Pellet Profile Planer pellets By Andrew Snook S everal years ago, Foothills Forest Products had a difficult time finding a home for the shavings being pro-duced by its planer mill operations at its sawmill in Grand Cache, Alta. So instead of trying to find a buyer for them, the sawmill owners decided to go into the wood pellet business and added a pellet operation to its existing mill. The wood pellets that the plant pro-duces service the residential heating market in northern Alberta as well as the oil and gas sector. The spilt is about fif-ty-fifty between pellets heating homes in the area and heading to the oil patch for use as an absorbent on the roads. The wood products company, owned by C&C Resources Inc., has an annual pellet production of 15,000 tonnes – which is relatively small, but there’s room for growth. “There’s going to be more demand for pellets,” says Mark Stevens, general manager for Foothills Forest Products. “Presently our pellet production is quite small, but the system has the flexi-bility to utilize a far greater proportion of residuals from the mill.” Some of the residuals from the saw-mill and planer mill are also sent to a Volcano boiler that provides heat for the sawmill’s two shifts and for the dry kiln. The sawmill produces 110 million bdft. of dimensional lumber annually, ranging in size from six-foot-long to 16-foot-long 2x3s to 2x10s. The boards are predominantly made from lodgepole pine, but the mill also processes spruce and balsam in its operations. The pellet plant has an annual production of 15,000 tonnes. 12 Canadian BIOMASS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
Canadian Biomass November December 2016: Page 12
