to a Bliss cooling tower before storage in a Westeel silo. “We can hold up to two days of product in the silos, and they feed directly into the rail cars,” Herzig says. About 90 per cent of the pellets are loaded bulk on rail cars, with the remaining 10 per cent getting bagged via a Hamer packaging system, and shipped out on trucks for the domestic market. The bagged pellets are only produced during the winter season. In the spring and summer 100 per cent of the pellets are sent bulk via rail. While the pellet markets are strong, Herzig says there are no current plans to expand the mill’s production. “We’re having conversations about what the future looks like in terms of expansion. How do we get bigger? Can we get bigger? Is there more fibre? And what’s the cost?” he says. The greatest value of Premium Pellet for Nechako is its role in extracting the full value of each log that enters the site. “From log in the gate to finished goods out, we have a fully integrated site that has a sawmill and planer mill, and then I can take my residuals and create heat for the facilities on site and generate electricity to offset our Hydro cost, and then sawdust and shavings are made into pellets that are going back into communities or internationally to help move away from coal and diesel,” Herzig says. “To have that full integration on site is pretty unique.” Nechako’s original boiler was built in 1999 — a thermal oil/wood residue boiler that replaced a beehive burner. “The original boiler was a big initiative to start using all the residuals from the bush on this site so we were leaving a better environmental footprint,” Scott says. In 2011 Nechako Green Energy was brought online, the first system of its kind built by Turboden at a forest products facility in North America. Hog from the mill is burned in a (GTS) boiler, which is attached to an ORC or organic rankine cycle turbogenerator that uses heated thermal oil to produce electricity. The 2.2 megawatt hour produced by the ORC offsets the site’s power requirements. Heat produced by TIMELINE 1969 – Nechako Lumber is originally built as a planer mill 1972 – The sawmill, L&M Lumber, is constructed on site 1999 – A thermal oil/wood residue incineration site is installed to heat the sawmill 2001 – Premium Pellet is built 2011 – The current ORC energy system, Nechako Green Energy, is built on site 2017 – Sinclar Group Forest Products purchases all companies on Nechako site WPAC AGM & Conference September 18-19, 2018 Visit us at the FUEL | AIR | GAS | ASH www.processbarron.com | 205-663-5330 | 2770 Welborn Street Pelham, AL 35124 12 Canadian BIOMASS CBM_ProcessBarron_JulyAug18_CSA.indd 1 JULY/AUGUST 2018 2018-07-06 9:18 AM
Canadian Biomass JulyAugust 2018: Page 12
