“Over the years we did some modifi-cations to improve production, and right now the bottleneck of the plant is the burner,” explains Levesque. PELLET PROCESS A MAJOR PLAYER KEEPING ON TRUCKIN’ The wet fibre begins its journey from the yard courtesy of either the company’s 644K series John Deere wheel loader, which is dedicated solely to pellet plant operations, or one of the company’s Volvo L90 or L110 series wheel loaders, that are used as backup when the John Deere is up for maintenance or is too swamped to keep up with production. Here, the wood chips are loaded into bins and are sent to one of the plant’s three Wellons FEI walk-ing floors – one for feeding the bark to the burner, one for providing hardwood and another for mixing in small amounts of softwood to aid in binding the hardwood, depending on the grade of pellet being produced. “That way we can control the mix for whatever is needed for the pellet recipe,” explains Levesque. Groupe Savoie is a major employer in New Brunswick, employing more than 600 people with the majority of its operations in northern New Brunswick, where it has felling rights over a vast expanse of hardwood forest. The company’s industrial facilities include two sawmills, a pallet plant, a component plant, a pellet plant and dry kilns in St-Quentin, N.B.; a component plant and a dry kiln in Kedgwick, N.B.; a pallet production and recycling plant in Moncton, N.B.; and a sawmill in Westville, N.S Another investment the company made re-cently for its pellet business is the purchase of a Western Star 15-ton capacity, vacuum delivery truck to service its domestic mar-ket across the province. “This is the first real vacuum delivery truck in Canada,” says Levesque. “It’s basically a grain truck to blow grain, but this one is designed to handle pellets more gently.” The truck features a vacuum system that has neutral pressure when it delivers pellets to silos and hoppers, reducing potential breakage of the wood pellets upon delivery. The truck’s tank system was built in Maine. “We want to supply customers via a ‘milk run’ style,” says Levesque. and where the biomass is coming from. The wood fibres are then sent through an Oliver destoner, and into a screw con-veyor to the plant’s MEC dryer. Once in the dryer, the fibre runs the length of the dryer three times for a “triple pass,” then goes into the drying cycle, where the wa-ter from the wood is converted into steam The biomass from the forest isn’t sepa-rated after it is chipped, which can create some challenges. “This is tricky to pelletize because you don’t know the amount of hard maple, birch and aspen,” says Levesque. To help with the process, Groupe Savoie keeps track of the recipes it uses Efficient drying of biomass Stela low temperature belt dryer • 93 years of history, 45 years of experience in manufactoring drying plants • more than 450 belt dryers in more than 60 countries all over the world in the most various sizes • lowest emissions rates, energy-saving air technology • dryers for produktion capactiy of 5.500.000 t/a pellets supplied • no need of wet electrostaticfilters (WESP) to achieve low emisson values Stela Laxhuber GmbH Öttingerstr. 2 D-84323 Massing Tel. +49 8724/899-0 E-Mail: [email protected] www.drier.com 12 Canadian BIOMASS JULY/AUGUST 2015
Canadian Biomass July August 2015: Page 12
