World's "Largest" Wood Pellet Plant to Feed REW Europe Power Plants

"The wood pelleting plant built in Georgia is currently the biggest of its kind in the world..."
Sorry to disappoint you, but Vyborg Cellolose Factory was manufactoring 900 thou tpa of pellets since 2009.
Otherwise a good paper.

woodpellet machine Your article is meaningful and it helps me a lot.It is a chance for me to give my voice here and I like this very much.

I'm wondering if there is a lack of pellet plant is EU and do Americans produce pellet just for export. Hope to get answer.
pellet machine

Steve Poppitz, you wrote,
"dear jajagabor,
good find. . . Do you know if it grows on marginal cropland?"

Actually, if I read your meaning right by "marginal" the answer is yes - very good question (sorry, didn't see this query from 3/4 of a year ago). I assume you mean poor soils - hemp is well known to grow with very litle input (hence the proverbial "weed" term applied to it - and this applies to both the mind-alterting varieties as well as the "industrial" types).

Of course, there are a lot of "lawn" spaces that institutions and individual land owners have that could be partially "sacrificed" to hemp cultivation - as well as a lot of flat roof space.

But we already have lots of invasive plants that - given the right mechanical machine that would simplify harvesting - and do so with little energy - would be great fuel stock after curing. Some examples are kudzu, privet, etc. To be able to harvest these with ease would provide a lot of feedstock without any deliberate cultivation. The key, though, would be ease.

It's great to hear from you and see what you've sent up. This is a great blog. You deserve an award of some kind. Thanks!

dear jajagabor,
good find. : an annual crop that burns about as hot as wood (slow growing) is a great fuel, IF IT DOES NOT DISPLACE FOOD CROPS. Do you know if it grows on marginal cropland?
I think we should first seperate our trash into burnable / and non-burnable and pelletize that. We already have to deal with it ; why not get a second use out of it? Rice straw and other agro-waste are also prime candidates for a second use.

Hmm -- I just found the following (Nov. 2008) after doing a search:

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/2230/u.s.-industrial-hemp-development-continues

An excerpt: "This past year, the tests were repeated using hemp biomass, stalk and leaf. Two pellet samples were evaluated, one comprised of a composition of half leaf and half stalk, the other pellet was made with 100 percent stalk. Pillsbury said the mixed pellets performed similar to the first round of tests done the previous year. The hemp pellets have a heat content similar to wood pellets at 7,247 British thermal units per pound with a 19 percent ash content. The pellet made from just hemp stalk had a higher energy content and lower ash content at 7,890 Btu per pound and nine percent ash content. Pillsbury added, in both cases the hemp fiber used in textiles and paper production had been removed, and the remaining biomass pelletized. ViFam is currently doing a cost analysis for developing a unit that would separate and pelletize hemp on the farm.

Pillsbury predicts President-elect's Barack Obama's administration will lift the ban on growing hemp in the United States, and pointed out that it's being grown in many other countries. 'The new administration has a solid commitment to bring new and old ideas to the table for renewable energy,' he said. Industrial hemp is an ideal bioenergy, Pillsbury said, citing figures from Canada that show straw yields of 6 tons per hectare (2.47 acres) and 1.5 tons of fiber, in addition to 200 liters (50 gallons) of oil pressed from the seed."

So . . . I ask again, in case anyone is interested, why not use industrial hemp, and/or bamboo? That is, am I correct or incorrect in assuming that more Btu's per acre/per unit of time could be created using these crops over wood? Have any studies been done comparing different crops (as they have for ethanol production, where corn was the clear loser)?

dear waldenthreenet,
I'm an old geezer that doesn't know how to "create a facebook group" but if you do, PLEASE DO. I'd join. In fact if you do contact me at stevemhrg@aol.com, and I'll push it to my little group of friends.

At this point best is to focus on local county economic dvelopment to take advanage of the local resources for a project funded by PPPP. Ethanol, Biodiesel, or even a industrial heat recovery to energy are all good options.
Let's create a facebook group to supplement this discussion. I have 5000 FB Freinds, and would welcome collaboration.

I should broaden that idea to anyone in the SouthEast USA.

I hope someone in south GA or north FLA, reads this and gets encouraged to push the pellet fuel agenda. Call your senators, call your local utilities, call a pellet stove company and get them to move their manufacturing to the area. If the Dutch and English are buying this fuel, don't you think the locals can use it economically without the transAtlantic shipping?

On the topic of Wood Pellet plants (evidence based economics) near source of such biomass instead of coal for electric utlities is a new direction that surely will grow in the next few years, creating jobs and helping the environment.

Here Here ! For years there have been breakthru's at NREL, and who is there to pay attention and take advantage? The Germans, the Chinese, the Japanese and our American utilities will be playing catch up ball for years to come as the price of fossil fuel continues up.

jmashburn,
Well said.I know it's about policy. What frustrates me is our apperent lack of forward thinking policy.We are a land of many natural resources. This is an example of selling one of those resources, trucking to the sea,shipping it across an ocean and burning it thousands of miles away from where I THINK it should have been consumed. BUT, I guess you are right ... we will "conserve" the existing fossil fuel model until there is real change.

to all reading this blog ; I believe that NREL should be localizing their R&D by sections of the country; SOLAR, should be in the Southwest. Onshore Wind,should be in the midwest. Offshore Wind should be in the Mid-Atlantic states, Pellet fuel should be in the Southeast. Geothermal should be in the Northwest. Biogas from sewage can be near any city (maybe not in a cold climate).
Algae where there is warm climate.Create jobs where the resource is local.Not to say these innovations won't cross regions, but don't you think people in Wisconsin know more about burning wood than those in Arizona?And don't you think people in Sante Fe might get more out of their solar potential than those in Seattle?

douglas prince , I understand that we have the resource here in the USA. What I don't get is why we don't use it here. If we were half as concerned about our energy future, we would be building biomass(and other renewables) to electric power plants in the USA by our own natural resources,and telling the "public"utility companies had to, or clean up their fossil fuel power plants even further.

It is great that Europe is at least using biomass, even if it is imported from "good-ole-Waycross, JawJa." ! :) But I wonder, why don't the Europeans use other substances that grow more quickly than trees, like Industrial Hemp and bamboo? From what I understand, one can get many times over the raw material for paper etc. from hemp and bamboo because of their fast growing nature compared to trees.

While you can't grow hemp here in the "dumb-dumb" USA, you CAN grow bamboo (and we could also perpetually harvest all the invasive privet in the SE USA if we had machines to ease the effort somewhat). But the Europeans (especially the Dutch) could burn the non-intoxicating hemp! Like bamboo and privet, it needs little water, fertilizer (if any) and little effort to grow tons of it . . .

My girlfriend recently got a gift of bamboo sheets from her mother, who unlike my girlfriend, is a Tea Party republican -- so my girlfriend was pleasantly surprised by the gift, as well as her mother's statement claim that it grows "2-4 feet a day" (???). She joked, "Who has stolen my mom and replaced her with an eco-conscious entity?"

Steve, WEllison - The reason the plant is here in the US is that we have the natural resources that Europe does not. Namely, millions of acres of woodland.
Add into that the pulp and fiber left over from manufacturing and logging plants, and the stockpiles keep stockpiling up. Even adding in the cost of shipping, and it's still relatively inexpensive for Europe to get their wood pellets from us. I believe Germany has been operating this way for years.

thank you WEllison, I think every major city in America has trash (that can be seperated and collected as 1)Comingled Recycleables 2)Burnable and finally 3)Trash. #1) is a resource #2) is a biomass resource that can be added to sawdust,wood pallets,construction site burnables,corn stalks,straw,or any type of agra-waste. I am a fan of wind and solar, but not all locations have a wealth of these resources. Every community makes trash. Why are we just throwing it away? Oh yeah,and every city makes sewage, that can yield biogas : whole 'nuther storey.

Good question Steve. Traditionally biomass processing plants are located near the source. In addition to the cost to transport pellets, there is also the added cost to pelletize the biomass. While pellets are the most convenient form (mechanized handling) and relatively cheap shipping-wise (efficient size and shape, also low moisture content means less weight), one would think that the expense to pelletize and ship across the Atlantic would make this non-competitive. I suppose the relative availability of biomass from local vs. distant sources must have been such that it was economically viable. Or, maybe there are economic "synergies" not disclosed.

Good article. Love renewable resources. Did anyone question why this power plant isn't located closer to the fuel source? America is so bought by big oil and coal we will ship this fuel across an ocean rather than build our own power plant here? So the Dutch and English can have better air? I'd suggest any reader(s) in the southeast that they should show this to their state and local representatives. Or, burn more coal.