquo; Maybe even sooner. Right now, an initial zero series of machines are being developed and produced for customers signed up on a queuing list, manufacturing of which is being done by an experienced European machine developer working with Drinor, which hopes to replicate this business model elsewhere. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re a small company, so we&rsquo;re not looking to do everything ourselves,&rdquo; Thelander says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a patented technique, so we&rsquo;re looking for partners around the globe to license it. We want to further develop the process, because there are other possibilities for the machine&mdash;so many interesting fields. In the U.S. and Canada, we want to tell everyone what we&rsquo;re doing, but we would like to find people to do this with.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an intensive phase, but we&rsquo;ve had so much fun moving this forward,&rdquo; adds Carl Romlin, financial executive at Drinor. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re planning for the next move regarding investment, focusing on building a strong know-how in terms of our R&amp;D, and letting others help us with manufacturing and installation.&rdquo; But realistically, how soon could a CDP be available? &ldquo;We hope to get more machines in the market during the fall,&rdquo; Thelander says. &ldquo;When it comes to the American market, it&rsquo;s just getting our partner agreements together&mdash;it won&rsquo;t be too long.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Editor, Pellet Mill Magazine asimet@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4961

Drinorâ€™s Alexander Thelander and Carl Romlin stand next to the companyâ€™s first continuous dewatering press installation at Rindi Pellets in Vansbro, Sweden. 

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The combination of force and pressure from the CDP results in a much softer biomass material, requiring less hammermilling and providing additional benefits for purposes beyond pellet manufacturing, such as enzymatic treatment.  

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Testing of the CDP, which is being done in partnership with Karlstad University and the Swedish Energy Agency, has indicated  processed biomass moisture ranges as low as 37 percent. 

2018/05/DrinorRollers-PelletMill_15265870718072.jpg

Drinorâ€™s patented technology squeezes water out of biomass using a mechanical process involving a pair of rollers and a perforated steel sheet. 

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Swedish company Drinor has developed a machine it believes could be a game-changer for pellet production.   

May-June Pellet Mill Magazine

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Busy Time for ISO TC 238

Mathematics of Demand

The â€œSâ€� Word, Points and Counterpoints

Featured

The Ideological Divide

Pressing for Wider Profit Margins

Contributions

Wood Pellets in the Emerging Asian Biomass Market

May-June Pellet Mill Magazine.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Busy Time for ISO TC 238

Mathematics of Demand

The â€œSâ€� Word, Points and Counterpoints

Featured

The Ideological Divide

Pressing for Wider Profit Margins

Contributions

Wood Pellets in the Emerging Asian Biomass Market

May-June Pellet Mill Magazine