Arsenault is confident that the new fuel can be made cost effectively on an industrial scale. The goal is to have 100% of the plant’s production leave in torrefied form, and he stresses that this is possible in large part be-cause the process was designed from a pellet producer’s perspective. For starters, the gas created in the torrefaction process will be re-used in the plant’s burner, thus limiting the effect on the plant’s energy balance. “We’re not approaching this from a re-This Grinder Means Business. 5064 Horizontal Grinder 888-402-4638 22 searcher’s perspective; we don’t want to wait for the perfect superpellet. We need to develop this from an industrial pellet producer’s point of view, with the client’s real needs in mind. One example is how far to take the process. Do we really need the 10,000-BTU/pound, super-dark pel-let some researchers are talking about or making in labs? Sure they have impressive numbers on paper, but you lose a lot of mass in the process, so unless you’re cap-turing that gas on site there’s a big loss. And they become brittle, creating more dust than we want. In the real world, the advantages of a 10,000-plus BTU pellet gets shot down by the drawbacks and costs. What we’re making here is only 9,000 BTU, but that’s a lot better than the standard pellet’s 8,000 BTU/pound, and it’s waterproof, grindable into a fine dust, shippable, durable. For our process and 80% of the pellet plants in North America, it’s a better compromise, and one we think we can start delivering in the next year. ” Canadian Biomass will keep an eye on En-www.duratech.info/Canada Flexible retail financing available. Contact your local dealer. CanadianBIOMASS PO Box 1940 • Jamestown, ND 58402-1940 ergex and the development of the industrial torrefied pellet over the coming 18 months. With luck, we’ll be reporting on the first in-dustrial shipments sometime in 2011. • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010
Canadian Biomass September/October 2010: Page 22
