Wood Pellets Power from pellets Resolute integrates pellets into its Ontario operations By Maria Church Ninety-four per cent of the plant’s fibre diet comes from the Thunder Bay sawmill located adjacent to the pellet plant. The final six per cent is sawdust shipped in from Resolute’s sawmills in Atikokan and Ignace, Ont. AS 16 Canada works its way to becoming coal free by 2030, Resolute Forest Products, the largest sawmill company in Eastern Canada, is making headway to achieving its goal of fossil-free oper-ations. One cog in that wheel is a pellet plant that opened on site at Resolute’s sawmill in Thunder Bay, Ont., in October 2014. The pellet plant was built to supply Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG’s) first fully pellet-fuelled power plant, which opened in Atikokan, Ont., 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, after a two-year conversion project that same year. (Read about that project at www.canadianbiomass.com.) “The pellet mill is achieving our capital project forecast,” says Michael Martel, vice-president of forest products operations for Resolute in Ontario and Quebec, following a tour of the opera-tion in December. The pellet plant is producing 45,000 tonnes per year, with a design capacity of 60,000 tonnes. The $10-million plant receives saw-dust from the Thunder Bay sawmill directly by conveyor, which makes up 81 per cent of the plant’s fibre diet. Another 13 per cent is from planer shav-ings, which are added to the sawdust mix. The final six per cent is sawdust MARCH/APRIL 2017 Canadian BIOMASS
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