Making wood function like home heating oil
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In the late 70’s I worked in a cedar processing plant. Not much was wasted. Sawdust and chips were used to fire the steam boilers for facility heat ,kilns and steam extraction of cedar oils. Dried shavings bagged for kennel bedding. Prime heart wood milled for closet lining. Any unusable scraps, slabs, bark was ground up and sold as mulch. If they had electrical generators, entire facility would have been mostly self-sufficient. When I asked about that aspect was told buying electricity was cheaper. The pelletizing of wood waste was in its infancy. I’m sure the company would have managed to work that into their recycling system.
Sadly, market changes, city growth, taxes and environmental pressures forced the closing
Jeff-
Great Story!
Seems like contrived efficiency to me. That was a pretty substantial plant to generate the equivalent of 1 small tanker truck of heating oil per day (the stated 2,500 gallons). Last winter the commodity price for heating oil was about $2 per gallon (currently it’s only $0.92 presumably due to the shutdown/Saudi-Russia glut), so that means $5,000/day in revenue normally for these chips.
And even assuming the same density as oil (which they aren’t because they float), 20 tons of these chips must require at least 4X the volume of oil to transport, so will need 4X the number of trucks and drivers to distribute. I’m sure they pay for themselves, but not much beyond that.
They are a true bio fuel though, except for all those trucks anyway : )
This appears to be a very nice and neat and fairly complete cycle type of business model.
Until the 1900, biofuels what is the primary source of energy. Oil, coal and natural gas has far outpaced natural bio fuel wood products…
Even so, biofuels still today produce more than twice as much energy as all the others (Solar, wind, nuclear, Hydro power) combined.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy
Natures solar powered renewable energy.