The 9th National Bioenergy Day was celebrated on Oct. 20th.&nbsp; The week kicked off with a wonderful surprise&mdash;a proclamation from President Joe Biden recognizing National Forest Products Week. This statement spotlighted energy as a &ldquo;valuable&rdquo; forest product, and outlined the administration&rsquo;s support for &ldquo;biofuels, biochar, heat and power&rdquo; from forest materials. He also noted the jobs and extensive supply chain tied to the forestry sector. This statement closely followed a letter he sent to the American Loggers Council for their annual meeting just a few weeks earlier. The letter noted that &ldquo;healthy forests are an invaluable part of our economy&rdquo; and that &ldquo;forest products touch nearly every part of our daily lives.&rdquo;&nbsp; Taken together, these two presidential statements signal a strong interest in forestry and the entire supply chain that surrounds forest products, including biomass power. It&rsquo;s exciting that we&rsquo;ve been able to perpetuate Bioenergy Day for nearly a decade, even when we&rsquo;re on year two of a global pandemic. Because of the challenges of planning in-person events, we teamed up with the California Biomass Energy Alliance to schedule a series of virtual events during the week of Bioenergy Day. This year, we wanted to give our respective members an overview of where our policy objectives stand, as well as the latest developments we are monitoring. Our Bioenergy Day events consisted of several virtual events spread out over the week. One panel looked at the latest in transportation credits, with Bob Cleaves updating participants on the latest developments on incorporating electricity into the Renewable Fuel Standard. Graham Noyes of Noyes Law Corp. detailed California&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, and Jack Barrow, BTR Energy, along with Val Tiangco, Sacramental Municipal Utility District, discussed the lessons we might learn from the implementation of that law. Another event examined the latest in biomass carbon management. Dan Sanchez from the University of California at Berkeley spoke about bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration and the U.S. DOE&rsquo;s Lynn Brickett provided an overview of the agency&rsquo;s work in carbon capture. Pacific Biochar CEO Josiah Hunt discussed his company&rsquo;s ability to match biomass power producers with biochar customers, as well as exciting developments in the new frontier of selling biochar carbon credits. Additionally, the U.S. Space Force hosted a well-timed event on Bioenergy Day to explore using wood energy to power and heat its New Hampshire station. We look forward to the return of in-person events in the hopefully not-too-distant future. That said, we appreciated the virtual input and participation from stakeholders across the industry. Whether it&rsquo;s the RFS or the expansion of biochar markets, 2022 will likely be a breakthrough year for the biomass power industry. Author: Carrie Annand Executive Director, Biomass Power Association www.usabiomass.org carrie@usabiomass.org

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The 9th National Bioenergy Day was celebrated on Oct. 20th. The week kicked off with a proclamation from President Joe Biden recognizing National Forest Products Week.

Celebrating National Bioenergy Day

One of the big headlines right now is how much more natural-gas using homeowners will have to pay to heat their homes this upcoming winter. Many utilities across the country are warning customers that, due to several reasons including lower natural gas production and inventory, their bills could double from last year, translating to hundreds of dollars more. One energy analyst is quoted in numerous media outlets saying that all types of heating fuels&mdash;including propane and heating oil&mdash;will likely substantially climb. For oil, we&rsquo;re talking negative per barrel prices nearly a year and a half ago, to a 3% jump in just one day in early October (up more than 60% for 2021). But the price of wood pellets (or wood chips) just does not see these price swings. This price stability is one of the benefits the industry has been touting since the beginning, but I think people often have a difficult time seeing things from a long-run point-of-view, which is why it hasn&rsquo;t gained as much traction as it warrants. Will rocketing energy bills create a a tidal wave of heating system changeouts? Probably not. Some? Likely. But in any case, what this does do for sure is get people thinking about and looking at alternatives. So, right now is an optimal time for renewable, modern wood heat to shine and draw some attention to itself. Moving onto content in this issue, we have a good balance of topics related to our overall theme of material preparation and handling, and our bonus theme, which is renewable natural gas (RNG). &ldquo;Size Reduction Solutions,&rdquo; page 12, includes some equipment manufacturers discussing what&rsquo;s new, and how they respond to market demand and consumer feedback. Our spotlight article on page 28, &ldquo;Material Characteristics and Bulk Handling Design,&rdquo; goes into detail about how feedstock variation affects material handling systems, and how to combat these issues. As for RNG, I covered some panels at the virtual Biogas Americas conference, and you&rsquo;ll find a review, &ldquo;Biogas Now and Beyond,&rdquo; on page 18. The biogas/RNG industry has so much momentum&mdash;and potential&mdash;and that was surely make evident by the conversations had by industry stakeholders, who discussed what they&rsquo;re doing, trends they&rsquo;re seeing, and what must happen to order to further drive the market. RNG is not without some challenges, and it seems right now, the biggest hurdle is the rate at which states adopt clean energy and low-carbon policies. Said Sean Wine, vice president of renewable operations at Clean Energy Renewable Fuels, about eight states currently have programs in the works, and the industry would greatly benefit from more of this type of state-enacted regulatory framework that will really give the compliance market a boost. On the note of RNG, I want to end with a plug for our annual North American Renewable Natural Gas map, which is currently being updated for 2022. This joint project with the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas is now in its third year, and includes operating and under construction RNG projects in the U.S. and Canada. According to RNG Coalition numbers, there are 194 projects online as of mid-October (excluding under construction/development). For some context, at the same time last year, there were roughly 115 operating projects&mdash;an increase of about 68%. If you&rsquo;re in the biogas and RNG space, you&rsquo;ll want to check out this opportunity&mdash;reach out to us to learn more. Author: Anna Simet Editor asimet@bbiinternational.com

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Many utilities across the country are warning customers that, due to several reasons including lower natural gas production and inventory, their bills could double from last year, translating to hundreds of dollars more.

Winter is Coming  (And for Many, Much Higher Heating Bills) 

Pellet feedstocks are hardly uniform. The characteristics of a single feedstock will differ as it passes through processing equipment. Yet, despite the differences, processors often don&rsquo;t consider how variations affect bulk handling equipment. They apply a &ldquo;one-size-fits-all&rdquo; approach only to discover that a machine that works well at one point in the process does not work as well in another. If pellet manufacturers aim for top performance and low expenses, they must equip their plants with conveyors and other machines designed for the materials they&rsquo;ll actually handle at each stage of the process. Consider green biomass. Due to its high moisture content, acids in the biomass leach more readily from the material than from dry biomass. As a result, conveyors that handle green material corrode faster than those handling dry biomass. Thus, the divergent traits of the two materials&mdash;green and dry&mdash;affect equipment differently. If a manufacturer wants to reduce maintenance costs, they do well to understand this. Galvanizing their equipment may be one solution. The fact that green material is more acidic than dry does not mean galvanization is warranted in every situation. Equipment that isn&rsquo;t inundated in material may not need a protective finish&mdash;for example, a receiving bin. Also, not all biomass species are equally corrosive. Biomass contains diverse acids in various quantities. White oak, for example, tends to be more acidic than red pine. In any case, protection is worth considering where it may reduce maintenance. Acidity is only one quality that affects biomass-handling machinery. Density is also preeminent among traits that affect equipment and handling characteristics. Say a pellet manufacturer receives wood chips but later decides to also accept shavings. Suddenly, material plugs the conveyor inlets and outlets even though the operations crew sped up the conveyors. What&rsquo;s happening? While equipment often receives blame when troubles like these occur, such problems aren&rsquo;t due to bad equipment&mdash;rather, it&rsquo;s because it isn&rsquo;t designed for the material operations personnel run through it. To handle the same volume of low-density material as a higher-density material, everything in a conveyance system must grow larger. If you want to run wood chips with a density of 22 pounds per cubic foot (lbs/ft3) though a conveyor at a rate of 5 tons per hour. The conveyor therefore needs to move 455 ft3 of material per hour. Later, you want to move shavings through the conveyor at the same rate. The density of the shavings is 12 lbs/ft3, which means the conveyor must move 833 ft3 of material per hour to get to five tons, almost twice the volume. Obviously, if the conveyor is sized for wood chips at five tons per hour, it&rsquo;s undersized for an equivalent rate in shavings. In attempt to overcome such a deficiency, crews will sometimes increase a conveyor&rsquo;s speed, but they may fail to consider the flow characteristics of the lighter material. With a belt conveyor, material may back up at the tail because the belt at first slides under it. In a paddle conveyor, material may collect in the head because it can&rsquo;t fall through the discharge opening as quickly as denser material. For any conveyor, crews may also discover that chutes going to and from it are too narrow and now easily plug. And if enclosed, they may learn their conveyor needs a plenum to stabilize air pressure so the material can settle. Differences in density aren&rsquo;t only attributable to changes in feedstock. The density of a single feedstock can vary. Green material is denser than dry material because it contains more water. If green wood chips have a moisture content of 40%, as they pass through a dryer, moisture drops to 12%. This lowers the chips&rsquo; density to 17.8 lbs/ft3 from the former 22 lbs/ft3. Their volume, however, doesn&rsquo;t change (they don&rsquo;t shrink), so the same size conveyor may be used to handle them as what handled them prior to the dryer. This post-dryer conveyor requires less power to operate, however, as the chips have less mass than before they entered the dryer. Characteristics of a material change drastically when it&rsquo;s densified, too. Pellets, due to their smooth, cylindrical shape, flow freely like corn or soybeans. As a result, they can be handled with bucket elevators, which don&rsquo;t work well for unpelleted biomass because of the material&rsquo;s high friction and poor flow characteristics. Because pellets flow freely, they also cannot be elevated at steep angles without supports, such as paddles. Equipment specified for a material prior to densification is not be ideal for handling it after it&rsquo;s been pressed. Temperature is a third trait that affects material and the equipment handling it. Pellets may exit a press at 200 degrees Fahrenheit and emit hot, acidic gasses. The combination of heat and gas makes them extremely corrosive. A standard paint or powder-coat finish does not protect a conveyor&rsquo;s steel components in these conditions. We&rsquo;ve known mild steel conveyors to rust beyond use after a few months handling hot pellets. Pellets call for stainless steel handling equipment after the press until they cool. A conveyor designed for material with different specifications won&rsquo;t work well in this application&mdash;anything made of mild steel will quickly rust away. The reality is that one machine, a conveyor or otherwise, can&rsquo;t accommodate much variance in the materials it handles. While it may seem convenient to repurpose a conveyor or to match conveyor specs to increase the number of common parts, much can go wrong when a conveyor isn&rsquo;t designed for the job it&rsquo;s given. Before making changes to your conveyor, consult the manufacturer for their recommendations. When your processes flow smoothly, you&rsquo;ll be glad you did.

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Despite feedstock differences, processors often don't consider how variations affect bulk handling equipment.

Material Characteristics and Bulk Handling Design - Biomass Engineering & Equipment

Wet ground from South Carolina to Texas affected harvesting operations and pushed third quarter southern pulpwood prices higher. Hardwood, often growing in wet (hydric) areas, suffered the greatest impact as loggers struggled to maintain production. Southern hardwood roundwood prices in the Q3 2021 Forisk Wood Fiber Review increased 7 to 8% for the quarter, up 12 to 14% year-over year (Figure 1). Constrained trucking capacity only added to the misery. &ldquo;Mills are challenged to keep adequate supplies on hand due to the chaos in trucking,&rdquo; says FWFR Editor Tim Gammell. Amidst a summer surge in COVID-19 cases, southern operations faced challenges on multiple fronts. Outside the U.S. South, pulp-quality wood fiber prices remain low across much of North America. Robust sawmill production through the first half of 2021 generated abundant residual chip volumes that pushed prices lower in the Pacific Northwest, Lake States, Northeast and Eastern Canada. Pacific Northwest chip prices increased on the strength of growing wood chip export demand, but current prices remain near five-year lows across much of the region. In Western Canada, softwood chip prices are largely tied to market pulp prices for northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp. Shawn Baker, Forisk&rsquo;s vice president of research, notes, &ldquo;While pulp prices declined in Q3, they remain high.&rdquo; Softwood residual chip prices in Western Canada are up 10% year-over-year despite an 8% dip this quarter. Forest industry economics still drive decisions related to operating rates and downtime. Shifting chip flows and strong prices remind us how raw material economics influence the pulp sector, where another market watcher emphasizes how &ldquo;you see a plastic to paper shift&rdquo; as end markets for recyclable products incent innovation for fiber-based packaging. This move is supported by the reality that conversion costs are lower for OCC than they are for virgin fiber. &ldquo;We have a glut of mixed paper, too,&rdquo; the market watcher remarks. This is important because wood fiber costs account for over half of total pulp manufacturing cost worldwide. Recently, Forisk analyzed growth-to-drain in the South and Pacific Northwest. The average pine growth-to-drain for the South in 2020 was 1.31, indicating a general oversupply of timber in the region, reinforcing the continued growth of grade-using sawmill capacity, and the expectation of ample residual chip flow for years to come in the region. Looking forward to 2025, Forisk&rsquo;s analysis for the region has an estimated average growth-to-drain of 1.04 (close to one). During this time, 10 sawmills and 11 pellet mills come online in the South. The above is data from the Forisk Wood Fiber Review, a quarterly publication tracking North America&rsquo;s major wood fiber markets, and the Forisk Market Bulletin, which tracks forest industry investments. Author: Brooks Mendell and Shawn Baker Forisk Consulting LLC 770-725-8477 bmendell@forisk.com sbaker@forisk.com

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Figure 1. Southern hardwood, roundwood, pulpwood prices through Q3 2021.

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Wet ground from South Carolina to Texas affected harvesting operations and pushed third quarter southern pulpwood prices higher.

Forisk Wood Fiber Review: Weather and Trucking Impacts

Whether upgrading plant capacity or outfitting an outdated plant with current technology, the ability to accurately plan, forecast and execute a project is a key component of running a biomass business. With all the project management information, tools and training available, it seems as though that performance would be easier than ever. Yet, problems still arise. To understand the biggest obstacles to successful project execution, I set out to discover the issues and hot buttons that are most near and dear&mdash;perhaps painful&mdash;to the hearts of those in the biomass industry with respect to capital projects. I have been engaging with biomass professionals to have that conversation, and will share some key points in this article series in the hopes that some of this insight will result in a better reality for your capital projects. My first conversation was with Mick Papp, owner and principle of SusEnergy LLC. Mick has many years of successful project management in the nuclear and bioenergy fields, including several years as the regional manager of projects for Enviva. I have extracted some of the most actionable items from our conversation and summarized them below. The Vital Role of Project Managers From Papp&rsquo;s perspective, recognizing the vital role that project managers play is paramount to successful project execution. This, coupled with providing project managers with necessary resources early enough in the project to achieve the level of accuracy in planning and financial forecasting required by the company. Project managers are not often looked upon as the important change agents that they are, even though they are potentially responsible for losing the company a heck of a lot of money. The choice of project manager is therefore vitally important to ensuring the project will be successful. Finding the right person is only part of the solution, though, as project management is not a one-man show by any stretch of the imagination. A properly executed project should begin with a number of items in place that are the responsibility of the management team, in support of the project manager. These important elements include not only stakeholder identification and involvement (which cannot be stressed enough), but also an understanding of the financial and regulatory goals and limitations of the project. There are numerous reasons why a capital project may be undertaken, and the project manager must have a keen understanding of goals in order to establish the correct scope and project decision points. At project initiation, there is always potential for cancellation prior to completion due to changing regulatory or financial situations, new technology or other scenarios. As such, there is always a reluctance to spend &ldquo;capital&rdquo; money early, as it may unfortunately end up in the overhead bucket if the project is scrapped. The project financing process may also make it difficult to release funds early, over and above some limited project manager manhours. Papp offers that failing to properly fund a potential capital project early directly contributes to schedule and cost overruns, as well as some project failures. Today, there all kinds of tools for project management, including some sophisticated software tools to help facilitate the effort. However, tools are just tools. The importance of software tools shouldn&rsquo;t be downplayed, but if you don&rsquo;t have reasonable, competent people involved with the project manager at initiation, you will likely pay for it during project execution, regardless of any fancy tools that are in place. You can have the best P6 schedulers in the world, but you&rsquo;re not going to get where you need to be unless the foundation work is in place. Providing Support Early Management must be prepared to provide support early on, which includes proper stakeholders to provide them with a complete understanding of what is needed, how and when. Early stakeholder engagement and resource allocation provides a foundation for the project to be built upon. The firmer this foundation is at the outset, the less chance there is of an upset down the road. The foundation should be built upon information that may or may not exist in some form or another. It is the project manager&rsquo;s responsibility to bring it all together&mdash;again, with management support. At this point in the project, the most important resources management can provide are the time and money to allow the project manager to assemble the information. Consider the adage, &ldquo;Time is money.&rdquo; As important as manhours are, in this context, its relevance extends beyond simple manhours for the project manager. At project initiation, there may be a need for outside professional help in determining project direction or parameters, such as design engineering or environmental studies. Attempting to establish a credible project budget and schedule without the proper leg work up front is next to impossible. Pulling all the pieces together will take some time, so it is important to establish the &ldquo;schedule to develop the schedule,&rdquo; with adequate project manager manhours allocated to enable the necessary research. This research may involve third-party studies as previously mentioned, but even before those studies comes the need for all true stakeholders to step up to the plate and get involved. These stakeholders are typically operations and maintenance, but also of vital importance is the involvement of internal environmental, legal, procurement, engineering and financial parties. This may sound like a reference to the project team&mdash;which is accurate&ndash;but the intention is to emphasize the personal relationships and engaged involvement that is required to develop a true project team. Do not underestimate the effectiveness of a project kickoff meeting, sponsored and attended by a well-respected senior manager. The team will support what management supports&mdash;conversely, they will likely put off requests for support from a project that is viewed as peripheral, simply because we all have more to do than time to do it. Conclusion In conclusion, all projects are all different to some degree, so there are no magic bullets. However, there are some guidelines to keep in mind&mdash;the following points summarize the above discussion. Pick the right project manager as your trusted change agent. Use someone with an established, successful track record. Support your project manager. This includes three main components, which are as follows. Time: Provide adequate time for legwork up front (the schedule for the schedule). Money: Allow a path for some early funding, in addition to project manager manhours for preliminary engineering studies as required. Stakeholder and management involvement: Make your support of the project evident, and make it &ldquo;popular&rdquo; to support the project The ability to successfully implement capital projects continues to be a worthy and challenging endeavor, and the above has just scratched the surface when it comes to execution items to consider. Author: Sven Swenson Senior Vice President of Technical Services Delta Energy Services LLC Sven@workdelta.com 352-201-9848

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Whether upgrading plant capacity or outfitting an outdated plant with current technology, the ability to accurately plan, forecast and execute a project is a key component of running a biomass business. 

Project Talk

With 2,200-plus operating systems in all 50 states, the U.S. biogas market seems sizeable. According to the American Biogas Council&rsquo;s tally, it currently consists of roughly 273 on-farm systems, 1,269 wastewater systems, 66 food scrap systems and 645 landfill systems. ABC Executive Director Patrick Serfass provided a snapshot of the industry during the Biogas Americas conference introduction, emphasizing the industry&rsquo;s vast potential, which is not only based on the estimate that there is potential for more than 15,000 more systems among all categories, but renewable natural gas (RNG) upgrading possibilities of existing electricity facilities as well. &ldquo;178 of the operating projects are RNG,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s interesting to look at how many [RNG] projects we have this year&mdash;the number is changing by the day and increasing very quickly. There are electricity-generating projects across the country and many are being upgraded, but there are a lot of new projects as well.&rdquo; Serfass&rsquo;s industry overview was a fitting segue into a conversation with Brightmark CEO Bob Powell, a former director of ABC, who discussed the company&rsquo;s tremendous momentum in the biogas space, as well as insights on project development, partnerships and how the industry should, in a united fashion, move forward. &ldquo;Ultimately, our mission is to reimagine waste,&rdquo; Powell said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re trying to find solutions to our most fundamental environmental issues caused by waste.&rdquo; Powell discussed Brightmark&rsquo;s current work in plastic recycling, which is centered on a technology that he said was invented and patented nearly 20 years ago. From numbers 1 to 7 plastics to Styrofoam containers, Powell said the pyrolysis-based platform can convert materials back into useable products, including transportation fuels, motor oils, paraffin waxes and more. Currently, Brightmark has a 100,000-ton-per-year (TYP) facility in Ashley, Indiana, and plans to build more in the future, Powell said. This includes a 400,000 TPY plant under development in Macon, Georgia, in partnership with the state, as well as projects in Europe in partnership with BP, with which the company recently signed an MOU. Moving on to the topic of RNG, Powell said the company has projects under construction from coast to coast of the U.S., a combination of new builds and upgrades of existing power projects. Operating projects, aside from a poultry litter-to-combined-heat-and-power project in Sumter, South Carolina, are all dairy manure, Powell said, which are on-farm or in farming communities. &ldquo;We recently announcing the closing of our third set of projects in a joint venture with Chevron,&rdquo; Powell said. &ldquo;Beginning last year, with Chevron, we agreed to jointly construct, develop, own and then sell RNG projects across the U.S. Last November, we closed our first tranche, earlier this year we closed our second, and very recently, we announced the closing of our third.&rdquo; Brightmark and Chevron are in the process of completing construction of the three different groups of projects, Powell added, which total 28. When asked what has had the most significant impact on growth, Powell was quick to answer. &ldquo;The people and the team,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When we started from ground zero five years ago, we had two to three people, and now we have over 100 strong. &ldquo;What I wanted at founding was to create a mission-oriented company that was looking to solve a problem that didn&rsquo;t yet have a solution &hellip; Without the mission, [Brightmark employees] wouldn&rsquo;t have joined the team. We&rsquo;re talking experts in every area ... engineers who had not worked on digester projects before but are really good at it, a financing team that is very passionate but could have done a lot of other things and been compensated very differently as we started the company ... we assembled a team that has done things like this in other areas and is excited to achieve the mission.&rdquo;&nbsp; Outside of Brightmark, Powell said, the industry needs to focus on growing its collective team, meaning attracting people who are not already in the space. &ldquo;We need a ton of new people to get this done,&rdquo; he said, in regard to market growth and the substantial increase of RNG use. &ldquo;Most [people] we need to get from outside, and we need to figure out how to train and educate them, and create processes for them to be successful. As we look at gaining workforce, I am very cognizant that if I were to get someone from another company similar to us, I&rsquo;m pulling from the same smaller, finite resource.&rdquo; The challenge in this, Powell reiterated, is having training framework in place for new people. He pointed to the American Biogas Council&rsquo;s educational programs, which he said &ldquo;are really awesome, in fact, a lot of our folks attended the operator trainings early on, and they were very valuable.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; Finally, when asked about partnering with larger players like Brightmark has, Powell emphasized how critical it is to have a long-term&mdash;and backup&mdash;plan. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re participating with larger players, in my history in the renewable sector, there may be big surprises if you haven&rsquo;t played the chess pieces,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You need a plan to exit in some cases, and to know what your long-term economic sustainability is ... having a strategy where you simply undercut your competitors, without thinking about the chess moves, can really poison the well for us, and limit all of our abilities to successfully solve the GHG, land management and the water quality issues we have. You really need to have an end game and be thoughtful, but don&rsquo;t be fearful of partnering with others.&rdquo; &nbsp; RNG on the Horizon The RNG market forecast panel was also led by Serfass, who initiated the conversation by asking participants which segment of the RNG industry they would choose if they had to put all their investment dollars for the next two years into one basket. Lauran Turner, vice president of renewable partnerships at Archaea Energy,&nbsp; pointed to partnering with downstream users of RNG&mdash;corporations, universities and utilities, to sell to under long-term, fixed-price agreements. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m really excited about the growth of the voluntary market,&rdquo; she said, adding that she believes this will lead to growth of the compliance market as well. &ldquo;Net zero and emissions reduction targets, large corporations and utilities, they are finally jumping in and learning about RNG, and how it can be used to decarbonize so many applications within their organizations.&rdquo; As for Sean Wine, vice president of renewable operations at Clean Energy Renewable Fuels, he said he couldn&rsquo;t pick one particular industry facet, but rather, &ldquo;Anything that is low carbon intensity (CI) &hellip; I think the transportation space commands the highest value today. It will continue to drive a lot of this and a lot of the feedstock development &hellip; the low CI markets are going to influence carbon reduction goals in various state programs currently being developed.&rdquo; John Dannan, managing director of Generate Capital, said his choice would be projects that obtain ultra-low CI scores. &ldquo;I think that&rsquo;s a really big differentiator in projects and their access to markets &hellip; profitability is driven by the scores they get. Poultry and swine have the chance of getting amazing scores.&rdquo; Dannan emphasized the potential of food waste projects at landfills. &ldquo;CARB (California Air Resources Board) is trying to incentivize food waste at landfills and give them ultra-low CI scores, which normal food waste standalones don&rsquo;t get,&rdquo; he said, adding that two projects under construction in California both received scores between minus 150 and 200. &ldquo;Regular ones usually get 0 to 50, or minus 20 to 40,&rdquo; he said &ldquo;Basically, CARB gave them credit for no extra trucking, because the trucks are already going there.&rdquo; Paul Niznik, Argus senior biofuels consultant, said in the interest of diversifying the conversation, another appealing option might be some low CI projects that don&rsquo;t necessarily go into the transportation fuel market. &ldquo;I might be interested in the development of swine effluent, low-capex biogas capture,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If there was a site with an open pond or lagoon, we might look at some retro-style electricity production that can also enter into some of these low CI markets &hellip; they get a lot of upcharge, extra credit generation through specifics of the rules. I would like to have that optionality if I had all my chips in one basket&mdash;not only to have the option of cleaning up the gas and getting it into the pipeline if convenient, but also go back to power generation.&rdquo; &nbsp;Low- and ultra-low CI projects continued to be a topic of conversation. Turner discussed the potential of landfills and the fact that there are still many without gas collection systems, adding that her company is a proponent of sliding-scale CI scores. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking at all strategies to reduce CI, whether that&rsquo;s incorporating onsite solar for electricity needs, or incorporating carbon capture and sequestration,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We have a team of geologists and we&rsquo;re working with the EPA to permit projects that make sense to capture CO2 from the landfills and put it back in the ground. So that&rsquo;s going to lower the CI.&rdquo;&nbsp; As for other types of untapped or underutilized resources, Dannan said poultry litter is a more difficult feedstock to gather, manage and digest from a physical perspective, but it&rsquo;s also tougher to acquire from a business model perspective. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why it hasn&rsquo;t taken off so much.&rdquo; Wine agreed, adding that swine projects also pose challenges. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s nice for dairy is that it&rsquo;s a pretty steady cycle&mdash;they eat feed, manure is produced and then it goes into the capturing system ... it&rsquo;s more of a seamless process and easier to manage than poultry and hog facilities. Hogs don&rsquo;t produce as much&mdash;there is a lot more hog, but a lot less gas production. A cow does about 120, 150 gallons of RNG a year, and a hog is significantly lower than that, with generally lower volatile solids.&rdquo; &nbsp; One of the final questions panelists were asked is about the possibility of a standard way of measuring CI outside of California&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard considering other states are working to develop programs, whether it will be a generic measurement, and how it could impact the voluntary market.&nbsp; &ldquo;Unfortunately, it is [currently] a very diversified market in terms of modeling,&rdquo; said Niznik. He pointed to Canada&rsquo;s CI programming model, and how it elected to implement a different accounting system than that of states like California or Oregon, and even different than British Columbia&rsquo;s. &ldquo;It does seem to be one of the problems, but it can be overcome &hellip;it is hard to get people to agree.&rdquo; Turner agreed that it would be a good thing to adopt an industry standard, but reiterated how difficult it could be. &ldquo;We have to remember the Greek calculator is a well-to-wheel analysis for transportation fuels, so when it goes into other uses like RNG for heat or as feedstock for other types of products, that calculation changes,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But can we get to something that is covering all those different uses? I think we can, we&rsquo;ve got lots of smart people in this industry working toward it, and everyone is moving toward carbon accounting. And with that, you need to measure it, have your data and know what it says, how it impacts your emissions and total CI ... there are a lot of different ways to model it.&rdquo; Wine had a slightly different view, stating that he believes standardization won&rsquo;t drive the market at this point. &ldquo;We need regulatory programs to be adopted in other states,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The standardization will come, but it&rsquo;s a long view to get there &hellip; In the grand scheme of things, as an industry we need to develop more programs and regulatory framework outside of just California. Washington has got theirs, but we need New York to be successful with getting that adopted for next year, and we need the other states like Minnesota and New Mexico&mdash;there are probably eight states currently looking at adopting something in next 24 to 36 months&mdash;to do more of that, which will help continue to drive project development.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4961 asimet@bbiinternational.com

The American Biogas Councilâ€™s interactive mapping tool tracks U.S. biogas and RNG projects, allowing users to filter by technology type, feedstock, operational status and state. 

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Top: Patrick Serfass, John Dannan, Lauran Turner; bottom: Paul Niznik, Sean Wine 

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Market momentum, potential and policy were some of the main discussion topics at the virtual Biogas Americas conference.

Biogas Now & Beyond

Energy efficiency, connectivity and reduced downtime are the pillars of fiber-sizing equipment today, and companies are striving to innovate and improve the metrics of each. From custom-designed, multidimensional grinding systems to hammermills, metal protection, screens, conveyors and bulk storage handling, the following includes some of the latest upgrades by a few of many equipment manufacturers that are largely inspired by market trends, customer demands and feedback. &nbsp; Vecoplan Vecoplan introduced its ESC (electronic slip control) drive train about five years ago, a variable frequency drive-controlled system that eliminates the need for a gearbox by electronically changing the speed of the cutting rotor. &ldquo;The ESC drive provides operators tremendous flexibility with how they are able to process different materials because the system reacts accordingly with the resistance of the feedstock material,&rdquo; says Yuri Chocholko, Vecoplan&rsquo;s sales manager, wood and biomass. &ldquo;The result is lower power consumption, a lower price tag and reduced long-term maintenance costs, since the gearbox, which is traditionally the most expensive part of the drivetrain, isn&rsquo;t there to fail.&rdquo; Vecoplan machines are designed to be flexible for many feedstocks. For example, the VIZ model shredder, which will be introduced in early 2022, can change the cutting speed at the touch of a button from 50 revolutions per minute (rpm) to 300 rpm. &ldquo;Further, its unique rotor design allows the operator to change the cutter head size on the rotor instead being committed to just one size,&rdquo; Chocholko says. &ldquo;One VIZ rotor can accommodate cutters as small as 1x1-inch for an output of one-fourth-inch particle size, and as large as 3x3 inches for bulky item size reduction such as bale-breaking.&rdquo; Whether incoming feedstock changes are seasonal or product-related, or when final material size requirements differ based upon a changing market, the VIZ model is a single machine that replaces the need for multiple machines, providing more flexibility and control to the operator, according to Chocholko. &ldquo;Vecoplan product development is partially based on the customer experience,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Reviewing service and technical support logs provides insight to where improvements and changes should be made. Improving access for maintenance and making certain areas extra durable came from this insight.&rdquo; So, over the last five years, Vecoplan has specifically concentrated on lowering and&nbsp; simplifying machine maintenance to drive down the cost of ownership. Many of its new equipment designs focus on ease of safely accessing the most common maintenance areas and improving the design and quality of consumable wear parts. &ldquo;Examples of maximizing the life of wear parts are designing rotatable cutter heads, reversible bed knives and symmetrical sizing screens,&rdquo; Chocholko says. &ldquo;All of these help to extend the operational life two- to fourfold on the most commonly replaced consumables on size reduction equipment.&rdquo; More recently, Vecoplan has increasingly received inquiries now about IoT (internet of things) and accessing machine controls remotely. The company prides itself in being an innovation leader regarding electrical controls&mdash;incorporating internet access and remote monitoring, diagnostics and reporting to equipment was an initiative that began over 10 years ago. &ldquo;The demand for information from the operator has never been greater; customers want all of the information, and they want it now,&rdquo; Chocholko says. &ldquo;This validates the importance for Vecoplan to continue developing and implementing new tools and software to provide greater access to equipment performance, enabling much improved process analytics.&rdquo; It shouldn&rsquo;t come as a surprise that worldwide supply chain constraint is Vecoplan&rsquo;s biggest challenge with manufacturing. As such, the company has been ordering more parts and materials than usual to maintain higher inventory levels in attempt to hedge against delivery delays and surcharges. &nbsp;Vecoplan&rsquo;s goal continues to be growth, and the company will continue innovating to do so. &ldquo;As energy and material costs increase, biofuels, bioenergy and biomass continue to offer a sustainable alternative to oil, plastics and traditional materials typically used for every day consumer products,&rdquo; Chocholko adds. &ldquo;This includes biobased jet fuels, compostable paper plates, the rapidly expanding hemp market and woody biomass as an alternative fuel source for traditional coal-fired power stations. It is a good time to be in this industry.&rdquo; Rawlings The motto at Rawlings is &ldquo;innovation not imitation,&rdquo; and the company says it is constantly looking at ways to improve its equipment to make the machines more durable and easier to maintain. In response to recent trends, Rawlings is thinking outside the box and recommends systems that incorporate a combination of equipment. For example, utilizing horizontal high-speed and slow-speed grinders as the primary grinder for processing larger-size materials such as railroad ties, pallets, construction, demolition and hurricane debris, while using the vertical grinders and hammermills to produce a smaller, more consistent particle size.&nbsp; &ldquo;By splitting the material loads through different grinders and incorporating product screening, it allows the equipment to process the material more effectively while producing consistent feedstock,&rdquo; says Judi Tyacke, Rawlings project manager. The company&rsquo;s solid steel Super Hi Inertia Rotor TM is designed from rock crusher technology, making it extremely tolerant of contaminants, rocks and metal without catastrophic maintenance costs if metal enters the grinding chamber. The Rawlings rotor is also designed to maximize inertia while minimizing its weight. &ldquo;With the increase of inertia, our machine runs at lower rpms than competitor machines and half the speed of conventional hammermills, resulting in overall savings of electricity and maintenance costs,&rdquo; Tyacke says. &ldquo;The cam profile of the Rawlings rotor prevents feed surges by keeping material closer to the cutting edge of the bits. This translates to better productivity as the in-feed conveyor is stalled less frequently, and less down time, as the increased energy reduces the number of motor drive stalls.&rdquo; During its 45 years of designing wood grinding systems, the company has learned that most of its clients are asking for grinders to obtain the smallest finished product on a single pass or one-stage pass through the grinder. &ldquo;We often suggest that this is not always the most economical option long term,&rdquo; Tyacke says. &ldquo;Running the grinder and related equipment at full surge capacity results in frequent equipment breakdowns, high consumption of spare parts and costly maintenance repairs. Incorporating several types of equipment into the system allows the customer to protect their investment while producing a high-quality, consistent end product.&rdquo; For that reason, Rawlings&rsquo; engineers have made significant changes to the hog case that allow its customers&rsquo; maintenance teams easier access to the hog rotor, sizing grates and internal case liners. Over the years, several customers have wanted a Rawlings solid rotary hog but did not have the overhead clearance in their existing footprint to allow for a clam shell opening type of machine, Rawlings says. &ldquo;Our engineering team took this feedback and did a redesign of the hog case. This new model opens hydraulically from the rear of the machine, allowing full access to the hog&rsquo;s internal wear components and rotor for ease of maintenance.&rdquo; More recently, a customer contacted the company looking for a 2-inch minus product, as his feedstock was 12-inch minus with approximately 40 percent of the material already sized to 2-inch minus. &ldquo;After thoroughly looking over the project parameters, we suggested a vibratory shaker deck to screen off and separate the material, removing the 2-inch accepts prior to grinding it through a Rawlings vertical drop feed hog,&rdquo; Tyacke says. &ldquo;This is a common practice to reduce the amount of tonnage to the machine, resulting in cost savings of spare parts, maintenance and overall electricity costs. Simply put, it&rsquo;s less expensive to screen it than grind it.&rdquo; Bruks Bruks Siwertell is continuously improving machines and optimizes its product portfolio to meet market requirements.&ldquo;The market demands a high-quality end-product with high production rate at low investment and operating cost,&rdquo; says Stefanie M&uuml;ller, area sales manager of Bruks Kl&ouml;ckner GmbH, part of Bruks Siwertell Group. Some of the demanding markets are the charcoal industry, biomass power plants, the paper industry, chipboard industry and the pellet industry. M&uuml;ller notes there are several trends to which the company is responding. &ldquo;When producing wood chips for charcoal, it is important to produce compact, large wood chips of up to 250 millimeters,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;When chipping, the wood chips should not be compressed and there shouldn&rsquo;t be too many cracks or fractures. We have developed a 1-knife rotor with a special design, allowing the oversized chips to freely flow out of the chipper without getting impacted by the chipper&rsquo;s outlet.&rdquo; For biomass power plants, fuel sizes according to G or P standards are mostly required, and the company&rsquo;s chipping machines are designed accordingly. &ldquo;Feed material of poor quality can also be processed to the appropriate fuel size using our machines&mdash;the sophisticated infeed work of the machine is particularly advantageous for this,&rdquo; M&uuml;ller says. &ldquo;This consists of several upper and lower infeed rollers that are arranged a way that the cradle (upper infeed unit) climbs over the intake material and is lifted. Depending on the size of the machine, the lifting of the intake is supported by a hydraulic system. The roller arrangement, as well as the function of the supporting hydraulics, are continuously optimized and adapted to the respective requirements of our customers.&rdquo; For the pellet industry, great importance is attached to producing a uniform chip that can be easily dried. The chipping can be done either in one or two steps depending on which product the dryer or overall concept requires. Bruks is continuously improving its machines, based on experience with customers and references, according to M&uuml;ller. &ldquo;New raw materials for knives, rollers and cladding sheets are tested and further developed for a wide variety of requirements in order to increase service life and minimize maintenance costs,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;We focus on sustainability. The longer the service life, the fewer new materials need to be used. And wherever possible, we work with easy-exchange wear plates. This enables material optimization, since only the parts that are in direct and constant contact with the material are exchanged without having to change the entire rotor or rotor casing, for example.&rdquo; The most frequently asked questions from Bruks Siwertell&rsquo;s customers relate to throughput, knife service life, wood chip quality and power consumption. Service life and ease of use come next. For example, one customer wanted to replace their old disc chipper with a drum chipper. The reason for this was the infeed material&mdash;different, quite strong, and sometimes poor-quality logs that could not be processed with the disc chipper, according to M&uuml;ller. &ldquo;Based on customer experience with the disc chipper, a special drum chipper was designed being able to meet all the desired requirements,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;After commissioning, some optimizations were necessary but, in the end, this resulted in a valuable new machine.&rdquo; In another project, drum chippers were replaced by disc chippers to achieve higher revenues due to better wood chip quality with lower fines. This project was successful, and others quickly followed. &ldquo;Bruks is continuously improving machines and optimizes products to meet market requirements,&rdquo; M&uuml;ller adds. &ldquo;For us, sustainability means manufacturing machines that preserve resources over their whole service life, and thus, work extremely economically.&rdquo; &nbsp; Author: Keith Loria Biomass Magazine freelance writer www.biomassmagazine.com

Rawlingsâ€™ engineers have designed a hog case that allows customer maintenance teams easier access to the hog rotor, sizing
grates and internal case liners.

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Designed for operational flexibility, the VIZ 1300 Rotary Shredder is a highly configurable industrial shredding machine. 

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Bruks Siwertellâ€™s drop-fed, or Rotom hammer hog, units can process many different types of materials including bark, forest residues, industrial wood waste and sawmill waste. 

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Rawlings wood hogs are available in seven different sizes, in both vertical and horizontal models to fit any application. Pictured is a Rawlings vertical grinder. 

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Biomass Magazine chats with manufacturers about improvements and innovation in fiber sizing equipment.


Size Reduction Solutions

Weltec, Bristola, partner for US RNG projects German biogas plant manufacturer Weltec Biopower announced a U.S. service partnership with Bristola, based in Des Moines, Iowa, to build and service biogas plants. Both companies have over 20 years of experience in the industry. Weltec has designed and built over 350 biogas and RNG plants in 25 countries, entering the U.S. market in 2006 with the construction of two biogas plants in Wisconsin. Bristola personnel will have full training in the construction and operation of Weltec plants and will be able to call upon the full support and expertise of the company&rsquo;s service and biology departments, and other in-house experts to assist U.S. clients. Vanguard Renewables names Smith CEO Vanguard Renewables, a U.S. organics to renewable energy company, announced the appointment of Neil H. Smith as CEO. Smith is the former president and CEO of InterGen, an international energy company. Under his leadership, InterGen was transformed from a 20-person startup company into a 700-plus person global, multibillion dollar operating and development company specializing in the development, ownership and operation of power generation and related energy infrastructure assets spanning six continents and more than 20 countries. Prior to becoming InterGen CEO, Smith served as the company&rsquo;s first chief operating officer. Prodesa creates new pellet production division Prodesa has formed a new division for the design, manufacture and aftermarket service of capital equipment for pellet production, ProGranul Equipment. The new division was developed from a design that has over 30 years of operations in more than 300 pellet mills installed around the world, and currently includes the ProGranul Toro Pellet Mill and ProGranul Thor Dry Hammer Mill. Xebec orders BGX Biostream units from Brightmark, Chevron RNG Xebec Adsorption Inc. announced the signing of the first set of task orders under a previously announced master service agreement for 18 BGX-Biostream units with Brightmark RNG Holdings LLC. Brightmark RNG Holdings LLC is a joint venture between Brightmark and Chevron U.S.A. Inc., a subsidiary of Chevron Corp., to own project companies across the U.S. to produce and market dairy renewable natural gas (RNG). The 18 units are expected to be deployed across 10 dairy RNG projects in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and South Dakota. Wisconsin county plans $10 million investment in RNG, CNG Dane County, Wisconsin, is proposing to invest $10 million in clean fuel infrastructure that will help expand the use of renewable natural gas (RNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles in the county fleet. Dane County Executive Joe Parisi included the investment in his 2022 budget proposal. RNG is already injected into the pipeline at the Dane County Landfill, produced from both landfill gas and biogas from nearby manure digesters. The county fleet currently operates approximately 100 CNG vehicles, including nearly 30 highway snowplows. According to the county, $5 million of the proposed investment will support the purchase of CNG trailers to help fuel the Dane County Highway fleet in areas of the county where CNG filling stations are less available. Approximately $2 million will support the installation of a new CNG filling station at the Fish Hatchery Road Highway garage, while the remaining $3.2 million will be used to purchase eight additional CNG-powered snowplows. Vermeer named top workplace Vermeer Corp. has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2021 honor by the Des Moines Register&rsquo;s annual Iowa Top Workplaces contest. The list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by employee engagement technology partner Energage LLC. The anonymous survey uniquely measures 15 culture drivers that are critical to the success of any organization including alignment, execution and connection. It asks questions about how companies are encouraging diversity, equity and inclusion through recruiting and hiring; compensation and benefits; professional development; employee involvement, and visible commitment. Shell starts production at first US RNG facility Shell Oil Products U.S., a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, has successfully achieved startup and production of renewable natural gas (RNG) at its first U.S. biomethane facility, Shell New Energies Junction City in Oregon. The facility utilizes locally sourced cow manure and excess agricultural residues to produce an expected 736,000 MMBtu per year of RNG. Shell is developing additional RNG production facilities to be located directly within operating dairies, including Shell Downstream Galloway at the High Plains Ponderosa Dairy in Plains, Kansas, and Shell Downstream Bovarius at the Bettencourt Dairies in Wendell, Idaho. Production at the three locations is expected to help supply Shell R-CNG fueling sites planned at the company&rsquo;s product distribution complexes in Carson, Van Nuys, Signal Hill and San Jose, California, and at a terminal in Portland, Oregon, owned by Shell Midstream Partners L.P. Martin Engineering introduces online conveyor training content New online content has been introduced by Martin Engineering, specifically designed to integrate with learning management systems so users can assign, monitor and certify progress of all participants. The new offering includes eight self-paced modules that address methods to identify, understand and correct common bulk conveying issues to improve safety while complying with regulations, maximizing production efficiency and achieving the lowest operating costs. The modules cover essential subjects that include an introduction to the concept of total material control, with content on transfer points, belting and splices, as well as belt cleaning, alignment and dust management. Morbark introduces Vtection Vibration Detection System &nbsp; Morbark has announced a new, patent-pending system that monitors rotor vibration in the company&rsquo;s 6400X, 3400X and 3000X series of horizontal grinders. The Vtection is designed to reduce damage from contact with ungrindable objects or other causes of damaging vibration, such as an out-of-balance rotor, broken insert or defective bearing. To use the Vtection system, the operator sets an acceptable operating vibration level through the electronic controller, to match the grinding application. Once the Vtection system is triggered, Morbark&rsquo;s Integrated Control System (MICS) initiates several actions to remove the tramp material out of the rotor area. The sequence of these actions includes reversing and stopping the infeed, bringing the engine speed to idle, disengaging the clutch, and a warning message displayed on the MICS screen. At this time, the operator can inspect the grinder and remove the object that caused the trip before resuming operation. Skrobala joins Bathan as country manager France High-performance ceramic lubricant company Bathan AG has added Alain Skrobala as country manager France. Prior to Bathan, Skrobala served as product and market manager at Carl Bechem for five years, and as commercial director for Bijur Delimon Interational. He brings experience in lubrication optimization to Bathan AG, where he will develop the French-speaking markets. Skrobala is a mechanical engineer with more than 30 years of experience in the automotive, sugar processing, cement production and rail industries.

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The Vtection system allows operators to detect and remove ungrindable objects that could damage equipment. 

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Xebecâ€™s BGX Biostream biogas upgrading units are modularized, skidded and fully containerized. 

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Weltec has experience with RNG plants that fuel trucks directly on-site.

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Buisness Briefs

Over the course of the past year, many power plants have shortened, postponed or rescheduled their maintenance outages due to the pandemic. Unfortunately, this has caused some critical maintenance activities to be put on the backburner. For many in the power generation industry, this has presented some uncertainties as the volume of unplanned outages caused by deferred maintenance is expected to rise. One component that is often overlooked as being system-critical is the electrical bus duct system. The bus system is a plant&rsquo;s main vessel of power distribution, carrying large amperage currents from the generator to a step-up transformer. In other words, the bus system acts like a giant extension cord. Although the value of the electrical bus duct system may seem minimal when compared to that of the generator or the transformer, the bus duct system plays a vital role in the plant. Consider it the lifeline between both high-value components; if a failure occurs, there is a good chance the connected appendices will be impacted. Electrical bus duct systems do not have redundancy. Being custom-designed components for each plant, they also do not have a quick-fix or replacement solution readily available. To make matters worse, the pandemic has broadly impacted the global supply chain, introducing significantly longer lead times, especially for systems that have obsolete or difficult-to-procure replacement components. As such, the need for having an ironclad contingency and a proactive, preventative maintenance plan has never been more prevalent. Nevertheless, a growing number of plants have adapted a run-to-failure strategy, known as reactive maintenance. Although this strategy can cost less in the present, waiting until something fails is a big gamble. It is a risk that can significantly lower efficiency and further contribute to bottom-line profit losses if an unplanned outage or catastrophic failure occurs. In fact, studies have shown that running to failure costs an average of four times more than implementing a routine proactive, preventative maintenance schedule. Industry best practice recommends bus duct maintenance yearly, at every scheduled plant outage, or at a minimum of every 18 to 24 months. However, over the past few years, online monitoring options have exploded in the marketplace, adding to the misconception that offline inspection maintenance can be postponed. Generally speaking, these diagnostic reports only provide provisional or nondefinitive findings that cannot be confirmed unless an offline inspection is performed.&nbsp; So, you are spreading your budget across two activities with partial results, versus one that provides certain results (offline inspection). Leading utilities are partnering with highly experienced and trained bus duct experts and relying on them to proactively manage these critical assets on their behalf. This approach results in less down time, increased operational efficiency and safety, and is the key in preventing a bus duct failure. A thorough offline inspection can identify, with certainty, many things, including but not limited to poor installation or system design; cracked insulators; localized overheating; corona/arcing; condensation and water intrusion; loose connections; loose, missing, or inappropriate hardware; dust and dirt build up; debris and foreign material; improper grounding; cracked weld joints; poor or inadequate insulation, lack of proper silver plating, and more. Once these abnormalities are discovered, proper repairs or upgrades can be performed to ensure the system is running in optimal condition. Routine preventative maintenance is not only a cost-effective way to extend the life of your electrical assets, but also a critical task in minimizing the risk of a forced outage and bodily harm to on-site personnel. In conclusion, incorporating a proactive, preventative maintenance program for electrical bus duct systems can increase operational efficiency, production and safety. &nbsp; Author: Mohsen Tarassoly Sales Engineer Director, Electrical Builders Inc. mtarassoly@electricalbuilders.com www.electricalbuilders.com

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Incorporating a proactive, preventative maintenance program for electrical bus duct systems can increase operational efficiency, production and safety.  


Avoiding Failure, Extending Life of  System-Critical Electrical Bus Ducts

Specializing in wood processing and material handling systems for over 80 years, Brunette Machinery Co. provides custom engineered solutions for mill optimization. The company is known as an industry leader in the manufacture of heavy-duty drum chippers, grinders and complementary equipment such as vibrating conveyors, disc scalping screens, E-Sweeps, and log singulators. With the global biomass power market expected to grow at an exponential rate throughout the next eight years, Brunette Machinery is uniquely situated to provide the best wood breakdown equipment to the industry. The following are some of the company&rsquo;s innovative and advanced wood processing machines built for biomass applications. Brunette Whole Log Micro-Chipper The Brunette Whole Log Micro-Chipper is a horizontal-feed chipper that can process logs up to 26-inch diameter. It is ideal for converting whole logs not suitable for lumber into a one-fourth-inch nominal chip for use in the biofuel industry. A powered feedworks controls the feed of single logs, or multiple stems and branches. With a 40-inch wide throat, it can process a variety of materials with ease. The Brunette Whole Log Chipper is available in various sizes and configurations to suit mill requirements. It features a hard-surfaced anvil with a breakaway support frame for protection from foreign materials. The rear access platform makes knife maintenance simple and safe. The Chipper includes a common subframe for a single lift installation. Brunette/CBI Grizzly Mill Hog This primary wood waste grinder is built to be the most rugged hog on the market. The Grizzly Mill&rsquo;s high-interia, solid steel rotor has four alternating angled rows of striker bars to ensure even distribution of input material for balanced wear and maximum throughput. This machine can break down large residuals from various sources, including cedar bark, green spruce bark, mill wood waste, demolition debris, butt ends, railroad ties and stringy bark, for easy processing into a high-quality product suitable for hog fuel, mulch or a biomass product. Brunette BioSizer The Brunette BioSizer is a high-speed secondary waste wood grinder designed to produce a uniform-sized output that is optimal for the biomass industry. The Brunette BioSizer is built to be low maintenance, with a high-inertia rotor and fixed hammers. With four rows of staggered hammers, this grinder efficiently processes oversized bush-grind hog fuel, trim blocks, wood chips and typical urban woodwaste, converting it all to fine, high-quality fiber suitable for various biomass products. Brunette Machinery&rsquo;s experience in manufacturing guarantees customers well-tested, heavy-duty machines that will produce high-quality product and deliver a long service life with low maintenance costs.

Specializing in wood processing and material handling systems for over 80 years, Brunette Machinery Co. provides custom engineered solutions for mill optimization. The company manufactures drum chippers, grinders and complementary equipment. 

SPOTLIGHT: Brunette Machinery Co., Advanced Forestry Equipment  

Japan&rsquo;s reliance on fossil-based sources such as oil, coal and natural gas for electricity production has increased significantly since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. To reduce this heavy reliance on nonrenewable, fossil-based energy, Japan&rsquo;s interest in nonnuclear renewable energy, especially biomass-based energy, has grown tremendously over the years. Japan&rsquo;s national commitment for decarbonizing its electricity grid is evident from former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga&rsquo;s announcement in 2021 that Japan would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.&nbsp; As an immediate effort, Japan also mandated shuttering some 100 inefficient coal plants as soon as 2030. Minister Suga said Japan would &ldquo; &hellip;maximize the use of renewables and other noncarbon power sources &hellip;&rdquo; Despite current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida&rsquo;s announcement of restarting many idled nuclear plants due to rising energy costs, Japanese utilities will still need coal replacement fuel to lengthen the lifespans of their high-efficiency coal plants.&nbsp; Also, many industrial coal boiler operators need coal replacement fuel soon, or they may be shut down. Torrefied wood pellets, also known as biocoal, is an excellent coal replacement alternative given its chemical and physical properties are closer to coal. With biocoal&rsquo;s superior gridability attributes and higher energy density, a significant proportion (50% or more) of torrefied pellets could be used for cofiring without major modifications to the existing coal-powered thermal plants. Finally, with biocoal&rsquo;s comparable shipping and handling attributes to that of bituminous coal, it has attracted increasing interest as coal replacement fuel. Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd., one of Japan&rsquo;s three major coal importers, with combined domestic and overseas coal sales of 20 million metric tons (MT) per year, has the goal of importing 3 million MT of biocoal by 2030 to meet initial market demand for carbon-neutral fuel. The development of the biocoal market is under review in Japan by major utilities, coal importers and Japanese government policymakers. Is there enough independently certified, sustainably available fiber around the world to produce the biocoal at a reasonable cost per metric ton? Additionally, because biocoal production requires much higher heat than white pellet production, does that negatively impact the carbon life cycle analysis for biocoal as a good alternative to coal? The following is a strategy of how western U.S. forests could profitably produce a major portion of Japan&rsquo;s need for biocoal over the coming years. Long-Term, Sustainably Available Biomass Over 100 years of suppression of all fires, including natural, low-intensity fires, has resulted in many unnaturally dense forests in the western U.S., which are at risk of severe wildfire. The U.S. Forest Service has forest restoration treatments underway, such as thinning, brush clearing and prescribed burning on 80 million acres of its own land, mostly in the West. California alone is targeting the treatment of 1 million acres annually by 2025 to scale up forest thinning and prescribed fire efforts.&nbsp; These treatments are meant to &ldquo;reduce long-term greenhouse gas emissions and harmful air pollution from large and catastrophic wildfires,&rdquo; according to the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan produced by California&rsquo;s Forest Management Task Force. The amount of thinning work underway or planned in California and several other western states will produce copious amounts of biomass, much of which has no market and is therefore burned in piles.&nbsp; As is the case with wildfires, these pile burns can emit hazardous, fine particulate matter into the atmosphere, measuring 2.5 microns or less in width (PM2.5). This has become a growing concern in the western rural areas where pile burns regularly take place. They are also costly and time consuming to perform, costing $1,500 or more per acre. Selective Forest Thinning and Increased Carbon Storage More and more research has shown that selectively thinning overstocked forests has multiple benefits. &ldquo;In a warming climate, thinning reduces competition for water, allowing trees to grow faster, store more carbon and be more resilient to drought and pests,&rdquo; according to Our Burning Challenge: Restore our Forests, a publication by the Nature Conservancy in Arizona.&nbsp; &ldquo;Scientific and professional firefighting evidence shows that where thinning is completed before wildfires, fire severity is reduced, and in some cases, damage to communities is averted.&rdquo; Biomass Residual-Based Biocoal HM3 Energy Inc., a biocoal technology provider, developed its torrefaction technology using biomass residuals left after logging and thinning operations, rather than clean wood chips produced from whole logs.&nbsp; This focus on using forest waste in its demonstration plant test runs helped it win a U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovations Grant in 2019. The grant work provided budgetary design work to determine construction costs for a 50,000-metric-ton-per-year (MTPY) biocoal plant in northern Arizona.&nbsp; Northern Arizona University&rsquo;s Ecological Restoration Institute performed studies on sustainable biomass availability and shipping logistics, while Coconino County helped identify good sites for a production facility that could eventually produce up to 100,000 MTPY, with access to the BNSF Railroad for exporting the biocoal to a port in California and on to Japan. The grant work determined that there would be enough sustainably available biomass from ponderosa pine and juniper harvesting and thinning operations for at least a 20-year period within reasonable hauling distances of several potential sites in northern Arizona. Federal forests in Northern Arizona have plans to thin 1.5 million acres over the next 20 years. With targeted retention at only 50 trees per acre, this will result in 2.25 million tons of forest slash per year that could be turned into biocoal. The biocoal would be shipped just like coal, in open hopper rail cars, to the Port of Stockton.&nbsp; From there, it would be exported to a Japanese power plant, typically situated right on the coast with its own port, where it would be stored without cover, just like coal. As part of the grant work, HM3 Energy compared the costs of using white pellets versus biocoal produced using HM3&rsquo;s technology as coal replacement fuel in Japan.&nbsp; The higher production cost of biocoal was greatly mitigated by the much lower shipping and handling costs. In addition, coal plants would not have to perform costly modifications to use white pellets, such as building silos for storage or separate feeding systems that can handle the fibrous pellets. When combusted, white pellets do not produce the same steam temperature as biocoal does, resulting in boiler inefficiencies. Overall, HM3&rsquo;s grant work in 2021 determined that a 100,000 MTPY plant using its technology in northern Arizona could deliver biocoal to the Japanese coal burner tip for $11.58 cents per gigajoule, compared to a cost of $13.15 for white pellets. Carbon Life Cycle Analysis The University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences performed a series of comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of biocoal and documented the environmental footprint, from cradle to grave, of extracting biomass and converting it to biofuel alternatives. Emissions from feedstock extraction and transportation to the manufacturing facility, processing, transportation of the pellets to a shipping port (in Washington or Oregon), as well as ocean transportation to a port in Japan were all included. Local pollution, as well as impacts on air quality, water and soil were also considered. The total LCA of electricity production from residual biomass-based wood pellets in a bioenergy plant in Japan was then compared to that of electricity production from coal.&nbsp;&nbsp; The research concluded that pellets produced from residues, on average, produce 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal. The assessment noted that biomass burned in a controlled environment, such as a bioenergy facility, emits 95% fewer pollutants to the atmosphere as compared to open biomass burns, such as prescribed burns or wildfires.&nbsp; &ldquo;After factoring in all the particulate matter, emissions of harvesting, processing, local and international transportation, harvest slash-based pellets reduce PM2.5 by 88%, with most of this clean air benefit going to local communities.&rdquo; The research further concluded that the marginally higher carbon impact associated with the production of torrefied pellets (biocoal) is mitigated by their energy efficient long-distance transportation. Conclusion The western U.S. has, and will continue to have for some years to come, a large amount of sustainably available biomass from thinning and harvesting operations.&nbsp; Forest thinning operations are planned for millions of acres to mitigate the risk of unnaturally severe wildfires and restore the health of forests so they better absorb and store carbon. Using biomass residuals for biocoal production will help reduce management costs and result in fewer pile burns, improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions.&nbsp; In many cases, particularly from the western states, biocoal can be economically exported to Japan to replace coal and greatly reduce its carbon footprint. Author: Hiroshi Morihara CEO, HM3 Energy Inc. hiroshi@hm3e.com www.hme3.com

Juniper before and after being converted to biocoal via HM3 Energyâ€™s torrefaction process.

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As is the case with wildfires, prescribed pile burns like this one in Prescott National Forest can emit hazardous, fine particulate matter into the atmosphere.

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HM3 Energy Inc.'s Hiroshi Morihara discusses the potential for U.S. biocoal production using biomass gathered via planned forest thinning operations. The product can be economically exported to Japan, he says, where it is used to replace coal.  

Biocoal Exports' Potential Role in US Forest  Restoration and Japan's Decarbonization Efforts

Pulpwood, the smaller trees typically chipped for making wood pulp, oriented strand board (OSB) or wood pellets, provides balance and diversification to the forest products industry. Robust, sustainable timber markets feature a broad set of wood consumers. A local wood basin with no demand for pulpwood or chips is like a shoe box with one shoe: incomplete. While roundwood (logs) deliveries satisfy most pulpwood demand across the U.S., this varies by region and mill type. In the South, chip mills supply close to 20% of total pulpwood demand. In the West, they supply close to 30% of fiber needs, though total volumes are less, given that fewer pulp mills operate in the region. According to the Wood Fiber Review, the actual supply profile of each region in North America varies based on pricing and market demand. Forisk mill-by-mill research of wood-consuming capacity suggests close to 60% of pulp mill wood-using demand in the U.S. is met by roundwood. Pulpwood Drivers of Demand Wood fiber costs account for over 50% of the total pulp manufacturing cost worldwide, so tracking wood fiber costs supports investment and operational decisions across a range of facilities and markets in the forest sector. In North America, demand for pulpwood derives from three primary sources. First, traditional forest industry consumers, such as pulp mills and OSB plants, use pulpwood to make pulp and panel products. Second, wood bioenergy projects use pulpwood to produce pellets and electricity. Finally, pulpwood demand associated with liquid biofuels capacity is increasingly in the news, especially with growing interest in sustainable aviation fuel. Wood pellets in particular have been a compelling source of growth. Wood pellet production capacity reached 20 million metric tons in North America in 2021. This capacity is forecasted to reach 23 million metric tons in 2022. Much of the wood pellet capacity growth is in the U.S. South, within economic freight distance of ports. Canadian wood pellet capacity is projected to increase 13% in 2022. Peak Renewables&nbsp; announced a 600,000-metric-ton facility in Fort Nelson, British Columbia. The company purchased Canfor&rsquo;s Fort Nelson mill assets and forest tenure in the region. The capacity increase is partially offset by the closure of Pacific Bioenergy&rsquo;s facility in Prince George, B.C., in early 2022. Pulpwood Supplies and the US South Changes to pulpwood inventories over time include pulpwood removals from the existing pulpwood inventory, new pulpwood inventory as young trees grow and become merchantable, and decreases in pine pulpwood inventory from older pulpwood trees that mature and grow into grade-quality timber. When digging deep into, for example, pine pulpwood supplies in the U.S. South, the most important characteristic for short- and medium-term projections is the age class distribution of the pine plantations (inventories) that drive industrial forest management in the region. In the U.S. South, wood-using mills consume more pulpwood than grade (Table 1). For pine pulpwood demand across 11 states, quarterly rankings in the Forisk Research Quarterly highlight Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana as the three biggest consumers in the region. When &ldquo;scoring&rdquo; markets for projects that require pulpwood supplies, investors prefer those that feature abundant supplies (both standing and from mill residuals), limited competition, lower prices and sufficient logging capacity. On a relative basis across regions, this helps explain the attractiveness of the U.S. South for pulpwood-using facilities. This article includes data from the Forisk Wood Fiber Review, a quarterly publication tracking North America&rsquo;s major wood fiber markets, and the Forisk Research Quarterly, which includes forest industry forecasts and analysis by sector. Author: Brooks Mendell Forisk Consulting LLC 770-725-8477 bmendell@forisk.com

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Wood fiber costs account for over 50% of the total pulp manufacturing cost worldwide, so tracking wood fiber costs supports investment and operational decisions across a range of facilities and markets in the forest sector.

Pulpwood Paradise and the US South

In Snowflake, Arizona, the state&rsquo;s only biomass power plant is playing a key role in helping improve forest health by utilizing biomass thinnings from forest management initiatives. For the Worsley family, this business model isn&rsquo;t just about a profit&mdash;it&rsquo;s also personal. Brad Worsley, CEO and president of Novo BioPower, explains that the Worsley family has been directly impacted by poor forest health. &ldquo;My family&rsquo;s world was dramatically impacted by a catastrophic wildfire and the poor policies and gridlock that had happened between the environmental community and the forestry industry,&rdquo; Worsley says. &ldquo;But we have found a way to move forward.&rdquo;&nbsp; Plant History In 2002, the Rodeo-Chinski fire in burned down the ponderosa pine forest that surrounded the legacy cabin built by Worsley&rsquo;s parents. &ldquo;That fire came through and burned right up to and all around our property&mdash;a handful of small structures on our property were burned, and we had to evacuate and come back in,&rdquo; Worsley says. &ldquo;As the residual impact of that fire was felt, we realized that the beautiful forest we had built our home in was now gone. The home was still there, but it was not the same place in our hearts and minds as it was when we built it in this dense, ponderosa pine forest ... and as we studied and learned, we realized it would not be the same for a thousand years&mdash;if it ever comes back to what it was.&rdquo; After the fire, fueled by the sadness and frustration caused by the loss of the forest, Worsley&rsquo;s father, Bob, was determined to find a way to solve the problem. As the Worsleys educated themselves on forest health, they learned that the forest had changed significantly since settlement. One reason for that was the &ldquo;Smokey Bear effect&rdquo;&mdash;an early U.S. Forest Service &ldquo;no fires&rdquo; policy that inevitably led to forests traditionally having 10 to 15 trees per acre as a healthy stand, to 500 to 1,000 trees per acre. &ldquo;Although to our eyes, especially as people who had traveled and seen dense East Coast forest, it was very attractive, but it was also very unhealthy and prone to wildfire and beetle [damage],&rdquo; Worsley says. While his father was exploring ways to solve this problem, the Arizona Corporation Commission began mandating a specific amount of renewable energy in the state&rsquo;s energy production portfolio, Worsley explains. &ldquo;There was this window&mdash;this door&mdash;the stars aligned where a biomass power plant could, at the time, provide very affordable and also renewable base load electricity,&rdquo; he says. Arizona Public Services and Salt River Project signed contracts with Bob Worsley to build a biomass power plant to deal with reforestation challenges, Worsley explains. The facility began running in 2008. However, the market crash led to the facility changing hands as the bank sold the facility. The group that bought it from the bank sold it back to Bob Worsley in 2013 for close to&nbsp; what they had initially bought it for, bringing Worsley on as CEO and president of the renamed company, Novo BioPower. Bob Worsley remains a majority owner of the company, though he is not involved in running the plant day-to-day. &ldquo;In the meantime, the facility that [Novo] was colocated next to, a paper mill, went bankrupt in 2012, so it was an opportunity to come in and buy the facility and some of the conjoined assets, and kind of make a singular facility that has a sole purpose of generating power from the thinning of our federal forests.&rdquo; Novo BioPower signed documents extending its power purchase agreement with Arizona Public Services through December 2033. An extension was also approved by Salt River Project executive management and was signed in October. &ldquo;We have taken this facility from twice-defunct ownership to profitable, high-output facility that has mostly had year-over-year steady growth,&rdquo; Worsley says. Operational Considerations Novo BioPower faces three challenges in day-to-day operations: fuel source homogeneity, feedstock sourcing and insurance for the power plant. Lack of homogeneity in the fuel source is the biggest of these challenges, Worsley explains. &ldquo;At a biomass facility, unless you can put a lot of money into making that wood look and act like rock, torrefy it, harden it, pelletize and then grind it, you are forced to deal with different sizing, different Btu, moisture and ash content, and then blend all of it together while trying not to increase cost,&rdquo; he says. The other aspect that is a challenge for a biomass plant is sourcing feedstock. Since they need to go on public and private land to obtain biomass to process, it requires dealing with the federal government red tape, environmentalists and local residents. &ldquo;You have to go out and work on public and private land, mostly public, where people have opinions and they recreate &hellip; we could be doing a thinning project right next to where people are camping and hunting,&rdquo; Worsley says. Finding insurance is also difficult since biomass power facilities have a history of being difficult to run and maintain since they typically operate within low margins. For Worsley, managing these challenges are worth it, if it means helping solve generational issues of fire and drought. In order to do this, the plant must stay in business. &ldquo;Profitability is the mechanism that allows us to carry out our purpose,&rdquo; Worsley says. And the 27-MW Novo BioPower plant is profitable, maintaining a &ldquo;true uptime in the low 90%, 93%,&rdquo; running 340-plus days each year for the past four years. Plant Functionality Novo BioPower&rsquo;s biomass feedstock is made up of ground hog fuel or precommercial timber, including tree limbs, bark, pine needles and tree tops. &ldquo;We take the residues off of those mills, the residue out of that forest, and then all the precommercial timber, the five-inch, four-inch and three-inch that has to be cut as part of the deal to be able to take the merchantable wood off, that all comes in, in the hog fuel,&rdquo; Worsley says. The plant aims to keep 30 days&rsquo; worth of fuel on hand, stored in the fuel yard. The plant uses a Babcock &amp; Wilcox bubbling fluidized bed boiler to burn the biomass, create steam and produce power. Worsley explains that the boiler uses a five-foot bed of sand with a higher melting point. The ground wood is injected over the top of the bed through air knives, allowing the feedstock to be burned for its duration. The sand will agitate the ash to make sure that any remaining wood is also burned. Noncombustible material such as rocks, metal or sand will flow through the bed as it&rsquo;s agitated by the air and comes out the bottom. The ash flies over through the boiler, into the bag house and is collected there, Worsley says. &ldquo;At that point it&rsquo;s just like almost any other power plant that heat is transferred into the tube walls, which are full of water that turns into high pressure steam shot into a GE turbine generator, and we make power.&rdquo; Sustaining the Forest Due to drought, the pine line in Arizona is shifting, Worsley explains. Previous policies designed to prevent fire has led to overgrowth of ponderosa pine forests, and the trees have become even drier in the midst of extreme drought conditions. This combination has made it impossible for fire to play its role in Arizona forests, Worsley explains, as they are too intense, spread quickly and kill healthy trees. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s impossible to return fire to this forest today without it being catastrophic,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;There are too many ladder fuels, there&rsquo;s too much fuel load on the ground, and the trees are too unhealthy.&rdquo; Novo BioPower&rsquo;s goal is to help return the forests to presettlement conditions, when low-intensity fires could play their rightful role and clean out the forest, allowing the trees to survive. Novo BioPower utilizes the &ldquo;lowest end portion&rdquo; of the trees throughout every acre of harvested forest. Worsley explains that this approach allows the plant to make a sustainable forest industry work. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not mining sequestered carbon, we&rsquo;re using active carbon, but our efforts go beyond that, in my opinion,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It goes beyond just being carbon neutral. I call it carbon neutral-plus, because we are in fact &hellip; spending each and every day preserving the largest carbon sink in the state of Arizona&mdash;the 4 million-acre ponderosa pine forest. We protect that and remove the low-grade, high-hazard fuels, retaining this large, beautiful forest at its capacity to pull CO2 out of the air and release oxygen.&rdquo; The purpose of maintaining this forest as a carbon sink, recreational area and watershed is what gives Worsley purpose in running Novo BioPower. &ldquo;There are a lot easier businesses to be in than biomass. But&nbsp; it was personal to us,&rdquo; Worsley adds. &ldquo;We experienced its impact, we felt the heat of those catastrophic wildfires and we saw what it did, so we wanted to do something about it. And we&rsquo;re doing it, while making a profit.&rdquo; &nbsp; Author: Katie Schroeder Staff Writer kschroeder@bbiinternational.com

(Left to right) Eddy Ekstrom, Brad Worsley and Bob Worsley look out into Novo BioPowerâ€™s woodyard.

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A look inside Novo BioPower. Pictured is a GE turbine generator, foreground, and the control room. 

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Novo BioPower is located in east-central Arizonaâ€™s Snowflake, between the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains. 

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Novo BioPower is Arizonaâ€™s only biomass power plant. The facility began operating in 2008 and produces 27 MW of electricity. 

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Novo BioPower CEO Brad Worsley describes the impact the family-owned biomass power plant has on the health of Arizona's ponderosa pine forests.

Power with a Purpose

Minnesotans are looking for a biomass revival&mdash;a combination of the growing movement toward decarbonization, expectations of continued high natural gas prices, and the need to better manage the state&rsquo;s forest resources. But first, they need to overcome hurdles left by shifting policy impacts and earlier boom and busts. &ldquo;Back in mid- to late 2000s, there was a surge of interest in trying to use woody biomass for bioenergy, biofuels and byproducts,&rdquo; explains Eric Schenck, executive director of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council. A 2007 state renewable energy standard set a goal of 25% renewables by 2025, which supported early biomass projects. &ldquo;At one time, three or four facilities were doing cogeneration using biomass for thermal and electrical energy. There developed, in response, a forest products industry, with loggers and people harvesting biomass, who bought equipment and got geared up to harvest and haul it. Then the market started to go away, and we had a bunch of people with equipment that had no use for it. A lot got sold out of state.&rdquo;&nbsp; The loss of the biomass market was partly due to economics favoring natural gas and partly policy driven, with federal policies restricting eligible woody biomass and tax credits favoring wind and solar. In Minnesota, wind and solar began to fill the renewable energy standard goals. In addition, the state&rsquo;s largest utility had been required to purchase biomass power as a condition for its nuclear power permit. When that was repealed in 2018, only one cogeneration facility kept firing wood: St. Paul Cogeneration in the state&rsquo;s capitol. Urban Wood Resource The St. Paul utility&rsquo;s use of woody biomass is based more upon providing an outlet for urban waste wood than meeting the state&rsquo;s renewable power standard, so it survived the policy shifts. The facility, launched in the mid-1980s, began cofiring wood chips with coal in 1997 to provide heating and cooling to St. Paul&rsquo;s downtown area through District Energy St. Paul. Cogeneration was added in 2003. The system generates 33 MW of electricity and provides heating and cooling for 33 million square feet of building space, which includes the state capitol grounds, downtown offices and businesses, hotels and residential properties. Today, woody biomass comprises about 50% of the boiler fuel, followed closely by natural gas. Fuel oil serves as a backup and a large solar thermal array supplies about 1% of the annual energy load. Coal is no longer used. The goal is to decarbonize entirely by 2050, says Ken Smith, CEO of Ever-Green Energy, the District Energy St. Paul subsidiary that manages St. Paul&rsquo;s system along with nine others in five states.&nbsp; Over the decades, they&rsquo;ve learned to manage supply, Smith says. When the system first began cofiring with wood chips, inadequate infrastructure meant another subsidiary was created to manage and process urban waste wood from the Twin Cities Metro area. There&rsquo;s an ebb and flow to urban wood waste, he adds. In the spring, volumes drop as more gets used for mulching. In the fall, deer hunting season slows down deliveries. Neighboring cities as far as 70 miles away have contributed their wood waste and, when needed, forest residuals were trucked in from central or northern Minnesota. Today, there are no concerns about wood supplies&mdash;the wood yard closes for deliveries at times, because it&rsquo;s full. Ash trees killed by the emerald ash borer (EAB) are adding major volumes to the regular tree trimming, storm damage and construction waste. EAB supplies are expected to last for more than a decade, Smith says. Minnesota has more ash trees than any other state, comprising around 15% of the Twin Cities&rsquo; canopy, he explains, and some communities in the state have 60% ash. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re one of the very few outlets for that material. If we didn&rsquo;t continue, there is no Plan B. There is no alternative.&rdquo; Nonetheless, Ever-Green faced its own challenge with its utility partner, regulators and policymakers when renegotiating its power purchase agreement. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been in conversation for seven years,&rdquo; Smith says. &ldquo;It took a while for folks to get their minds wrapped around the important role this facility has in managing tree waste.&rdquo; While natural gas was a lower-cost fuel favored by some, &ldquo;Where are you going to go with 250,000 tons of tree waste every year?&rdquo; Smith asks. Across the state, natural mortality of trees from storms, changing climate, disease and invasive insects covers as much or more ground every year than what gets harvested, Schenck says. On top of that, there is an accumulation of wood residuals from the state&rsquo;s forest products industries but few outlets, meaning a lot of slash is not being managed optimally for regrowth. Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest there&rsquo;s about 5 million tons of dead wood and slash left in the forest every year, he says. The Minnesota Forest Resources Council, which Schenck directs, is supporting revived efforts to better utilize those forest resources. A January resolution supports statewide fuel or energy standards for low-carbon renewable biofuels from woody biomass or other feedstocks and commits to developing strategies and recommending policies to attract new markets. &ldquo;The governor had a big administrative push this past year to develop climate friendly policies that cut across all sectors&mdash;agriculture, forest, energy, transportation,&rdquo; Schenck explains. &ldquo;Part of this is looking at biomass again as a low-carbon fuel alternative, along with other uses.&rdquo; From Smith&rsquo;s perspective, interest in woody biomass indeed is growing, thanks to higher natural gas prices, &ldquo;but is it among the top solutions? We&rsquo;re not there yet,&rdquo; he says. Woody biomass is not likely to become the majority fuel source, he continues, adding that the St. Paul utility would never rely on just one fuel source, &ldquo;but it can be an important role if it&rsquo;s done sustainably, and if you&rsquo;re dealing with waste streams.&rdquo; Biomass is playing an important role in many places around the world, he adds. &ldquo;It tends to be a small percentage of the overall energy mix, but it plays an important role because it&rsquo;s more of a base load.&rdquo; Smith suggests we&rsquo;re in an energy system transformation, and not just a transition. The built environment&mdash;buildings and industry&mdash;will be the hardest to decarbonize, he says. &ldquo;Between buildings and industry in Minnesota, they make up 70% of where our energy goes. It won&rsquo;t be a transformation that occurs necessarily building by building. It&rsquo;s going to have to be done community by community.&rdquo; Ever-Green has worked with a number of campuses&mdash;colleges, hospitals, communities&mdash;that are planning for the future of their district heating. Each defined area, he suggests, will be looking at available resources. Wind and solar may not be available to all, and woody biomass will make sense in some areas, he says. Forest Fuel Surrounded by northern Minnesota forests, Hibbing, Minnesota, is one of those places that illustrates the opportunities and challenges for woody biomass in the state. This year, Hibbing Public Utility upgraded and fired up the wood boiler it installed in the mid-2000s and mothballed in 2018. The city has phased out coal and plans to increase the use of woody biomass. &ldquo;A year ago, we were crazy for going back to biomass,&rdquo; says Luke Peterson, general manager of Hibbing Public Utilities. &ldquo;Now everybody&rsquo;s going back to biomass.&rdquo; The goal, he says, is not about using the lowest-cost fuel&mdash;particularly considering wood prices have gone up alongside natural gas&mdash;but making Hibbing a more sustainable community. One that is more resilient, relies on locally sourced resources and supports local jobs. The Hibbing cogeneration plant generates about 33 MW, with about 10 MW exceeding local needs that can be sold to the grid, Peterson says. The district steam heating system makes a mile loop around the city, serving about 1,000 customers&mdash;including the hospital, several large civic buildings and residents. Economics and the work involved in sourcing and managing the burning of wood chips were the main reasons the wood boiler was mothballed, Peterson says. Returning to woody biomass not only preserves 20 jobs at HPU, but is supporting at least 20 jobs in the community. &ldquo;It requires this whole ecosystem of people and processes,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It can be a lot of work, but it&rsquo;s worth it to explore and develop those value chains.&rdquo; The utility was fortunate, because two local loggers kept their chippers when the market disappeared, he adds. With a goal of burning 200,000 tons of wood chips annually, the utility is finalizing an agreement to take residuals from a pallet manufacturer 60 miles away to add to local supplies. The long-term goal is to eliminate fossil fuels entirely and use the city utility as a catalyst for economic transition. Possibilities include hydrogen and methanol, and attracting complementary industries such as cross-laminated timber. Another idea is to explore waste heat utilization, Peterson says, citing Iceland&rsquo;s use of waste heat to melt snow on sidewalks and on the soccer field. Peterson advocates for a restorative development approach that looks at total costs, not just financial ones, and takes a long-term view of sustainability.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is it about wood that creates value,&rdquo; he says. He&rsquo;d like to see each log get managed for its best value, with the waste chips being used for cogeneration. Better forest management reduces debris that contributes to forest fires. New equipment requires new skills that build workforce capabilities. &ldquo;There are all these offshoots, not just the tech, but the whole process and humans involved in taking care of the forest,&rdquo; Peterson adds. &ldquo;Like the loggers&mdash;you wouldn&rsquo;t believe how many multigenerational vendors I have supplying wood to the power plant. What&rsquo;s that family story worth? That means something, because that&rsquo;s people, building a network for the future that has a strong family tie to the land, and also a hard work ethic.&rdquo; Contact: Anna Simet asimet@bbiinternational.com

Hibbing Public Utilities power plant operators take a look into the fire chamber, where 3,000 tons of wood chips are turned into electrical power each day.

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A truck unloads nearly 30 tons of wood chips into the Hibbing Public Utilities biomass power facility. The plant burns 3,000 tons of wood per day. 

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Across Minnesota, natural mortality of trees from storms, changing climate, disease and invasive insects covers as much or more ground every year than what gets harvested. 

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Roughly 260,000 tons of wood chips are supplied to St. Paul Cogeneration annually. The use of biomass keeps $12 million in the local economy each year. 

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Urban centers are expecting the current onslaught of 
EAB-killed wood to continue, but lost infrastructure will need 
rebuilding for woody biomass markets to rebound.

Minnesota Biomass Revival

Andrew Eastman, senior council at Husch Blackwell, was a guest for Season 1, Episode 8 of the Biomass Magazine Podcast. Husch Blackwell is a national law firm with approximately 800 lawyers across 20 offices nationwide. Within the firm, Blackwell explains, there is a group called Energy Natural Resources, which is dedicated to green energy development, project and financing transactional work, and a sub-team dedicated to biofuels, biomass and biogas projects. Eastman is a part of this team, which specializes in representing developers throughout all stages of the project lifecycle, from concept to initial financing, to commercial operation and offtake. BMM: So, have you been busy lately? &nbsp; A.E.: Oh yes&mdash;busy and then some. And with enactment of Inflation Reduction Act, that will only increase. &nbsp; BMM: We&rsquo;re here today to chat about project contracts and financing. What are the foundational agreements of a biogas project? A.E.: Any biogas project requires a couple of backbone, foundational contracts to get off the ground and going. The first has to do with land rights. If you&rsquo;re going to build a project, you need the rights to be on that project site, to build and operate. Those agreements usually take the form of a lease or license form the landlord. You also need a complementary easement agreement, which lets you, your subs, agents and contractors be on-site, and it also allows you to get across to adjacent or neighboring land for the purpose of interconnection. Those are the two things that get you off the ground and running. Once you&rsquo;ve got those in place, the thing that needs to happen next is the feedstock agreement. If you&rsquo;re dealing with a livestock project, this is probably going to be a manure supply agreement, a landfill will be a gas rights agreement, and a wastewater treatment plant is going to be a comparable agreement ... those are really the three foundational agreements that are the basis for any biogas project. BMM: Once you have those three in line, what&rsquo;s next?&nbsp; &nbsp; A.E.: Once you get those three just discussed, the next thing you&rsquo;re looking for is an offtake agreement. It shouldn&rsquo;t be longer than your gas rights or feedstock agreement. The reason for that is you don&rsquo;t want to be stuck in a position where you&rsquo;re obligated to sell gas for a longer time than you have the rights to receive or generate that gas. Once you&rsquo;ve got those four contracts in place, you&rsquo;re in pretty good shape to go get financing for your project. Those are the things that lenders, investors and financing parties are going to be looking for. &nbsp; BMM: What&rsquo;s the financing environment like right now for biogas projects? Tune in for Eastman&rsquo;s response Listen to the rest of the podcast: www.biomassmagazine.com/pages/podcasts Don't Miss an Episode: Biomass Magazine&rsquo;s recent podcasts: S01 E06 The Landmark Inflation Act: What&rsquo;s in it for Biogas/Renewable Natural Gas? Featuring Patrick Serfass, Executive Director, American Biogas Council S01 E08 Targeting a Green Hydrogen Economy in Northern California Featuring Chris Headrick, founder &amp; Executive Chairman of H2 Energy Group S01 E09 Growing the Forest Economy: Peak Renewables Featuring Scott Bax, CEO, Peak Renewables Interested in being a guest? Contact Danielle Piekarski at dpiekarski@bbiinternational.com

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Andrew Eastman, senior council at Husch Blackwell, discusses contracts and financing for biogas projects during Season 1, Episode 8 of the Biomass Magazine Podcast.

Podcast Preview with Andrew Eastman, Husch Blackwell

U.S. renewable diesel capacity continues to rapidly expand and is poised to surpass operating biodiesel capacity, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Sept. 30. Biodiesel capacity fell to 2.089 billion gallons in July, down 126 MMgy when compared to the 2.215 billion gallons of capacity reported for June and down 342 MMgy when compared to the 2.431 billion gallons of capacity in place as of July 2021. Capacity for renewable diesel and associated fuels, including renewable heating oil, renewable jet fuel, renewable naphtha, renewable gasoline and other biofuels and biointermediates, expanded to 2.089 billion gallons in July, up 142 MMgy when compared to the previous month. Capacity for renewable diesel more than doubled when compared to the 1.014 billion gallons of capacity in place as of July 2021. &nbsp; CoBank in late September published a report that recognizes renewable diesel as the most exciting growth opportunity in the U.S. biofuels space, with proposed capacity increasing from approximately 1 billion gallons in 2021 to 6.5 billion gallons by 2030. That level of capacity would equate to approximately 15% of today&rsquo;s diesel market, according to the report. CoBank notes that it expects the recently signed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to a be a catalyst for biofuels sector growth over the next decade. Provisions of the law that are particularly beneficial to the biofuels industry include $500 million allocated to support biofuel infrastructure development; the extension of the $1 per gallon tax credit for biomass-based diesel through 2024; the newly established clean fuel production tax credit and enhanced carbon capture and storage credits/payments; and a temporary tax credit for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Mitsui Chemicals Inc. announced an investment in Apeiron AgroCommodities Pte. Ltd., rebranded and known as Apeiron Bioenergy. Apeiron Bioenergy is one of the largest collectors and sellers of used cooking oil in Southeast Asia and China region. Mitsui Chemicals indicated the investment will help the company expand its procurement of biomass raw materials as it looks to meet growing demand for biobased chemicals and plastics. Earlier this year, Neste Corp. and Marathon Petroleum Corp. announced an agreement to establish a 50/50 joint venture to produce renewable diesel following a conversion project of Marathon&rsquo;s refinery in Martinez, California. The companies recently reported that the required closing conditions have been met, including the receipt of the necessary permits and regulatory approvals, and Neste and Marathon have closed the transaction for the establishment of the joint venture. To be called Martinez Renewables, the operation is slated to commence production in early 2023. The facility is expected to be capable of producing 2.1 million tons per year (730 MMgy) by the end of 2023. OMV, an international integrated oil, gas and chemicals company headquartered in Vienna, Austria, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to supply SAF at Ryanair airports across Austria, Germany and Romania. The MOU agreement gives Ryanair unique access to purchase up to 160,000 tons (53 million gallons) of SAF from OMV over the next 8 years, starting in 2023. Clean Fuels Alliance America has appointed Jonathan Martin of Ottawa Hills, Ohio, as its first director of economic and market analytics. Martin, most recently an economist with Marathon Petroleum Co., brings 10 years of experience in oil and gas corporate economics to this newly created role. Martin has a bachelor&rsquo;s degree in chemical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana. He will be based in Ohio. Imperial on Sept. 6 announced a long-term contract with Air Products to supply low-carbon hydrogen for Imperial&rsquo;s proposed renewable diesel complex at its Strathcona refinery near Edmonton, Alberta. Air Products will provide pipeline supply from its hydrogen plant under construction in Edmonton. Announced in August 2021, Imperial&rsquo;s renewable diesel complex is expected to produce more than 1 billion liters per year of renewable diesel from locally sourced feedstocks. Vertex Energy Inc., a specialty refiner and marketer of high-quality refined products, provided an update on the company&rsquo;s Mobile, Alabama, refinery renewable diesel conversion project, including a strategic extension of the planned construction timeline. As previously disclosed, Vertex is working on completing a $90 million-plus capital project designed to modify the Mobile Refinery&rsquo;s existing hydrocracking unit to produce renewable diesel fuel on a standalone basis. Upon completion of the conversion project, the refinery is expected to commence production of approximately 8,000 to 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of renewable diesel, with production volumes anticipated to ramp up to approximately 14,000 bpd. After a thorough review of project execution risk by the company, mechanical completion of the conversion project has been proactively extended from its initial target of year-end 2022, to the first quarter of 2023. These risk considerations are the result of recent COVID-19 induced product delays and global supply chain shortages in several previously unimpacted markets, including common pipes, valves and fittings, and certain base bulk materials, according to the company. Management expects mechanical completion to occur in the first quarter of 2023, with production anticipated to begin in the second quarter.

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Renewable Diesel & SAF Roundup 

The brilliantly colored leaves brought by Minnesota&rsquo;s autumn are fading and falling. Massive, healthy trees abound my neighborhood and much of the town, but that&rsquo;s not necessarily representative of the current state of all of Minnesota&rsquo;s forests, which are in perpetual need of managing and thinning (an issue not unique to Minnesota). Notably, the emerald ash borer is contributing major volumes to the flow of wood waste in the state&mdash;which is home to nearly 1 billion ash trees&mdash;and our page-12 feature, &ldquo;Minnesota&rsquo;s Biomass Revival,&rdquo; underlines just how crucial biomass- and waste-to-energy plants are for wood waste disposal. Says Ken Smith, CEO of Ever-Green Energy, subsidiary of the District Energy St. Paul, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re one of the very few outlets for that material. If we didn&rsquo;t continue, there is no Plan B. There is no alternative.&rdquo; About 50% of the metro tree waste the facility takes in is EAB-infested. And while wood waste disposal is a critical function of the facility, using biomass there keeps $12 million in the local economy each year. Besides discussions with operators of biomass-using energy plants in the state, freelance writer Susanne Retka Schill chats with Eric Schneck of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council, which is supporting revived efforts to better utilize forest resources. This includes a resolution that promotes statewide fuel or energy standards for low-carbon, renewable biofuels from woody biomass and other feedstocks, as well as development of strategies and policies to attract new markets. On that note of forest restoration and energy production, you won&rsquo;t want to miss our page-16 feature, &ldquo;Power with a Purpose,&rdquo; in which staff writer Katie Schroeder interviews Brad Worsley, CEO of Arizona&rsquo;s lone biomass plant, Novo BioPower. This feel-good piece lays out the history of the plant, and why the Worsleys felt compelled to keep this facility alive (and profitable), while greatly contributing to the health of the state&rsquo;s ponderosa pine forests. &nbsp;While the aforementioned features are focused on wood waste to power, other end markets for this vast resource are quickly emerging, and I would be remiss if I did not mention the explosive renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) markets. Wood is a being eyed as a promising feedstock for the industry, the development of which may unlock previously uneconomical sources of forestry waste. You&rsquo;ll find a roundup of recent renewable diesel and SAF news on page 6. Finally, you may have noticed within the magazine&mdash;or online&mdash;that Biomass Magazine and Pellet Mill Magazine have launched a podcast platform (see preview on page 8). We&rsquo;re always looking for new guests, so if you&rsquo;re interested, please reach out. Author: Anna Simet Editor asimet@bbiinternational.com

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The emerald ash borer is contributing major volumes to the flow of wood waste in  Minnesota, which is home to nearly 1 billion ash trees.

Biomass Magazine Issue 4

Business Briefs

Buisness Briefs

Columns

Celebrating National Bioenergy Day

Winter is Coming (And for Many, Much Higher Heating Bills)

Avoiding Failure, Extending Life of System-Critical Electrical Bus Ducts

Forest Waste to Fuel

Featured

Biogas Now & Beyond

Size Reduction Solutions

Power with a Purpose

Minnesota Biomass Revival

Contributions

Material Characteristics and Bulk Handling Design - Biomass Engineering & Equipment

Forisk Wood Fiber Review: Weather and Trucking Impacts

Project Talk

SPOTLIGHT: Brunette Machinery Co., Advanced Forestry Equipment

Biocoal Exports' Potential Role in US Forest Restoration and Japan's Decarbonization Efforts

Pulpwood Paradise and the US South

Departments

Podcast Preview with Andrew Eastman, Husch Blackwell

Biomass Magazine Issue 4.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Buisness Briefs

Columns

Celebrating National Bioenergy Day

Winter is Coming (And for Many, Much Higher Heating Bills)

Avoiding Failure, Extending Life of System-Critical Electrical Bus Ducts

Forest Waste to Fuel

Featured

Biogas Now & Beyond

Size Reduction Solutions

Power with a Purpose

Minnesota Biomass Revival

Contributions

Material Characteristics and Bulk Handling Design - Biomass Engineering & Equipment

Forisk Wood Fiber Review: Weather and Trucking Impacts

Project Talk

SPOTLIGHT: Brunette Machinery Co., Advanced Forestry Equipment

Biocoal Exports' Potential Role in US Forest Restoration and Japan's Decarbonization Efforts

Pulpwood Paradise and the US South

Departments

Podcast Preview with Andrew Eastman, Husch Blackwell

Biomass Magazine Issue 4