ships smaller quantities of pellets to customers in Korea and Singa-pore, which are loaded at the plant into one-ton bags and shipped through a different location at the Port of Vancouver. Year one saw the company produce approximately 30,000 tonnes, with closer to 50,000 tonnes targeted as the production volume for year two. The company has agreements already in place for that volume, allowing them to maximize production volumes based on customer demand. SHIFTING FOCUS OPPORTUNITIES AWAIT With the white wood pellet production nearing capacity, and the bugs and kinks of the system worked out, Ericsson is now able to shift the corporate focus back to the original plan – the production of second-generation black pellets. As the company continues to scale up its technology, moving from lab-scale to commercial-scale production volumes, they have encountered a series of challenges not unique to a project of this scale and significance. “Engineering a new, first-of-its-kind process is very challeng-ing,” Ericsson says. “I am constantly asking myself, ‘Can I make a lot of it, can I make it an attractive product, can I afford my equipment?’ These are the challenges we constantly balance.” But the challenge is nearing its payoff. As we went to press, Ericsson suggested that the project is just a few months away from completion. By the third quarter of 2016, the plant should be producing commercial-scale volumes that can be supplied as part of the off-take agreement with its cement company partner, Lafarge Cement Canada Ltd. The opportunities that come with the success of the advanced biomass system in Merritt are already starting to pile up. In 2015, Diacarbon was selected as the preferred proponent for a Request for Proposals (RFP) submitted to BC Hydro for the Site C Clean energy project in regards to alternative energy and utilization of non-merchantable wood fibre generated by the land clearing activities. Ericsson stated that there are also multiple projects in the early stages of development in the U.S., and there is legwork already being done in response to the announcement that Alberta will look to halt energy-generation from coal. Closer to home, Diacarbon is already in the process of expand-ing its white wood pellet line, adding a third pelletizer to increase production by approximately 25,000 tonnes per year at capacity. Ericsson credits the regulatory environment in place in British Columbia as part of the reason why his company is able to move forward with these initiatives. “B.C. is one of the best places in the world to start this project because we have a carbon tax here that has been around long enough for people to get used to it,” Ericsson says. “It creates a local domestic market, which reduces a lot of the logistics chal-lenges. For us to run a truck 45 minutes east or two-and-a-half hours west, we have a lot of control over the logistics.” Should Ericsson be successful in his commercial-scale pro-duction of second-generation pellets, Diacarbon Energy would become the first company in Canada to successfully do so. And they will have done so while re-establishing an important source for white wood pellets in the B.C. Interior. • REGISTER NOW NETWORK WITH PRODUCERS Networking Opportunities At the World’s Largest Biomass Event Meet Thousands of Biomass Professionals Expand Your Biomass Knowledge WHERE PR ODUCERS MEET LARGEST BIOMASS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD April 11-14, 2016 866-746-8385 [email protected] Charlo tt e, Nor th Car o lina www .Bi omassConf er ence.com # IBCE16 -Follow Us: twitter.com/biomassmagazine CBM_janfeb16_BBIinternational_CSA.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2016-01-26 11:32 AM 13
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