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Volume 6, Issue 2
Pastures new
Feature
Enerpellets Group is a wood pellet manufacturer, located in Portugal. The company owns and operates two production plants in the region: one in Pedrogão Grande and a second in Alcobaça. The facility in Pedrogão Grande was the first to be established. Development began back in 2007 before the groundbreaking in 2009. It was operational a year later and, with an annual capacity...
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Wood, glorious wood
Feature
October 2014 saw a clear signal of the mood of the industrial wood pellet industry in the US when leading pellet maker Enviva filed its plans for a $100 million (€94.5 million) IPO. In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), privateequity backed Enviva Holdings will list a wholly owned subsidiary as a master limited partnership. This is a tax efficient structure common...
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A chip off the old block
Feature
Try as we may to plan and schedule certain facets of our lives, it seems there are some things that are just out of our control. Call it larger forces at work, divine intervention or just plain fate, business history is rife with stories of individuals and companies who had one move in mind, only to be pulled in a completely different direction. Jerry Sapp Timber was a logging company established...
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Maxed out
Feature
At Holzkontor Preussen, a waste management firm located in Berlin’s Spandau neighbourhood, at least 500 tonnes per day of waste wood are shredded, screened, loaded and delivered to a large wood-fired power and heating plant. ‘We’re the main supplier for the plant, with an annual volume of 150,000 tonnes of fuel,’ says the company’s operations manager Uwe Kulitzscher....
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Holey moly
Feature
There are special requirements for the storage and drying of woodchips for biomass boilers, to guarantee a steady high quality. As high humidity, fungi and rot can have adverse effects, an efficient ventilation system is crucial for a controlled process environment. Biomass boilers offer farmers an excellent energy efficiency and cost saving opportunity as well as enabling them to take advantage...
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More than just hot air
Feature
Dryers are used to remove moisture from flammable materials such as woodchips, sewage sludge and animal feed in order to achieve a defined residual moisture content for further processing stages. Drying is a crucial part of the production process, with material inlet and outlet points connecting dryers to other process areas. In such a networked environment, a fire started in a dryer can quickly...
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A positive impact
Feature
Tilbury ‘B’ Power Station is located on the River Thames near London in Tilbury, UK. The facility is owned and operated by RWE, one of Europe’s five leading electricity and gas companies. In 2011 the Tilbury ‘B’ Power Station, opted out of the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) and therefore with limited running hours, was converted from coal to wood pellet...
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Biomass transparency
Feature
Woody biomass is an increasingly important part of the EU’s energy mix through its use in large scale production of heat and power. In its 2014 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises that bioenergy can play a critical role in mitigating climate change. It is key to achieving the EU’s 2020 and 2030 renewable energy targets, and has significant potential...
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No mean feat
Feature
As a result of the rapid growth of wood pellet markets, wood pellet standards and testing methodology has been in a state of constant flux. Today there are numerous standards, test methods, customer specifications, and quality management schemes to choose from, making it complicated for pellet fuel producers and users to know and understand which are applicable or best suited for their purposes....
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Top of the crops
Feature
In most of the world, biomass energy means electricity (and heat) generated by burning wood or sugarcane bagasse. Wood and wood waste have many competing uses such as construction materials, and pulp and paper. Most of the world’s wood resources are spoken for, and cutting down the rainforest is not an option. Coal-fired electricity plants in Europe, Japan and Korea are aggressively seeking...
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A well-oiled operation
Feature
‘They use everything about the hog except the squeal,’ is a wellknown description of the meatpacking industry in the 19th century America. In today’s ethanol industry, producers are using a similar tactic of trying to extract every possible byproduct from the corn used in the ethanol process. The industry has been on a ‘technology treadmill’ adapting new technologies...
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