There&rsquo;s nothing better than low-priced natural gas, unstable renewable energy credit markets and a stalled Clean Power Plan to motivate the biomass power sector to flip over every rock looking for additional economic value from the organic material that others leave behind in the woods and fields. Throughout March, my travels took me to Amsterdam to speak at the World Biofuels Conference. There, I learned and spoke about biomass displacing coal in the European Union, and what set of policies would be needed to use more pellets in the U.S. I also learned that companies like Stora Enso&mdash;once world leaders in the production of paper&mdash;are using fiber for all sorts of higher value new products like sugars, biochemical and other bioproducts. For that company, and many others, making pulp and paper is no longer the dominant part of their future. The Amsterdam talks about innovation and investment could not be timelier for a discussion on this side of the Atlantic about the future of our forest products industry. Here in Maine, we have lost five paper mills in 24 months. That&rsquo;s direct and indirect job losses exceeding 5,000 in a state that has higher poverty rates than most areas of the country. It&rsquo;s an economic collapse never before seen in Maine. To learn more about the future of the bioeconomy, I was invited along with Sarah Boggess at ReEnergy to represent biomass power producers at a meeting in Lincoln, Maine, home to a now-closed tissue mill. Convened by Maine Sen. Angus King and his staff, the event, &ldquo;Maine&rsquo;s Forest Economy Roundtable: Strengthening Maine&rsquo;s Forest Economy Industry,&rdquo; was an opportunity for loggers, power plant operators, sawmills, and town officials&mdash;many of whom have lost almost their entire tax base&mdash;to come together and discuss a path forward. Noting the accomplishments of George Washington Carver in creating products from peanuts, King urged the industry to find the &ldquo;George Washington Carver of Wood.&rdquo; We learned about the potential for small-scale combined-heat-and-power at Robbins Lumber, the work done by the University of Maine and Biobased Maine on promoting the use of biofuels, and the potential for thermal greenhouses at power plants. But we also learned from Maine&rsquo;s logging community that the state&rsquo;s biobased economy will become a whole lot harder if Maine biomass plants and the remaining paper mills close. An entire value chain of landowners, foresters, loggers and truck drivers is at risk of being lost forever. States from Maine to California are currently wrestling with strategies to keep biomass plants viable in the face of lower power prices. Frustratingly, it&rsquo;s also at a time when limitless fiber from trees killed by drought or diseased by the pine beetle epidemic ie unused on millions of acres in the West. Regrettably, the debate sometimes reverts to a comparison with natural gas. But cheap natural gas doesn&rsquo;t keep forests healthy, or solve a waste problem for sawmills, or create a market for residual or by-products, or provide a solution to the impending spruce budworm disaster now on the doorstep of north New England. Like the paper industry, we will innovate. But federal and state policymakers need to help make sure that the bioproducts of tomorrow are not jeopardized by the actions we take today. On May 11, Biomass Power Association members will be meeting with federal legislators in Washington, D.C., for our annual fly-in to make these points. We welcome all involved in the biomass industry to join us. &nbsp; Author: Bob Cleaves President, Biomass Power Association bob@usabiomass.org www.usabiomass.org

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There's nothing better than low-priced natural gas, unstable renewable energy credit markets and a stalled Clean Power Plan to motivate the biomass power sector to flip over every rock looking for additional economic value.

Biomass at a Crossroads

ACE Group launches dedicated environmental policy for renewable energy ACE Group has launched ACE Renewable Energy Environmental Protection, the first dedicated environmental policy for companies in the renewable energy industry in the U.K. and Ireland, as ACE continues to invest in its environmental risk capabilities. ACE Renewable Energy Environmental Protection covers the full spectrum of environmental risks faced by renewable energy companies, providing seamless coverage. It is available to energy producers in every renewable sector, including solar, onshore and offshore wind, tidal, hydro, waste-to-energy, biofuel and landfill gas extraction. Deinove awarded patents&nbsp; Deinove recently announced it has received 10 new patent grant agreements. Patent family PF7: &ldquo;Bacteria and uses thereof&rdquo; received an initial agreement for issuance by the U.S. Patent Office. The patent protects the production of compounds such as ethanol, proteins, enzymes, or drugs from Deinococcus bacteria. The company has also obtained new grant agreements for five families of patents already issued in other geographical areas. The Deinove patent portfolio now includes 19 patent families protecting its technology platforms, development of selection methods for a wide variety of Deinococcus and related bacteria, their use in the production processes of various biobased products of interest, and their industrial applications. JBEI announces new leadership in fuels synthesis division The Department of Energy&rsquo;s Joint Bioenergy Institute has announced Aindrila Mukhopadhyay will step into the role of vice president of the Fuels Synthesis Division. Mukhopadhyay,&nbsp; who joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2003, will continue to serve as director of JBEI&rsquo;s Host Engineering group and as interim division director of LBNL&rsquo;s Biological Systems and Engineering in the Biosciences Area. She leads a team responsible for the study of signaling and stress response in both environmental and engineered organisms. Her research focus at JBEI is the development of robust microbial strains that show high tolerance and productivity during biofuels and chemicals production. Her team has conducted many discovery, strain engineering and systems biology studies to explore the causes of growth inhibition and low productivity, and has developed strategies to improve these phenotypes. With her team, she has published numerous research papers on this topic, and holds patents on the use and optimization of cellular transport system to improve tolerance to final products as well as improve intake of carbon sources. Taek Soon Lee has been named deputy vice president of the Fuels Synthesis Division, a position previously held by Mukhopadhyay. Lee joined Jay Keasling&rsquo;s group at UC Berkeley and LBNL as a postdoctoral researcher in 2006, and since 2008 Lee has served as director of metabolic engineering in the Fuels Synthesis Division at JBEI. His research group focuses on the identification of potential drop-in biofuels and building and optimizing the metabolic pathways to produce these target fuels in microbes. PanAridus awarded patent PanAridus LLC, an Arizona-based guayule producer, recently announced the U.S. Patent Office granted the company its 10th patent, the first in the industry for guayule harvesting. PanAridus already holds nine patents for guayule plants, which yield a polymer nearly identical to tropically grown natural rubber. Novozymes announces new corporate structure&nbsp; Novozymes has announced the formation of three divisions: Household Care and Technical Industries, Agriculture and Bioenergy, and Food and Beverages. The organizational change aims to enhance the company&rsquo;s ability to deliver more innovation to customers with more speed and commercial impact. Each division will be led by a newly named executive vice president. They are: Agriculture and Bioenergy, Tina Sejersg&aring;rd Fan&oslash;, formerly vice president of sales; Household Care and Technical Industries, Anders Lund, formerly vice president of sales; and Food and Beverages, Andrew Fordyce, formerly vice president of Business Operations. The divisions will be supported by one central Research, Innovation and Supply organization led by Thomas Videb&aelig;k, chief operating officer and executive vice president. Benny D. Loft, chief financial officer and executive vice president, is head of Corporate Functions, and Peder Holk Nielsen will continue as CEO and president. European Biogas Association elects leadership The European Biogas Association has announced the reelection of Jan &Scaron;tambask&yacute; of the Czech Biogas Association as president and Harm Grobr&uuml;gge of the German Biogas Association and Franz Kirchmeyr of the Austrian Compost &amp; Biogas Association as vice presidents. Stefano Bozzetto of the Italian Biogas Association, David Collins of the Renewable Energy Association-Biogas Group, Attila Kovacs of the Hungarian Biogas Association and Anderson Mathiasson of Swedish Gas Association will serve as board members. In addition, Susanna Pfl&uuml;ger has been appointed secretary general. JetBlue joins RSB JetBlue Airways has joined The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials. As the first U.S. airline member, JetBlue joins 100 other like-minded organizations in creating a market and standard for sustainable biomass and biobased products. The RSB is an independent and global multistakeholder coalition that works to promote the sustainability of biomaterials. JetBlue will participate in discussions relating to the aviation sector. WSM announces WSM BioPrep West Salem Machinery Co. has announced the WSM BioPrep Organics Processing System, a complete high-capacity system to convert green waste, food waste, and mixed organics into high-quality feedstock for compost and anaerobic digestion conversion systems. The system includes bulk receiving and metering infeed, shredding, conveying, metal removal or detection, light fraction separation, screening, sorting, and grinding&mdash;the full set of tools to allow effective processing of incoming materials at rates up to 100 tons per hour. &nbsp; Morbark announces acquisition Morbark LLC has been acquired by an affiliate of Stellex Capital Management. The acquisition is focused on providing growth capital and resources to significantly expand the company in the future.

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Business Briefs

Choosing an appropriate cover photograph for the waste-to-energy issue of Biomass Magazine always presents an informative challenge for our team. It is informative in the sense that for just a moment, on a very small scale, we confront a question that is an ongoing inquiry within the waste-to-energy sector: What is waste? Initially, the question seems rhetorical, but in practice, the answers have significant impacts on the industry. In Associate Editor Katie Fletcher&rsquo;s page-26 feature &ldquo;Playing by the Non-waste Fuels Rules,&rdquo; she works to parse out what the recent amendment to the nonhazardous secondary materials means for energy producers utilizing construction and demolition materials, paper recycling residuals and creosote-treated railroad ties. While these materials might be described in layman&rsquo;s terms as &ldquo;waste,&rdquo; the implications of that distinction within the regulatory context are significant. When largely homogenous streams of nonforest woody biomass are labeled as waste, the emission control burdens are prodigal.&nbsp; Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of the Biomass Power Association, tells Fletcher, &ldquo;If we in the biomass industry were regulated as an incinerator, we would essentially be forced to implement and upgrade air pollution equipment and transform what is a simple biomass boiler to a waste-to-energy facility.&rdquo; Regardless of the regulatory complexity surrounding these materials, the stories in this issue make it clear that they will continue to be produced in abundance, and continued innovation in their utilization for energy production is a must. Senior Editor Ron Kotrba&rsquo;s feature, &ldquo;A Wiser Way to Handle Waste,&rdquo; examines Dong Energy&rsquo;s newly commercialized enzymatic technology that turns the conventional approach to waste handling upside down. Kotrba describes how unlike typical approaches where inbound household waste is sorted before it goes into a reactor, Dong&rsquo;s technology, which it calls REnescience, uses enzymes to begin breaking down the organic fraction before the inert and recyclable materials are removed. Dong believes this will ultimately increase the capture rate of recyclable materials and eliminate the need for source separation of waste, a practice that industry is struggling to get the general public to widely embrace and adopt. Despite what we call it, or how regulatory bodies classify it, these materials aren&rsquo;t going away, and the opportunities they provide this industry are well worth the considerable challenges they present.
&nbsp;
Author: Tim Portz Vice President of Content&nbsp; &amp; Executive Editor tportz@bbiinternational.com

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What is waste? Initially, the question seems rhetorical, but in practice, the answers have significant impacts on the industry. 

What's in a Name?

Reduced oil prices have been bad news for oil industry profits. It hasn&rsquo;t been easy for renewables, either. Despite dampened enthusiasm for renewables overall, innovation continues in areas such as biofuel production. &nbsp;In late March, United Airlines announced that it will use biofuel to help power flights running between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with future plans to expand to all flights operating out of LAX. A small step indeed, but a positive sign that biofuel production remains viable for the future. Now that United has publicly committed to biofuels, it must be able to rely on a steady Supply. In this case, it will come from a Los Angeles refinery operated by AltAir Fuels. The total mixture will be 30 percent biofuel, sourced from feedstocks that include algae, and 70 percent traditional jet fuel.&nbsp; The United announcement is part of a groundswell of activity across the transportation sector. From air to sea, to rail to over-the-road, major consumers of fuel are eyeing more affordable solutions that also comply with mandates related to clean air. The view appears positive, and the biofuels industry should be and is thinking about a future of higher production volume and greater quality. That means production efficiency and productivity, which puts biofuel labs back on the spot to demonstrate their critical enterprise value. As biofuel producers refocus on a more optimistic future, they will turn their attention back to the complexity of their processes. With the potential for increased demand comes the increased risk of production failure. Batch failure is magnified when production accelerates, so labs will increasingly rely on new analytical technologies and new software solutions that enable them to more closely monitor, analyze and report. This ranges from gas chromatography (GC), ion chromatography and fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), all of which generate volumes of data. Volumes of data can soon lead to mountains of challenges, from daily lab operations to more complex pattern recognition that could expose risks, such batch failure. Without a solution such as a laboratory information management system (LIMS), these mountains quickly become impossible to summit. The LIMS brings discipline to an environment with many complex, moving parts. Enterprise-level LIMS, designed for integration across the lab and with other enterprise systems, can seamlessly connect with and work in harmony with other systems, such as a chromatography data system (CDS). In the next-generation biofuels lab, a CDS is critical to ensuring the quality of biofuels, which has everything to do with adherence to required gas and ion chromatographic methods. As modern biofuel laboratories select equipment that is most suitable for specific analyses, they commonly choose from a variety of chromatography instruments from different manufacturers. Using a manufacturer-specific CDS for each instrument can lead to complications regarding efficiency, data handling, training, validation and compliance. The selection of a CDS with multivendor instrument control, including acquisition and data handling of MS instruments, overcomes these challenges. In addition, data storage and handling can be decoupled from instrument control and centralized, a so-called enterprise of the client-server system, increasing the security and accessibility of the data. With all data from instruments in the same format and one common report for results, regardless of the instrument that was used to generate them, the efficiency gains and productivity increases are considerable. A major requirement in production laboratories is ensuring the highest instrument uptime to produce results at every time of day. Especially when running in a client-server system, keeping the laboratory fully up and running during a network outage, planned or not, is a big challenge. Therefore, a CDS should allow operation independent of the network, so that even when the network is down, the CDS keeps instruments running, data accessible for processing, and even allows creation and running of new sequences, ensuring 24/7 laboratory uptime. By guiding technicians through the execution of analytical methods, the CDS drives the laboratory processes related to all aspects of a chromatographic analysis. Some CDS provide an even higher level of automation by encapsulating all of the unique aspects of a chromatography workflow, like instrument control and data processing parameters, correct injection order and reporting parameters, and guiding the operator through the minimal number of steps required to run it. The operator simply selects an instrument, specifies the number of samples and the starting vial position in the autosampler, and begins the analysis. The software then runs the chromatograph, processes the data, and produces final results. Take, for example, ASTM D6584 and EN 14105, the main quantitative quality control methods for the determination of glycerol and glycerides in pure biodiesel by GC. When biodiesel (B100) is derived from vegetable oils, such as sunflower and palm oil, glycerol is created as a byproduct. Mono-, di- and triglycerides, created as intermediates or unreacted starting material, also occur. These methods test for the presence of glycerol and glycerides in the final product, which is important because of their negative impact on fuel efficiency and engine performance.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While both of these analyses differ in small ways, there are some common elements. Both methods require complex and time-consuming sample and calibration standard preparation. Samples are run in duplicate and compared to determine analytical precision. With only a few clicks in the CDS, users can create and start a run and data analysis according to the requirements in the ASTM methods is automatically performed. The next step in the chromatography process, data processing and evaluation, is the most time-consuming step. Even with all data processing parameters correctly set up in the automated chromatography workflow, technicians need to decide if a sample requires re-analyzing, based on the results. Advanced features, such as intelligent run control, allow users to setup system suitability tests with pass/fail criteria, testing for acceptance criteria of the calibrations, checks and samples. The software can then respond to the outcome of these tests, such as failed sample replicates or standards, and without user intervention, take predefined, immediate action, such as reinjecting the samples, performing a dilution or aborting the run. As this can even happen overnight, productivity is increased and a source for errors removed.&nbsp; Final results can be sent directly to the LIMS. A seamless integration between the CDS and LIMS ensures a quick response to all quality results. Any samples that fail to meet the specifications established by ASTM and EN are appropriately flagged as out of specification in the LIMS and preventative action can be taken. This level of automation across the laboratory process ensures product quality and boosts laboratory productivity. &nbsp; Conclusion A LIMS is a proven workhorse in the biofuels industry, especially because it is uniquely suited to highly distributed lab environments with multiple instrument platforms, workflows and standard operating procedures. Although instruments perform discrete tasks and generate data for specific purposes, data integration is vital and a LIMS is critical to achieving an end-to-end flow of information across the lab and across all processes. To ensure efficient, safe and profitable biofuels production, labs must be able to support continuous process monitoring and manage the data outputs in a way that is useful to stakeholders across the enterprise when, where and how they need it. Third-generation biofuel production processes are dynamic and complex. It can take weeks for feedstock to break down, and finding a problem at the end is costly. Labs must be able to use even more sensitive analytical instruments and multilayer software infrastructure that enables instrument-, lab- and enterprise-level insight and decision-making across the production process. Author: Trish Meek Senior Manager, Product Marketing Informatics &amp; Chromatography Software Thermo Fisher Scientific &nbsp; Co-Author: Barbara van Cann Software Product Marketing Specialist, Informatics and Chromatography Software Company Thermo Fisher Scientific www.thermofisher.com

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

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Increasing biofuel demand will require next-generation laboratory software solutions.

Preventing Production Problems in the Lab

Once again, we enter spring awaiting the U.S. EPA&rsquo;s proposal for the renewable volumes obligations (RVO) for the next year. After six years in this cycle, we know that EPA must propose a rule, take comments, and finalize the RVO by November 30, to comply with the law. This year, however, we have some new complicating factors, including pending lawsuits brought by the corn ethanol industry objecting to last year&rsquo;s RVO, and other lawsuits filed by the oil industry that oppose lifting the biomass-based diesel pool without 14 months&rsquo; notice (and no proposed rule there either, as of yet). In addition, for those trying to run a business and plan for the future, the fate of biofuels tax credits remains uncertain, with all set to expire at the end of the year, with little to no conversation about when or if Congress will extend any of them. At least most recently, we have seen oil make a 40 percent comeback to almost $40 per barrel, which somewhat stabilizes the market and sends a short-term signal that perhaps the bottom has finally been found. So, where do we stand at this point? I would argue that these factors have once again led to suspended animation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) and the future of the biofuels industry. This begs the question: What can we do? As a pragmatic optimist, I believe we must start by digging in and staying the course by producing quality biofuels, improving technologies and becoming more cost efficient. Although more complicated, we must also find ways to work with the government in the near-term to help drive our future. Obviously, we are in a presidential election year. The immediate operation of the RFS program is dependent on the current administration. At the end of any administration, concern shifts to &ldquo;legacy,&rdquo; and focus tends to be redirected to fewer items. This may mean that some civil servants could seize an opportunity not to act on some programs until the next administration takes charge. While sitting it out for a year may be an option for the government, it does nothing for the business community that must continue to make investments, run existing facilities and pay employees. Therefore, we must stay engaged with the government, as it has a responsibility to do its job. We must continue to explain the benefits of our fuels. We should ensure that we not only comment on the RVO rules, but also continue to lobby hard for fixing the issues, such as the intermediate feedstock/colocation regulatory designations that limit our ability to bring more advanced fuels to the marketplace. Similarly, we cannot allow the EPA to drag it&rsquo;s feet on the simple plant registrations and the approval of new pathways for technologies and feedstocks. In an election year, we have the opportunity to meet the candidates who are asking for our vote. We must seize the chance to tell them about our industry and what we need the government to deliver. We must tell them that we need rules implemented with efficiency, and to maintain the overall health of RFS program. As for the lawsuits, we must let the courts run their course. For the current law in effect, however, we must engage both the agencies directly in person, through comments submissions, or by pushing your trade association to do both on your behalf. Individually, you are the face of the industry, and the more you directly engage with the candidates themselves, the better they will appreciate how important it is for the government to work for and on behalf of the advanced biofuels industry to improve the lives and security of the people of this great nation. This industry has grown immensely since the initial passage of the RFS. We stand as the largest producers of renewable biofuels in the world. But there is much more to achieve, and many more advanced fuels on the cusp of giving the world needed energy and sustainability moving forward. As the number of people in the world continues to grow, the number of airplane miles flown increases, and the amount of trade on our oceans swells, we must develop more sustainable fuels, if we are to protect our climate. Addressing climate continues to be one of the major reasons to support and develop advanced and cellulosic biofuels. Therefore, we must continue to remind politicians and governments around the world of this option for fighting climate change in the future. We have our work cut out for us to push through the roadblocks before us. Let&rsquo;s make every day this year count for something moving forward, not only for the U.S., but also for the future of the people of the world. Author: Michael McAdams President, Advanced Biofuels Association www.advancedbiofuelsassociation.com Michael.mcadams@hklaw.com

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Addressing climate continues to be one of the major reasons to support and develop advanced and cellulosic biofuels. 

Tenacity Required to Secure  Advanced Biofuels Future

Early this year, construction began on a unique plant at a 100-plus-year-old brownfield site near the historic blue-collar city of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Project owner Dong Energy calls it a &ldquo;world&rsquo;s first.&rdquo; Using enzymes, the facility will produce biogas from 120,000 tons of unsorted household waste, equivalent to garbage from 110,000 residential homes. The fact that this waste is unsorted, meaning no prior separation of the digestible organics from recyclable inorganics, at the source (i.e., residents placing materials in designated bins) or the plant, is what&rsquo;s truly unique about this project. The process to be employed at the new biogas facility in Northwich, Chesire, is Dong Energy&rsquo;s REnescience technology, which has been proven since 2009 at a demonstration-scale plant in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Dong Energy is based. According to Ulrik Falkenberg Lending, senior commercial manager for Dong Energy&rsquo;s REnescience commercial division, the 1-ton-per-hour demonstration plant has logged more than 15,000 hours of run time, testing a variety of wastes from European markets, at various settings using different enzymes. &ldquo;The REnescience technology started its first development back in 2005, as a spin-off from the Inbicon technology&mdash;proprietary technology using enzymes with biomass also developed by Dong Energy,&rdquo; Lending says. As in any proper scale-up, the REnescience technology was first proven in Dong Energy&rsquo;s laboratory, followed by pilot-scale production prior to commissioning of the demonstration plant in 2009. &ldquo;With the REnescience Northwich Plant, the technology is now taken to a full-scale commercial level,&rdquo; Lending says. He adds that important knowledge and improvements have been gained from the lab, pilot and demo plants over the past decade. &ldquo;The decision to build the first plant is a very important step in our roll-out of the REnescience biotechnology,&rdquo; says Thomas Dalsgaard, executive vice president of Dong Energy. &ldquo;This is an entirely new way of treating household waste where we very effectively can ensure that we get as many resources as possible from our waste.&rdquo; The waste will be supplied by the U.K. waste management company FCC Environment, which already collects household waste in the region. &ldquo;This is an exciting new technology for the disposal of municipal residual waste, which is potentially set to revolutionize our thinking as an industry of what can be achieved,&rdquo; says Richard Belfield, group development director with FCC Environment. &ldquo;Not only does this technology convert waste into energy without the need for the combustion of the waste, it will, for the first time, be able to extract the valuable recyclable materials, which so far have been difficult if not out of reach in traditional municipal residual waste treatment processes.&rdquo; Lending says the plan is to subscribe to the U.K.&rsquo;s Renewable Obligations scheme, &ldquo;which is a subsidy paid to producers of green energy,&rdquo; he explains. While much of the feedstock will be ordinary &ldquo;black bin&rdquo; household waste containing food, paper, plastics and metal, Lending says some of the areas from where FCC Environment collects have source segregated separate collection in place. In addition to the RO subsidy, Dong Energy will receive a tipping fee from FCC Environment when it receives the waste, as is customary in the U.K. &ldquo;The solutions available on source separation have not delivered high recycling targets, even when combined with traditional material recovery facility and mechanical biological treatment technologies,&rdquo; Lending says. &ldquo;In addition, the full solutions are overall fairly expensive.&rdquo; Source separation solutions from high-rises in particular have not given good results, according to Lending. This means untold tons of valuable recyclables from the most dense population centers are potentially headed for landfills, wasting precious resources and degrading the environment. For this reason, the ability for Dong Energy&rsquo;s REnescience technology to take in unsorted household waste is vital. The Process While no prior sorting is required, big, bulky items such as &ldquo;white goods&rdquo;&mdash;refrigerators, washers, dryers, air conditioners&mdash;are screened out and will not be put into the system. Sorting of other recyclable material will eventually take place on-site, but only after the waste has been through the bioreactors. &ldquo;Only big, bulky items are screened out prior to the waste being mixed with waste and enzymes,&rdquo; Lending says. &ldquo;All the remaining mixed organic and inorganic wastes go into the bioreactors.&rdquo; Here&rsquo;s how the process works. The REnescience Northwich Plant will take in unsorted household waste and treat the mixed materials gently with water, enzymes and enough heat for enzymatic hydrolysis. &ldquo;No shredding or cutting of the waste is performed, and there is only slow, gentle movements in the bioreactors,&rdquo; Lending explains. This enables the solid fraction&mdash;the plastics and metals, for instance&mdash;to be separated from the nonsolid or liquid fractions at the end of the bioreactors, where Lending says all of the nonrecalcitrant biodegradables are converted into a homogenous bioliquid. &ldquo;This has two important results,&rdquo; Lending says. &ldquo;First, all the biodegradables can be used to create green power and heat, or the biogas can be upgraded by washing out the carbon dioxide and injected into the gas grid. And second, the plastics and metals come out very clean, now ready and easily separated.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the ballistic separation process, the treated waste is separated into three components&mdash;a bioliquid fraction and two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) solid fractions. The 2D fractions are mostly materials such as plastic wraps, tin foil and cloth or textiles. The 3D items are plastic cartons, cans, bottles and the like. The 3D fraction is transported to a washing drum, where surface residues are cleaned using recycled wash water. After the ballistic separator, the 2D fraction is transported to a press, where liquid with organic fibers and residues is separated and mixed into the bioliquid stream. The 2D fraction is washed to improve storage stability and retain as much biomaterial as possible. After washing, a second pressing takes place to increase dry matter content. When the bioliquid exits the ballistic separator, it is mixed with bioliquid from the first pressing of the 2D fraction. Lending says that compared to other types of mechanical biological treatment technologies and biogas processes, the steps taken in the REnescience plant are essentially reversed. &ldquo;Instead of trying to separate the organics from the inorganics by tearing up the waste to sort it and then prepare the organics for anaerobic digestion, the REnescience technology dissolves and makes the organics ready for anaerobic digestion and then the inorganics can be separated,&rdquo; he says. This reversal of the process, so to speak, provides two main benefits in terms of recycling, according to Lending. &ldquo;The biogas yield is high,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and the capture of recyclates is high, and they come out very clean providing for an attractive market value.&rdquo; Inert materials recovered from the process will be funneled to the secondary aggregates markets as road filling, for instance, and residual items of no value will undergo a thermal process such as incineration or cement kilning. Global Applications The REnescience Northwich Plant is designed, financed, owned and operated by Dong Energy. Lending says capital expenditures to build the plant will be approximately $90 million for this first-of-a-kind endeavor. The company would not disclose operational costs. On a cost-comparison basis to other biogas processes, the REnescience Northwich Plant is competitive, according to Lending, not only in the U.K. waste market where it will increase recycling performance compared to alternative solutions for household waste and contribute to the nation&rsquo;s landfill diversion ambitions, but also globally. &ldquo;We see the business being robust in different markets with different fundamental drivers and economic conditions,&rdquo; Lending tells Biomass Magazine. &ldquo;The application of the REnescience technology can be structured and configured to meet different needs, depending on what the particular market interests are.&rdquo; He says Dong Energy is in the process of rolling out more REnescience plants globally. &ldquo;The board of directors for Dong Energy sees the investment as an attractive investment, both standalone and for its potential to unlock a pipeline of coming REnescience plants in the U.K. as well as on a global basis.&rdquo; The plant is expected to produce enough biogas to generate 5 MW of electrical energy. Dong Energy is on track, according to Lending, to begin commissioning early next year. &ldquo;REnescience is a brilliant new technology and generates as many resources as possible from everyday household waste,&rdquo; says Brent Cheshire, Dong Energy&rsquo;s U.K. country chairman. &ldquo;This new bio plant will see us handling waste in a much smarter way.&rdquo; Author: Ron Kotrba Senior Editor, Biomass Magazine 218-745-8347<a style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" title="Call: 218-745-8347" href="#"><img style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" title="Call: 218-745-8347" src="data:image/png;base64,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" alt="" /></a> rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

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

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

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AN UNPLEASING MIX:  The REnescience technology treats â€œblack binâ€� household waste, which can contain a mix of organics, such as coffee grounds and various food scraps, and recyclable inorganic materials like plastic bottles, bags and wrappers. 

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Near Manchester, United Kingdom, Dong Energy is constructing 
the first biogas plant using its REnescience technology that 
treats unsorted household waste with enzymes.  


A Wiser Way to Handle Waste

Our nation&rsquo;s primary law governing the disposal of solid and hazardous waste&mdash;the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act&mdash;was passed by Congress in 1976 to address the problems the U.S. faced from the growing volume of municipal and industrial waste. Since its enactment, the programs and regulations under the statute have evolved, as have the types of waste produced and the way they are managed and disposed of. Undergoing the most recent evolution is the nonhazardous secondary materials (NHSM) regulatory program. In February, the U.S. EPA finalized an amendment to add three sources of fuel to its categorical nonwaste fuels list: construction and demolition (C&amp;D) wood processed from C&amp;D debris; paper recycling residuals generated from the recycling of recovered paper, paperboard and corrugated containers; and creosote-treated railroad ties. The ruling became effective as of March 9. Under the RCRA, the NHSM program is a legislative outlet under which the EPA could begin to differentiate fuels from wastes. The agency announced the regulatory program in March of 2011 to generally establish standards and procedures for identifying whether NHSMs are solid wastes when used as fuels or ingredients in combustion. The rule was amended in February 2013 to include particular NHSMs listed as &ldquo;categorical nonwaste fuels,&rdquo; provided certain conditions were met. EPA also indicated that it would consider adding additional NHSMs to the categorical listings, and did just that in March 2014 by proposing the addition of the three sources in the recently passed amendment. Industry Implications EPA finalized the amendment in an effort to make it easier to comply with the NHSM regulations, as persons who generate or burn these NHSMs will not need to make individual determinations on their materials regarding their waste status. Burning these NHSMs does not require evaluation under the general case-by-case standards and procedures that would otherwise apply to NHSM used in combustion units. According to the NHSM regulation, if material is a solid waste under RCRA, a combustion unit burning it is required to meet the Clean Air Act section 129 emission standards for solid waste incineration units. If the material is not a solid waste, combustion units are required to meet the CAA section 112 emission standards for commercial, industrial and institutional boilers. &ldquo;EPA needs to make a threshold determination whether a material is a fuel or waste and that has huge implications for our industry, because if the material is a waste then it&rsquo;s really no different from a regulatory standpoint than municipal solid waste,&rdquo; says Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of the Biomass Power Association.&nbsp; MSW needs to be combusted in commercial or industrial solid waste incinerators regulated by the Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration or CISWI rule. &ldquo;If we in the biomass industry were regulated as an incinerator, we would essentially be forced to implement and upgrade air pollution control equipment and really transform what is a simple biomass boiler to a waste-to-energy facility, which is a business that we&rsquo;re not in. It&rsquo;s a completely different business model,&rdquo; Cleaves says. &ldquo;We were really pleased by this NHSM ruling because it essentially is a very clean and simple message to those who use these materials as fuel that they won&rsquo;t be considered incinerators.&rdquo; Other than the positive regulatory implication on the industry, there is a practical one as well. &ldquo;In certain parts of the country, like in California for example, where forest biomass is becoming harder to source because of the closure of sawmills and the like, biomass boilers have increasingly relied upon nonforest-derived biomass materials for their feedstock,&rdquo; Cleaves says. &ldquo;To be foreclosed from using these kinds of fuels would be a further challenge for the industry.&rdquo; In its comments filed with the EPA for the Clean Power Plan, the BPA urged the EPA to clarify in the final plan that nonforestry cellulosic materials&mdash;like urban wood, wood-derived C&amp;D debris and railroad ties&mdash;be specifically included in the definition of &ldquo;waste-derived feedstocks,&rdquo; since these organic materials do not cause land-use changes and do not deplete carbon stocks. Waste under the CPP refers to materials that do not have high value in the marketplace and would otherwise probably be discarded and landfilled. The three added materials to the NHSM rule&mdash;C&amp;D wood, railroad ties and paper recycling residuals&mdash;are these types of materials. &ldquo;One of the important takeaways from the NHSM rule is EPA is aligning its rules under the Clean Air Act and federal solid waste laws with the goals of the Clean Power Plan, which, among other things, have encouraged the use of certain biogenic fuels as a way to mitigate climate change,&rdquo; Cleaves says. Defined as waste-derived feedstock in the CPP, these new material sources are now considered nonwaste fuels under the NHSM rule. Apart from avoiding methane emissions when the material is landfilled, Cleaves states there are strong environmental reasons to use this material in biomass boilers, and that &ldquo;one of them is clearly just more efficient combustion.&rdquo; Overall, EPA&rsquo;s amendment to add these three materials is a positive to the industry, but there are many who can&rsquo;t take advantage of the ability to combust these new material sources, as they are listed as categorical nonwaste fuels only if certain conditions are met. Prior to finalizing the rule, EPA opened up a comment period and various stakeholders in the biomass industry responded. Some of the suggested changes were reflected in the final amendment ruling, but others were left out. Tie Terms According to the Association of American Railroads, the U.S. Class I railways maintain nearly 490 million crossties, which does not even account for the more than 500 regional and short line railroads in the U.S. Millions of these railroad ties are replaced every year in the U.S.&mdash;enough to fill an entire football field 70 stories high, according to industry estimates. One-third of these used ties are ground up for landscaping mulch, with the remainder sold as biofuel for creating electricity and heat. According to BPA, its members alone use around 815,000 tons of railroad ties per year, distributed among 13 facilities in seven states. Most of the energy recovery with crossties is conducted through three parties: the generator of the crossties (railroad or utility); the reclamation company that sorts the crossties, and, in some cases, processes the material received from the generator; and the combustor as third-party energy producers. One prominent reclamation company providing the link between the railroad and the end user is National Salvage &amp; Service Corp. Vice President Curtis Schopp says that each year, there are up to 23 million new ties installed, about 15 to 17 million of which are sorted for various uses. National handles around 7 million ties with about 1.5 million going to landscaping, approximately 200,000 landfilled and the rest turned into fuel. While it&rsquo;s clear that railroad ties are available for use as fuel, and its inclusion as a nonwaste fuel is positive, it&rsquo;s not without limitation. One of the legitimacy criteria BPA focused on in its comments to the EPA was the designed-to-burn criteria that requires NHSM contaminants to be at levels comparable to, or less than, those in the traditional fuel that the unit is designed to burn. In the final ruling, the addition of creosote-treated railroad ties (CTRTs) requires that they are processed and then combusted in units designed to burn both biomass and fuel oil as part of normal operations and not solely as part of start-up or shut-down operations, and units at major source pulp and paper mills or power producers subject to 40 CFR part 63, subpart DDDDD that combust CTRT and had been designed to burn biomass and fuel oil, but are modified (e.g. oil delivery mechanisms are removed) in order to use natural gas instead of fuel oil, as part of normal operations and not solely as part of start-up or shut-down operations. BPA and others commented that treating a railroad tie as a fuel if burned in a boiler capable of burning fuel oil, but waste when burned in the same exact boiler not capable of burning fossil fuels, is not defensible as a matter of public policy. Some biomass boilers converted from fuel oil to natural gas; others converted from coal to biomass; and others never had the capability of cofiring with any fossil fuels. The fuel oil restriction eliminates 69 percent of the facilities, and as much as 78 percent of the fuel currently available for energy conversion. Biomass producer ReEnergy Holdings LLC stated in its comments that the limiting boiler configuration would disqualify the company from accepting nearly 85 percent of its current CTRT fuel supply. Also in BPA&rsquo;s comments, biomass facilities that rely on the use of CTRT&rsquo;s are located in states that have mandatory renewable portfolio standard programs (RPS). Michigan and California have RPS programs designed to promote biomass and penalize the use of fuel oil. &ldquo;The way that EPA treated railroad ties was a little disappointing to us,&rdquo; Cleaves says. He adds that the ruling limits some, and it may even be a possibility facilities install a fuel oil gun simply to show the EPA they have the ability to use a fuel oil. Cleaves says that for facilities that do not meet the combustion criteria, he believes they can and will petition the EPA on a case-by-case basis to have CTRTs accepted at their facilities. Schopp doesn&rsquo;t believe it&rsquo;s likely that plants will change out their boilers. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just a matter of whether this fuel is something they can consider in their fuel mix&mdash;the cost is prohibitive,&rdquo; he says. Schopp adds that the ruling aids the company when promoting the fuel. &ldquo;It lifts that cloud,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;However, with the oil nozzle, it has affected some folks. It has greatly cut the field of perspective plants down and made it harder to find new ones to get permitted.&rdquo; Besides the limitation on boiler configuration, some are disappointed that only creosote-treated ties were included. According to the RTA, in 2013, 51 percent, or about 7.7 million tie purchases were creosote-treated. Creosote-borate ties made up 38 percent, or 5.7 million. According to Schopp, borate began being added in the past few years to some railroad tie pretreatment processes to aid in longevity of the preservative. An Aug. 21, 2015, letter from the Treated Wood Council requested that the agency quickly act on a categorical nonwaste determination on creosote-borate, copper-naphtenate and copper naphtenate-borate-treated railroad ties. TWC indicated in the letter that these types of ties are increasingly being used as alternatives to creosote-treated ties, and that the ability to reuse the ties is an important consideration in rail tie purchasing decisions. According to EPA,&nbsp; these three tie types are candidates for categorical nonwaste listings and the agency expects to begin development of a proposed rule under 40 CFR 241.4(a) regarding these treated ties in the near future. There is some activity regarding the combustion of used rail ties by removing the preservatives. The Coalition for Sustainable Rail in collaboration with the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth has performed lab-scale torrefaction tests on used railroad ties in pursuit of removing the preservatives through the torrefaction process. CSR is planning to run an industrial-scale test of railroad tie torrefaction within the year. &ldquo;Future pretreatment options CSR and NRRI are pursuing may impact the current ruling and open up their use in other combustion systems,&rdquo; says Don Fosnacht, associate director with NRRI. Lengthening the List Beyond railroad ties, the finalized amendment included C&amp;D wood processed from C&amp;D debris according to best management practices. The exemption essentially allows the markets to continue as they have been, according to William Turley, executive director of the Construction &amp; Demolition Recycling Association. &ldquo;There was some trepidation among end users on whether this material would get the exemption,&rdquo; Turley says. &ldquo;I think the end users to boilers are assured now that as long as they follow the steps outlined in the rule, the market is there and will continue to function as it has in the past.&rdquo; Turley says that for the most part, the best management practices outlined by the EPA in the amendment ruling are aligned with what the industry was already doing. These practices include sorting by trained operators who exclude or remove the following materials from the final product fuel: nonwood materials, and wood treated with creosote, pentachlorophenol, chromated copper arsenate (CCA), or other copper, chromium or arsenical preservatives. Best management practices must also be in place for positive and negative sorting, training and written certification. &ldquo;Our only real change there is the training of the operators be recorded and updated on a regular basis,&rdquo; Turley says. EPA also included that only de minimis quantities inherent to process limitations may remain of painted wood. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s important EPA recognized that we are not able to get 100 percent of everything&mdash;CCA or painted wood&mdash;out of the stream,&rdquo; Turley says. &ldquo;In a 10,000-pound pile, a couple scraps are not going to be a problem. The de minimis part is in there with no set level because they know we&rsquo;re trying to get it out.&rdquo; There are a few states that ban the use of C&amp;D wood as a fuel product, including New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Although Turley doesn&rsquo;t think EPA&rsquo;s ruling will have much effect on states, treatment of C&amp;D wood, he is hopeful that the ruling will eventually help expand its use across state RPS programs once the market for biomass improves. &ldquo;Now that these states can&mdash;with a good, clean conscious&mdash;say EPA has examined this and exempted it, it can only help and remind the states this is a clean biomass product, with a high-Btu content,&rdquo; Turley adds. Minnesota-based Koda Energy LLC has burned some C&amp;D debris in the past. General Manager Stacy Cook says the addition of this material in the amendment is helpful, but when it comes to the other materials, unless a plant was already using the railroad ties or it was already set up to use the recycled paper material, &ldquo;it really didn&rsquo;t open up the capability for anyone else to do so.&rdquo; The language in the final ruling reads that paper recycling residuals generated from the recycling of recovered paper, paperboard and corrugated containers and combusted by paper recycling mills whose boilers are designed to burn solid fuel are considered a NHSM. According to Cook, EPA lacked data to support the combustion of recyclable paper in anything other than a recycled paper plant that had a boiler already consuming wet recycle paper material. EPA identified 15 to 20 facilities in the U.S. that were already permitted to burn recycled paper material, and they were other paper recyclers. &ldquo;It really limited the application of additional fuels to plants that were pretty much just those already doing it,&rdquo; Cook says. &ldquo;It didn&rsquo;t really help expand the use of it.&rdquo; He adds that on its face the NHSM ruling sounds like a wonderful thing, but its application is limited. &ldquo;It was less helpful than it could have been, but it&rsquo;s still a step in the right direction.&rdquo; Author: Katie Fletcher Associate Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4920<a title="Call: 701-738-4920" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" href="#"><img title="Call: 701-738-4920" alt="" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></a> kfletcher@bbiinternational.com

Positive and Negative Sorting: At a C&D facility, employees are trained to either pick out all desirable material (positive sorting) or to remove all material but wood fuel (negative sorting) and leave it on the belt. Both positive and negative sorti

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Size Separation: Initial screening of incoming construction and demolition material separates smaller material, often 8 inches or less, from large material before going into a picking room. 

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Torrefied Ties: On behalf of the Coalition for Sustainable Rail, Natural Resources Research Institute performed lab-scale torrefaction tests on used railroad ties in pursuit of removing the preservatives through the torrefaction processes. The proces

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Three forms of wood waste got the green light under the U.S. EPA's nonhazardous secondary materials rule, but the amended regulation's impact appears narrow.

Playing by the Nonwaste Fuels Rules

In Burlington, Vermont, sustainable forestry is a way of life. On a crisp spring morning in late March, participants of the Northeast Biomass Heating Expo biomass boiler bus tour were able to witness that assertion firsthand, after observing a brilliant sunrise and a ride through region&rsquo;s endlessly rolling, heavily-forested countryside that included a pass by Camel&rsquo;s Hump, Vermont&rsquo;s third-highest, most-recognized mountain that is featured on the state quarter. Admirable are the region&rsquo;s historic, well-preserved architecture and style (in fact, Vermont has 40,000-plus buildings of historical significance on the National and State Registers of Historic Places), and the trend of up-keeping and renewing old structures makes biomass heat a good fit as replacements of aged fuel systems, and a solution to satisfy desires to lower carbon footprints while using locally sourced fuel. The seven systems that were featured on the tour were all specially designed to fit into each structure&rsquo;s existing footprint and structural requirements, and meet unique, specific demands. They included: Norwich University&rsquo;s two 400-horsepower (HP) Messersmith wood chip-fired steam boilers; Granite Industries&rsquo; two 56-kilowatt OkoFEN autopellet boilers; Montpelier District Energy&rsquo;s two 600-HP, 20-MMBtu, AFS woodchip boilers; the Montpelier Senior Center&rsquo;s 60-kW pellet boiler by SunWood Biomass; a private residence using a 26-kW Pellergy Alpha wood pellet boiler; the South Main Apartments using two 100-kW wood pellet boilers; and the Green Mountain Club, which uses one 60-kW cord wood gasification boiler. Tour guide Paul Frederick, wood utilization specialist at the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks &amp; Recreation, discussed the importance of forest sustainability in the state, and emphasized the significance of maintaining and growing the base of low-grade wood end users. &ldquo;When we start looking at how much wood is used for fuel in the state, roughly 30 percent of our total wood harvest in the state ends up as wood fuel in one form or another,&rdquo; Frederick said. &ldquo;The majority is residential fire wood. We estimate that 347,000 cords of wood every year go into residential heating in the state&mdash;that&rsquo;s a little over 80,000 households using wood in one form or another for supplemental or primary heat.&rdquo; &nbsp;In addition, about 12 percent of households are now using at least some pellets for heating. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s up from about 3 percent seven or eight years ago,&rdquo; Frederick said. &ldquo;There has been enormous growth in residential pellet heating. We&rsquo;ve seen some growth in cordwood, but not nearly as much.&rdquo; A shift in Northeast forestry markets over the past 20 years has created a significant decline in the paper industry&mdash;many mills have closed or throttled back on production&mdash;and though one large-scale, wood-using power plant was built, much of the market for low-grade wood has been lost. &ldquo;When we start looking at sustainability, we look at what we&rsquo;re growing and what we&rsquo;re moving annually&mdash;we currently grow more than twice what we&rsquo;re harvesting and losing to natural mortality in the state of Vermont,&rdquo; Frederick said. &ldquo;To some extent, it varies from year to year with harvest and insect and disease outbreaks, but in general, over the past seven or eight years, it&rsquo;s averaged over twice what we&rsquo;re losing. Through some work with the Biomass Energy Resource Center, we estimate that we&rsquo;ve got about 900,000 green tons of low-grade wood available [annually], that could be used for energy purposes. That available wood is what we&rsquo;re shooting for in our planning processes in our [state] comprehensive energy plan, as a way of using more renewable fuel.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Managing Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-739-4961<a title="Call: 701-739-4961" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" href="#"><img title="Call: 701-739-4961" alt="" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></a> asimet@bbiinternational.com

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

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

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

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Biomass heating installations in northern Vermont are far from sparse.

Biomass Boilerhopping in Burlington

Growth of the pellet export industry in the southern U.S.&mdash;from zero in 2008 to 3.6 million tons in 2014&mdash;has caused some to question the impact exporting pellet mills are having on forest inventory and wood fiber prices. Claims that this impact is significant and disastrous are largely exaggerated, however. Forest2Market&rsquo;s data indicates that these impacts are eclipsed by the effects of a range of supply and demand factors in the region, including increased demand from pulp, paper and panel manufacturers and supply restrictions. Impact on Southern Forest Inventory Overall, forest inventory in the U.S. South increased by nearly 1.2 billion tons between 2000 and 2014. Data shows that pulpwood harvests for export facilities are a small fraction of overall harvests when compared to harvests for nonpellet facilities. In 2014, pellet exports from the South to Europe were 3.6 million metric tons, or 40 percent of Europe&rsquo;s 9 million-metric-ton industrial pellet consumption. The data also shows that wood fiber removals for this demand represent a minor portion of harvests. In 2014, removals of pine pulpwood for export pellet production totaled approximately 3.7 million tons, compared to 117.7 million tons for nonpellet production (Figure 1). Pellet removals represent 0.3 percent of the total pine pulpwood inventory and just 0.09 percent of total pine inventory (pulpwood and sawtimber). Removals of hardwood pulpwood inventory for pellet production in 2014 totaled approximately 2.4 million tons. Comparatively, all other consumers of hardwood pulpwood harvested 33.6 million tons (Figure 2). Pellet removals represented 0.2 percent of the total hardwood pulpwood inventory and just 0.06 percent of total hardwood inventory (pulpwood and sawtimber). What about the future? Many who believe that the export pellet industry is harming U.S. forests base that belief on an inflated view of how much demand from Europe will grow. Estimates based on outdated announcements of new facilities and not on actual demand from Europe do not realistically take into consideration recent developments in Europe, including changes in incentives in the U.K. and increased scrutiny of biomass projects by the European Union. A realistic view of demand shows: &bull; Existing and under construction export pellet plants in the South have the potential to produce 7.4 million metric tons of pellets to meet demand from funded biomass projects in Europe. &bull; Applying the South&rsquo;s current market share of 40 percent to the 8.5 million metric tons of increased incremental European demand would mean an additional 3.4 million metric tons would be supplied from the South. &bull; Adding 3.4 million metric tons to the 7.4 million metric tons of current production capacity, total South industrial exports of biomass pellets to Europe could rise to 10.8 million metric tons. To produce this additional supply of pellets would require an additional 7.9 million tons of wood fiber. &bull; The potential of 10.8 million metric tons of export pellets represents a total of 25.0 million tons of wood fiber, which is 1 percent of total South pulpwood inventory and 0.3 percent of all South inventory. By comparison, total removals&mdash;for all consumers&mdash;in the South in 2014 were 250.2 million tons, or 3.3 percent of total inventory. Change Drivers in the South These inventory numbers expose a single incontrovertible fact: Growth in European demand for wood pellets manufactured in the South is not the sole driver of change in the region&rsquo;s forest products industry. The changes that are occurring are the result of the following: &bull; Land ownership change: The divestiture of industry land ownership to financial and private ownership has resulted in stand-level management changes. The maximization of timber and land value has replaced the management strategy of supplying mills with wood fiber. &bull; Sawmill ownership change: Sawmill divestiture has separated pulp/paper intercompany ties to residual chip supply, so sawmills are no longer operated to feed a pulp/paper mill. &bull; Decline in newsprint and print paper demand; increase in containerboard, fluff pulp and performance fiber demand: Declining demand for coated and uncoated papers has resulted in the closure of 13 newsprint and paper mills and the conversion of several to pulp and performance fiber facilities. These closures were market-driven, not export pellet mill-driven. The conversion has led to declining demand for hardwood and increased demand for pine. &bull; Housing market crash and the Great Recession: A recession-driven decline in sawmill residual chip production resulted in heightened demand for pulpwood. Sawtimber final harvests also declined, increasing inventories and reducing pulpwood supply. OSB production increased steadily as production shifted from older, less efficient mills to larger, more efficient mills. &bull; Precipitation events: Strong deviations from average rainfall totals have caused pulpwood price volatility. &bull; Pellet mill demand: Demand from pellet manufacturers has entered the market. All of these variables interact to influence forest inventory levels and market price. Wood Fiber Price Effects of Supply, Demand Over the past 15 years, demand for pine fiber in the South has increased, while demand for hardwood fiber has decreased. Our analysis, however, shows that disruptions in supply have had a greater impact on wood fiber prices. During the housing crisis and economic downturn in the U.S., available pulpwood and sawmill residual chip supply declined significantly in the South. In certain years, significant precipitation events magnified supply restrictions. In a competitive market, when supply is constrained in this way, prices for pulpwood will naturally increase. A look at market prices for pine and hardwood pulpwood shows that price trends cannot be attributed to export pellet demand, as similar price trends occurred in regions with pellet mills and regions without pellet mills: &bull; For pine pulpwood, nonpellet mill demand has increased by 5.9 million tons (from 111.8 to 117.7 million tons) since 2008, while pellet mill demand has increased by 3.7 million tons (from 0 to 3.7 million tons). The South&rsquo;s average pulpwood prices increased 4.5 percent annually (Figure 1). Similar price trends occurred in areas with and without export pellet mill influence. &bull; For hardwood pulpwood, nonpellet mill demand has decreased by 2.5 million tons (from 36.1 to 33.6 million tons) since 2010, while pellet mill demand has increased by 2.4 million tons (from 0 to 2.4 million tons). The South&rsquo;s average pulpwood prices increased 7.4 percent annually (Figure 2). Similar price trends occurred in areas with and without export pellet mill influence. In this period of change&mdash;a recession that was particularly hard for the sawtimber market and an increase in demand from multiple consumers of pulpwood and residuals&mdash;the data shows exactly what the basic principles of economics teach us: Price is a function of supply and demand interactions. In the future, another principle of economics will also be manifest: Supply and demand will find equilibrium in markets where there is increasing pressure on price, and prices will normalize as a result. This will be true regardless of the size of the export pellet industry or any other new entrants. Author: Tracy Leslie Director, Forest Biomaterials and Sustainability, Forest2Market Tracy.leslie@forest2market.com www.forest2market.com

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

Export Industry's Impacts on Southern Forests, Markets

<div>The rapidly growing number of pellet heating installations in Germany&mdash;from several hundred appliances in 1998 to nearly 280,000 pellet stoves and boilers at the end of 2012&mdash;illustrates an increased interest in environmentally friendly heating systems. Although pellet boilers represent the larger part of pellet applications market share, pellet stoves are gaining significance in the German marketplace. Most of German pellet stoves are equipped with an automatic cleaning system, which is the most appropriate choice for ash utilization. Today, residential wood pellet ash levels are very low, less than 1 percent. According to statistics, the amount of pellet ash produced in each German household is less than 20 kilogram per year. Of course, the amount of leftover waste depends on the intensiveness of pellet stove usage. The majority of German pellet stove models provide an automatic ash removal function. As a rule, appliances are featured with devices that compress the ash in the ash container, which allows for emptying in several-month intervals. Depending on the size, the ash drawer must be emptied at intervals that vary between one and several weeks. Some models of wood pellet stoves are equipped so that the ash is also discharged via a screw from the heater in an adjacent, moveable ash container. In the process of pellet stove de-ashing, bottom ash and flying ash must be removed from the heat exchanger through the ash drawer. An amendment to German regulations that concern the use of ashes from the incineration of uncontaminated wood now recognizes the material as a fertilizer in the country. This has resulted in the option of using pellet ash as a fertilizer in gardening, or disposing of it as household waste. When utilizing ash, its quality must be taken into consideration. It should be high enough to prevent contamination. Most European countries, including Germany, have implemented legislative changes to control the recycling of biomass ashes for forests and agriculture. These laws mostly concern industrial biomass ash utilization; it would be ideal if the laws also defined a more coherent and smart utilization of pellet stoves ash, as this kind of installation is gaining traction in European households. Apart from the abovementioned applications, pellet stove waste can be used in gardening. For the time being, ashes from wood pellet stoves are broadly used as a free garden amendment along with regular garden amendments such as coffee grounds, potato peels, etc. However, there is a substantial difference between wood stove ash and all other amendments used in gardening. Besides the fact that pellet stove ash contains a particular set of elements and nutrients&mdash;it is especially rich in potassium&mdash;that are favorable for soil, it can also help to correct and improve acidic soil. More than that, wood stove ashes are applied in order to control the amount of pests as well as compost supplement. Ash should not be used unless a soil pH test has been done. In regard to acidic soil correction, wood stove ash as a garden amendment is a much more convenient means than the traditionally used ground limestone, bearing in mind that it is an absolutely costless resource. However, one should pay attention to the type of wood used, as well as the size of ash particles, as it influences the precise effect of wood stove ash on the pH level of soil. Wood stove ash used for pest control is by no means a new tendency. For that, ash has long been used both in dry and liquid form. One more application of wood stove ash in gardening and fertilizing is as a neutralizing ingredient in piles of compost. Ash is extremely helpful in countering dry materials rich in carbon such as pine needles and sawdust, which are highly acidic. Furthermore, ashes by themselves have influence on the amount of carbon in the compost pile, thus, they can be placed in thin layers between other waste materials such as grass clippings and vegetable scraps, which are rich in nitrogen. Wood stove ashes also have the ability to neutralize odors. All in all, the best choice is for wood pellet ash usage is as a fertilizer. The combustion chamber of a pellet stove should always be free of ash residues, as an overfilled ashtray leads to disturbances in the operation of the pellet stove. Therefore, the ash container should be emptied very one or two weeks, and the ashes can be used as garden compost or fertilizer, or simply bedisposed of it with household waste. Author: Karl Brunner Media Partnership Coordinator</div>
<div><a href="http://biomassa.de/">German Biofuel Portal</a> kb@biomassa.de +49 30 74692995<a title="Call: +49 30 74692995" href="#" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;"><img title="Call: +49 30 74692995" alt="" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></a></div>

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All in all, the best choice is for wood pellet ash usage is as a fertilizer.

Utilizing German Pellet Stove Ash

When Gene and Edna Hurst opened up shop behind their Thomasville, Georgia, home in 1967, they were acting on a vision that would play out for generations. Nearly 40 years and 350 employees later, Hurst Boiler &amp; Welding Co. Inc., now run by four Hurst siblings&mdash;Tommy, Hayward, Teri and Jeff&mdash;operates a 314,000-square-foot boiler manufacturing facility in nearby Coolidge. There, a full line of solid waste, wood and other steam and hot water boilers and equipment are designed and made, a diverse variety of machines that has allowed Hurst to expand its reach to applications across the globe. Highlighting two projects completed stateside and south of the border, Hurst stands ready to solve unique challenges posed by the utilization of waste for energy. Global Reach One of Hurst&rsquo;s most innovative and unique installations to date is in a town called Tequila. The Jalisco, Mexico, town is home to the country&rsquo;s historic and renowned tequila producer Casa Herradura, a 140-year-old company that still operates on the site of its original, 19th-century Hacienda, but has striven for technological innovation and sustainability.&nbsp; Herradura installed the first reverse osmosis plant in the country and two of its own wastewater treatment plants, as well as a series of projects to install state-of-the-art steam boilers to generate energy from waste biomass and biogas. Working in cooperation with Hurst Boiler and Calderas y Proyectos Ochoa S.A., the Hurst distributor for Mexico, Herradura installed a Hurst Hybrid Biomass Steam Boiler that can be fired with either the biogas generated via the wastewater treatment plant&rsquo;s anaerobic digester, or by burning the organic agave waste produced via their production process. Custom engineered and designed specifically for Herradura&rsquo;s processes, the equipment configuration incorporates a grinder, three-pass stainless steel dryer and material conveyor system to deliver the processed agave waste to the biomass boiler combustion chamber, where it is burned to produce steam. Annually, the boiler converts 81,000 tons of agave bagasse into process steam and more than 27,000 tons of compost, that can also be used in the agave fields and neighboring nurseries. Additionally, Hurst and Ochoa installed two Oilon Burners at the site. They are also fuel flexible, as they can burn both No. 6 and No. 2 oil, as well as biogas. Herradura has been able to realize a fuel savings of up to 70 percent by switching to biogas and biomass fuels, and achieved the projected ROI on the boiler project in 13 months. A more recent, equally innovative project Hurst highlights is its third poultry litter-fueled boiler project. Prestage AgEnergy of Clinton, North Carolina, is completing a 1600-HP installation. From fuel receiving through emissions, it is Hurt&rsquo;s first system in the U.S. that has been designed and engineered specifically to be fueled by poultry litter. This cogeneration facility is scheduled to be commissioned mid-year, the company expects, and will support Prestage Farm&rsquo;s turkey operations. Traditionally, litter has posed challenges to typical boiler systems, according to Charlie Coffee, solid fuel boiler sales for Hurst Boiler. &ldquo;We are well aware of the many challenges and problems of litter as a fuel, which is why we spent an inordinate amount of time and resources making sure that we had measures in place to ensure success in the U.S. market,&rdquo; he says. To mitigate the challenges associated with using this type of fuel, Hurst boiler strategically considered each aspect of the process, which includes the way litter arrives at the facility, material handling equipment and emissions. &ldquo;The greatest challenge with the combustion of litter has been its low ash fusion temperature,&rdquo; says Sam McLamb of Broad Energy Solutions, a Hurst partner. &ldquo;Hurst manages the challenge of litter&rsquo;s low ash fusion by utilizing enlarged furnace volume, two-stage combustion, and enhanced temperature controls throughout the boiler system. Additional features include upgraded soot blowers, increased grate area, water cooled furnace, and a two-pass, fire-tube boiler design.&rdquo;&nbsp; Hurst&rsquo;s biomass boiler system allows facilities like Prestage&rsquo;s to take advantage of the many unique benefits poultry litter offers. For example, the ash from litter is particularly rich in available potassium and phosphorous. &ldquo;By concentrating these nutrients in ash, these systems can transform the potential risk of phosphorous regulation into an economic asset for companies,&rdquo; Coffee says. &nbsp;President Tommy Hurst says that while the company has been carefully evaluating the potential to use litter in its boilers in the U.S. market, one of Hurst&rsquo;s solid fuel boilers in Guatemala began running almost three years ago on 100 percent litter, simply because it was the most cost-effective and reliable fuel. &ldquo;Since then, two more systems have been installed and are providing steam to poultry facilities using only chicken litter,&rdquo; he says. &nbsp;McLamb adds that there are multiple projects in various stages both within and outside of the U.S., and drivers differ. &ldquo;In the country, projects are largely driven by a combination of environmental concerns, fuel costs, and nutrient recovery in the ash,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Outside of the U.S., the availability of poultry litter and high costs of other fuels has been the primary driver.&rdquo; Coffee shines some light on international development, pointing to the Southeast as an active region for these kinds of projects. &ldquo;There are several litter-to-energy projects in development or under construction in the southeast,&rdquo; he says, adding that while there is potential for an installation anywhere there is significant environmental concern about land application of litter, overseas markets have been leading the implementation of these types of power plants, primarily due to restrictive U.S. EPA regulations. &ldquo;However, many states are beginning to enact energy policy mandates that require utilities to provide waste-generated power,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;As the overall U.S. market now moves toward environmental sustainability and sees energy costs continuing to increase, companies and governments are both looking for viable alternatives to provide these solutions. It&rsquo;s taken so long because we spent a lot of time in development and researching different technologies to make sure that the application and technology we were using would be successful.&rdquo; Hurst is also currently engaged in securing funding for several jobs converting municipal solid waste to energy, particularly in Mexico and the Ukraine. &ldquo;We are currently seeking ways to help bridge the gap between the viable projects seeking Hurst solutions, and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which were announced as part of a new universal Renewable Energy Agenda by the United Nations,&rdquo; says Dennis Dauphin, Hurst international sales manager. &ldquo;These efforts have culminated in the drafting of several proposals presented to organizations associated with the UN such as the World Bank Group and the International Finance Corp. In doing so, Hurst has encouraged environmental stewardship through research and the implementation of new technologies for emissions control, energy efficiency, renewable energy resources, and other environmental and health concerns associated with these power generating plants and utility operations. This can reduce the operational costs of current facilities, and provide a return on investment from installation in new construction.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Managing Editor, Biomass Magazine asimet@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4961<a title="Call: 701-738-4961" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" href="#"><img title="Call: 701-738-4961" alt="" style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></a>

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

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Hurst Boiler installed a hybrid biomass boiler system at tequila producer Casa Herraduraâ€™s plant in Jalisco, Mexico, that is capable of burning waste agave and biogas from the facilityâ€™s wastewater treatment plantâ€™s anaerobic digester.

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

Sponsor Spotlight: Hurst Boiler 

North American energy-from-waste (EFW) facilities are at a crossroads. Built 20 to 40 years ago, most are operating with cranes that may be at or nearing the end of their service life. The question these facilities face today is how to replace or modernize their aging cranes without disrupting service to customers or the revenue stream from the energy they produce. When the city of Quebec, Canada, built its EFW plant in North America in 1974, the facility was designed to incinerate Quebec&rsquo;s municipal garbage at the rate of 280,000 tons per year and generate a $10 million annual income by selling steam to a nearby pulp and paper plant.&nbsp;&nbsp; Fast-forward to 2006. The primary tools of any EFW plant are its overhead cranes, and Quebec&rsquo;s two aging cranes were costing the city more than $400,000 per year to maintain. Designed before modern technologies such as load sway prevention were available, the cranes were difficult to operate and hard to keep running. Critical components such as wire ropes were wearing out every two weeks, structural failure was rampant and downtime was escalating. And when the cranes were down for repair, the facility was unable to receive, mix or burn waste. According to Konecranes&rsquo; Joseph Botros, Quebec&rsquo;s problems were not unique&ndash;they are shared by many older EFW plants in North America. &ldquo;The growing focus in the industry is on these older facilities&ndash;and how they intend to move forward for the next quarter century,&rdquo; says Botros, Konecranes&rsquo; director for EFW, Americas and Asia-Pacific Regions. &ldquo;Their biggest concern is how to replace or modernize the cranes without interrupting production.&rdquo; Fortunately, there are solutions. In both Europe and North America, Konecranes has demonstrated its ability. As the City of Quebec has discovered, the right cranes from the right supplier can actually pay for themselves over time. Yves Frechet, Quebec&rsquo;s principal design engineer, has been involved with Quebec&rsquo;s EFW facility since 1991 and was instrumental in guiding the renovation process. &ldquo;Our original cranes experienced 2 million cycles over their lifespan, and operators who needed to work quickly sometimes treated them roughly,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The fatigue of the cranes was understandable, but it was a major problem for productivity.&rdquo; In addition, cranes operating without sway control were constantly colliding with the pit walls, damaging both the building and the structural integrity of the cranes themselves. &ldquo;The entire building was stressed from the movement of the cranes, and there was a lot of reparation needed on the structure,&rdquo; Frechet sats. &ldquo;We had to repair the concrete pit walls repeatedly because the swinging grab damaged them. It was a big problem for us, getting worse year after year.&rdquo; The old cranes had some rudimentary automation, an in-house retrofit by one of the facility&rsquo;s employees. One of the cranes would receive a signal that it was time to feed the hopper, and it would pick up a load of garbage and deliver it to the hopper for burning. While not a perfect solution, it got the job done. But for the renovation, Quebec wanted state-of-the-art, automated cranes that were integrated with their entire facility&mdash;technology with more to offer in terms of information and feedback, plus strategies to reduce maintenance and prolong the life of the facility and its equipment. Frechet contacted crane automation company Konecranes in 2006 to talk about redesigning the lifting interface for the whole facility.&nbsp; More With Modern Cranes According to Botros, the solution involved much more than two new cranes. It was a turnkey project that involved modernizing, automating and rewiring virtually the entire facility and redesigning it for maximum efficiency and productivity. Quebec&rsquo;s new, automated cranes do far more than their older counterparts. They manage waste reception, feeding and mixing to make it burn well. Quebec&rsquo;s crane and automation package was based on Konecrane&rsquo;s technology that had been developed for and delivered successfully to several EFW facilities in Europe.&nbsp; Konecranes specified two new fully automated CMAA Class F AC-powered cranes with variable frequency drives for energy efficiency and an easier-to-operate hydraulic grab. The cranes are identical, 10-metric ton capacity with 2.5-ton auxiliary hoists, operating on a 55-meter runway. Each crane is equipped with a hydraulic grab that picks up more than twice the amount of garbage as the previous cable-operated mechanical grabs, and also has the ability to compress the garbage to hold more. When it comes to safety and ease of operation, the difference is palpable. &ldquo;The new cranes have a very soft start, accelerating and decelerating gradually, with no shock to the structure of the building,&rdquo; says Frechet. Konecranes DynAPilot anti-sway technology has also reduced wear and tear on the facility by preventing collisions of the grab with the pit walls. &ldquo;Since we replaced the cranes that problem has stopped,&rdquo; he says. According to Frechet, the new cranes can operate manually, in semiautomated mode or in full automation, similar to a robot zone. &ldquo;When we operate in automatic, nobody can enter the operation area, so it is extremely safe,&rdquo; he says. Automating the Tipping Process The new cranes are able to &ldquo;talk&rdquo; to the plant&rsquo;s DCS system, which is the managing software of the entire incinerator. Konecranes installed the cranes and all the wiring in the building, along with sensors that function as the &ldquo;eyes&rdquo; of the cranes. These laser sensors detect the garbage trucks as they arrive on a platform with eight bays. Through a system of traffic lights integrated with the crane&rsquo;s automation, they direct the trucks where and when to dump garbage. Green indicates to drivers that dumping is permitted. Red lights signal drivers not to dump in a bay where a crane is active in the reception zone. &ldquo;The truck operators respect the lights, and there is good collaboration with them&mdash;it is working very well,&rdquo; Frechet says. &ldquo;We have cameras to watch the truck operators and they know that they are being supervised, so they respect all the procedures,&rdquo; he continues. New Crane Installation in a Live Facility Originally, the plant only had parking for one of its cranes, with the other always positioned over the pit, vulnerable in the case of fires. A major element of the redesign was the addition of a maintenance bay for the second crane. This new building feature made it possible for the first time to use the facility&rsquo;s two cranes equally, extending the service life of both. But even more importantly, it allowed Konecranes to replace the cranes without shutting down production.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was a major challenge for the facility,&rdquo; Frechet says. &ldquo;It was not possible to transfer the waste to a landfill&mdash;it was necessary for us to continue to incinerate the waste while changing out the cranes. We also had a client for the energy produced by incineration&ndash;the client was a paper mill near the incinerator. Our agreement required that we continue delivering steam to the mill without interruption. So we had to replace the cranes while operating the facility and continuing to deliver power,&rdquo; he says. Konecranes worked with Frechet to develop a strategy to replace the cranes one at a time. The city built the additional crane maintenance bay adjacent to the refuse pit, which enabled one crane to be parked out of the way and replaced while the other continued to operate. As part of the renovation, the plant replaced all of the rails and support structures, and upgraded the structures to be compliant with new safety regulations. The new maintenance bay gave Konecranes a secure area to perform the installation. The company installed the first new crane, then removed the first old crane, which allowed the facility to operate with one new and old one crane. &ldquo;After that, we installed the second new crane, and then we removed the second old crane, prior to putting on the roof of the building addition,&rdquo; Frechet says. Konecranes installed both new cranes in a total of four weeks.&nbsp; &ldquo;We received and processed all the waste we needed to receive during that period,&rdquo; Frechet says. &ldquo;It was not our peak season for reception of waste&ndash;we did the job in November and December, and during those months, we receive the lowest amounts of waste for the year. We were able to receive all the waste the city sent to us and maintain complete operation of the plant during the crane replacement.&rdquo; Protecting Infrastructure One important goal of the facility redesign and crane replacement was to better protect people and infrastructure while improving throughput. A key Konecranes technology known as &ldquo;Protected Areas&rdquo; is preprogrammed into the software controlling the cranes, to create no-go areas, as well as predetermined destinations for loads of waste. For Quebec, the operator&rsquo;s cabin, water stations and access stairways are some of the areas that are off-limits for the crane&rsquo;s grapple. Other elements of this feature facilitate positioning so that loads of garbage destined for the hopper end up inside the hopper, not next to it. The automation software actually prevents the crane from missing the hopper. &ldquo;A grab can weigh somewhere between 2 and 8 [metric] tons, depending on its size and range,&rdquo; says Botros. &ldquo;To understand the magnitude of this issue, just imagine an 8-ton grab slamming into a concrete pit wall like a wrecking ball. Konecranes Protected Areas feature is designed to safeguard infrastructure. When the grab approaches an approved destination, it slows down and then stops, with no load sway that could damage the pit walls or other important structures.&rdquo; Paying For Themselves After Quebec installed its new equipment, crane-related maintenance costs fell 80 percent from the $400,000 the facility spent on its original cranes in their last year of service. In the nine years since, the improvement in crane maintenance cost has continued at this level. The facility&rsquo;s enhanced ability to perform scheduled crane maintenance without impacting throughput is another benefit of the new maintenance bay and is expected to help the city of Quebec keep its cranes in top shape for a long time. In addition to the maintenance savings, electrical consumption of the new cranes is significantly less. The facility&rsquo;s contract operator TIRU Canada logged a 12 percent drop in electrical consumption for the whole facility, immediately after the new cranes went online in 2008. &ldquo;The old cranes were very heavy, and when you have something very heavy to move, it takes more energy,&rdquo; Frechet says. Since 2012, Frechet has left the facility to develop a new anaerobic digestion plant to receive the Quebec&rsquo;s organic waste. This $100 million project will create a product akin to natural gas that can be utilized in the city&rsquo;s trucks and busses.&nbsp; Frechet&rsquo;s successor Vincent Pouliot, city of Quebec engineer, weighs in on the continuing cost savings attributed to the crane replacement and facility redesign. Pouliot related that as a result of the changes, Quebec&rsquo;s contract EFW facility operator TIRU Canada has become more cost-effective. When the operator&rsquo;s contract came up for renewal in 2008, TIRU was able to win the bid again with a tight, competitive proposal whose 16 percent reduction over their previous contract at least partially reflected how much the facility&rsquo;s operating expenses had dropped. According to Pouliot, money formerly spent on maintaining the cranes now benefits other areas. &ldquo;The cost savings was redirected to the other equipment, including the furnace, the boiler, the automation system and all the other equipment in the facility,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The crane replacement generated significant benefit to the facility as a whole, as they use that money to do maintenance on other parts of the process,&rdquo; he says. Enabling Better Manpower Utilization Savings have also extended to personnel costs. Originally, a crew of five was required to operate the old cranes over three shifts, with two operators working each daytime shift and one at night. Now, the new cranes spend most of the time running in full automation at night, freeing up the operator to perform additional tasks. During the day, the cranes require only one operator per shift, which has allowed TIRU to move two employees to support other areas of the plant. Therefore, one direct benefit of installing modern, automated cranes is the annual cost of two skilled employees. According to Pouliot, when the Quebec facility first began operating in 1976, it ran three furnaces burning 10 tons per hour. Today, it burns four furnaces in the summer, a 25 percent increase. Since Quebec&rsquo;s crane operators also typically manage the furnaces, automating the cranes has provided the manpower to run the additional furnace and given the facility redundant skill sets for both areas. &ldquo;This is good news for all EFW operators,&rdquo; says Botros. &ldquo;Many older EFW facilities are running barebones programs, so automating the cranes can enable them to redeploy manpower to other areas where they may be shorthanded. This helps the whole facility.&rdquo; Today, Quebec&rsquo;s EFW facility is reaping the benefits of more efficient, automated technology and a safer workplace. Operational costs have dropped so much that, less than a decade after their installation, the cranes have already paid for themselves. The best news: The financial windfall generated by lower maintenance, electrical and personnel costs should continue to accrue for years on the city&rsquo;s bottom line. Frechet emphasizes how critical it was to work with a partner that had experience replacing existing cranes in a running facility. &ldquo;The experience of the supplier was one of our principal requirements,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Reliability was another. It was very important for us that the cranes work, 24 hours a day, seven days per week, all year long. And, it continues to be important year after year.&rdquo; Author: Linda Graham Wordsworth Ltd. 713-937-0043<a style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" title="Call: 713-937-0043" href="#"><img style="margin: 0px; border: currentColor; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; float: none; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; position: static !important;" title="Call: 713-937-0043" src="data:image/png;base64,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" alt="" /></a>
For more information, click <a href="http://www.konecranes.com/contact-us">here.&nbsp;</a>

Built in 1974, Quebecâ€™s energy-from-waste facility was designed to incinerate the cityâ€™s municipal garbage at a rate of 280,000 tons per year, and generate $10 million annually by selling steam to a nearby pulp and paper plant.

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The city of Quebec replaced its aging, inefficient cranes at its energy-from-waste plant with two identical, 10-metric-ton capacity cranes with 2.5-ton auxiliary hoists. Each crane can pick up more than double the trash as the previous cable-operated

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MINIMIZING MANPOWER: Operating the plantâ€™s old cranes required a crew of five over three shifts, with two operators working by day and one at night. The new cranes mostly operate in full automation at night, and during the day require only one oper

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

May 2016

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Biomass at a Crossroads

What's in a Name?

Tenacity Required to Secure Advanced Biofuels Future

Utilizing German Pellet Stove Ash

Featured

A Wiser Way to Handle Waste

Playing by the Nonwaste Fuels Rules

Contributions

Preventing Production Problems in the Lab

Export Industry's Impacts on Southern Forests, Markets

Out With the Old

Departments

Biomass Boilerhopping in Burlington

Sponsor Spotlight: Hurst Boiler

May 2016.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Biomass at a Crossroads

What's in a Name?

Tenacity Required to Secure Advanced Biofuels Future

Utilizing German Pellet Stove Ash

Featured

A Wiser Way to Handle Waste

Playing by the Nonwaste Fuels Rules

Contributions

Preventing Production Problems in the Lab

Export Industry's Impacts on Southern Forests, Markets

Out With the Old

Departments

Biomass Boilerhopping in Burlington

Sponsor Spotlight: Hurst Boiler

May 2016