shipped in from Resolute’s sawmills in Atikokan and Ignace, Ont. The resulting pellets are made up of spruce, pine and fir, and are six millimetres in diameter with moisture content between four and six per cent, which is according to specifications by OPG. OPG does not require the pel-lets to be certified, however, all fibre harvested for Resolute’s sawmills is from certified woodlands. Resolute’s pellets are made up of spruce, pine and fir, and are six millimetres in diameter with moisture content between four and six per cent. THUNDER BAY IS THE FIRST PELLET PRODUCTION FACILITY FOR RESOLUTE. “We’re fully integrated right now. If you look at Thunder Bay, Atikokan and Ignace, we make lumber at three facili-ties, we make pulp, we make paper and we make power,” Martel says. INSIDE THE OPERATION The pellet plant is located just steps from the Thunder Bay sawmill, connected by a series of ducts and conveyors. An outdoor Wellons burner fuelled by bark from the sawmill provides heat for the pellet plant’s TSI dryer. Rodrigue Métal out of Quebec supplies the duct system. Dried wood biomass is then channelled into the pellet plant where two 400-hp pellet machines, both supplied by Andritz, compress the sawdust and shavings. Law-Marot-Milpro (LMM), which at the time was associated with Andritz, supplied the coolers and screens. Once the pellets are cooled, three 100-tonne silos store them before they are shipped to OPG’s power plant. In 2016 Resolute upgraded the TSI dryer by adding a $500,000 vapour recycling system. “It’s basically a big pipe with a dampener that allows the system to recycle the air at the outfeed of the dryer and send it back to the dryer,” says Maxime Langlais, general manager for Resolute’s northwestern Ontario sawmills. “It’s giving us more capacity and more stability for drying and also reduces the risk of internal fires.” Since hot air from the burner is fed directly into the dryer and the sawdust, the plant has a sparks and heat detec-tion system supplied by Flamex. A mist and deluge line prevents accumulation of flammable pitch in the ducts after the dryer. As well, a contractor cleans the ducts with water pressure every month. There are no further upgrades planned for the plant, however, Langlais says ideally they would con-sider a system to automatically feed the planer shavings into the dryer, sim-ilar to how the sawdust is conveyed directly from the sawmill. Langlais, who also manages Resolute’s three sawmills, says he’s rel-atively hands-off the pellet plant now that it is operating as expected. The plant requires just one dedicated staff member, Jeremy Palmer, who is the general supervisor of the pellet plant and kilns. Palmer supervises a crew of around 11 other Resolute employees. “It’s running well so I don’t have to intervene, Jeremy is taking care of it,” Langlais says. “He was a sawmill super-visor so he had to learn the pellet pro-cess, but now he knows more than us and has done very well.” Learning to run a pellet plant was an adjustment for the Resolute sawmill team, Langlais adds, but “At the end of the day, it’s screws, conveyors, drying and other things that we are used to.” MUNCY, PA Your global equipment supplier for the biomass industry ANDRITZ is one of the world’s leading suppliers of techno logies, systems, and services relating to equipment for the bio mass pelleting industry. We offer single machines for the production of solid and liquid biofuel and waste pellets. We have the ability to manu facture and supply each and every key processing machine in the pellet pro-duction line. ANDRITZ Feed & Biofuel A/S Europe, Asia, and South America: [email protected] USA and Canada: [email protected] www.andritz.com/ft Canadian BIOMASS CBM_Andritz_ JanFeb17_CSA.indd 1 17 2017-01-11 9:11 AM
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