Alain Brodeur, Cyclofor forestry manager, and Daniel Tardif, the RC-03 inventor have big plans for the regionʼs slash. be dropped into a series of three drum-style debarkers. These are designed and built by Cyclofor, and create an increasingly fine screen for separating the white wood from the bark, dirt, small stones and sand. The design uses rotatable feller buncher teeth ar- ranged close together, with just a small percentage of the tooth Once at the sorting station, material will be divided into four principal sorts. The fi rst step will be to create debarked whitewood (hardwood or softwood) that will allow Cyclofor to offer products depending on demand – chips, shavings, sawdust/particles, or bark and other material for energy biomass. Waste material making one product, or slash too small for even specialized debarking, will serve as a product in other catego- ries. Potential clients include panel mills, pulp mills, agriculture, pel- let and energy plants. As for the environmental bal- ance, it looks pretty good. The slash piles now decomposing on forest sites not only reduce the area available for reforestation, but will in its turn create greenhouse gases over time. The component of Cy- clofor’s mix going to bioenergy will create the same gases, but will do so while replacing fossil fuels. The rest of the material will be used in products such as panels or papers, storing GHGs for anywhere from months to decades. Finally, larger volumes growing on the cleaner sites means more GHG storage per hectare. The effect of the RC-03 mov- ing over the site will be negligible, as it will travel on existing skidder trails. In this region it will also encourage reforestation by reduc- ing the volume of processor slash on site. “What we’re offering is an increase in the area tradition- ally available for re-planting com- pared to traditional site prepara- tion methods,” explains Brodeur. “Moreover, all the following silvi- cultural work and inventory work will be simplifi ed by removing the excess slash. This treatment is being studied by the MNR in the hopes of making it a recognized site prep treatment.” Of course this would only fur- ther enhance the economic viabil- ity of the overall Cyclofor process. Cyclofor has already worked with a host of consultants in forestry, metallurgy, fi nance and account- ing, human resources, computer systems, technical and architec- tural design to nail down the final design. Also key, the provincial government has authorized the recovery of slash in certain zones of this immense forested region. A co-operation agreement has al- ready been developed with a local forest company, as well as with regional private woodlot co-ops to diversify the fibre supply. For the near future, the entire concept is being studied by a re- search collective to optimize the collection and transport process. The group includes FERIC, The CAF Group, and Kekeko Forestry, and the results of their study will be released soon. The fi nal piece of the puzzle is “The forestry balance looks pretty good, right down to making it easier and safer for spot planters to access the site.” up to the folks at Cyclofor. They are developing a debarking sys- tem for the sorting station that will let them extract maximum value from material larger than 4 centimetres. They’ve designed a specialized drum-style system that will do a better job, with less damage, than current systems. In the end, it will be the ability of Cyclofor to extract a maximum volume of whitewood, in all its forms, that will make the sorting station a paying proposition. Oth- erwise, you may as well chip it all in the bush. To test this new system, the company has built a prototype sorting/processing centre in La Sarre on the site of an old Tem- bec sawmill (with infrastructure already in place). This started up before the end of June 2008, and will serve above all to test the crew’s ability to efficiently sort white wood out of the slash from pieces down to 4 centimetres. Slash will be brought to the line by a Bobcat, where it will travel up 45-degree inclined and coun- ter-rotating screw conveyors to sitting above a set of guards. The really small material (mostly min- eral) will drop all the way through and be composted, while the rest either drops out as it becomes very fi ne (bark or very small wood pieces), or continues on to the next drum. In the end, white wood leaves the third, fi nest drum, and con- tinues on to a vibrating conveyor and chipper, followed by vibrat- ing screens to sort out the various white wood products, including pulp chips and material for panel producers. These will be loaded straight into waiting vans to avoid contamination. While you can imagine a higher percentage of white wood being lost by volume than say a traditional log debarking and chipping operation, it’s important to remember that the alternative was once just to burn it all or leave it in the bush. We’ll continue to follow progress on this innovative company’s development. • Translation and additional reporting and updates by Scott Jamieson. CanadianBIOMASS 21
Canadian Biomass August 08: Page 21
