Moisture Technology The BLH Moisture Meter from ELECTROMATIC is suitable for wood shavings. Data gathering and analysis is the key to maximizing value and minimizing processing costs By Treena Hein Moisture measurement A s the value of raw feedstocks such as sawdust and fin-ished products such as pellets continues to increase, the importance of streamlining biomass processing has never been greater. Moisture percentage is a huge factor in determining the energy content for a given volume of biomass materials. Knowing precise moisture content is needed at the front end to gauge fair value for raw feedstock, and at various processing steps so that processing energy (heat and electricity) is not being wasted. To help you determine the value of what’s coming into your plant, increase the quality of your products or improve/accel-erate processing activities, we’ve gathered up the latest on the newest moisture meter options. Moisture meter tech for biomass has come a long way over the last few years in terms of reliability, accuracy and speed. It’s been a complex sector for technology developers, as raw materials can be mixed (bark and sawdust, for example), is often highly compressible, and can possess a highly uneven distribution of moisture. There are two choices in measuring the moisture content of any biomass material or product: analysing samples or analysing mate-rials continuously as they move along an infeed or processing step. A sampling method that’s still commonly used involves weighing some raw material samples from the truck, drying them over 24 to 48 hours, and then weighing again. While it’s a highly accurate method, there is obviously a big lag time in obtaining results, and those results can only truly be guaranteed for those samples and may not be representative of the entire volume. A quicker and more accurate method for the entire batch is preferable. “Biomass prices go up and up, and because of that the qual-ity goes down, at least in Europe,” says Theo Coolen. “Mixes NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 22 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass November - December 2014: Page 22
