“So far, we’re quite happy with what we see. It meets our expectations in terms of its running volume, and our pellet quality is very good,” Keery says. INSIDE THE PLANT As a new player in the wood pellet indus-try, Skeena turned to a veteran equipment manufacturer to design and implement the plant: Prodesa. The plant itself is set up in a way that emphasizes efficiency and safety. Fibre that is stockpiled in the yard goes to the plant through a double infeed system. “This allows us to use products with different characteristics and blend them together to get the finished product that we want,” Keery explains. The fibre then goes to a Bruks Siwertell green hammer mill, and then to a Swiss Combi gas-fired belt dryer with three 16-million-BTU gas burners. After this step, the fibre goes to another Bruks dry hammer mill, and then on to a dry storage bin, which feeds three Promill pelletizers. The pelletizers are capable of increasing the plant’s production capacity from 75,000 tonnes per year to 96,000 tonnes, but Keery says the company wants to get more experi-ence running under normal operating con-ditions before they increase production. Pellets then go to a pellet cooler, which feeds a screen. After screening, the pellets are stored in two 100-tonne truck-loading silos. From there, the pellets are trucked to the Kitsumkalum First Nation’s rail siding two kilometres from the plant, where they are loaded into rail cars for shipment. PRIORITIZING SAFETY Skeena has also implemented several mea-sures to ensure the safety of their employ-ees, both with regards to COVID-19 and to mitigate dust and explosion hazards. The company was among the first to implement safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, installing hand-washing and sanitizing stations, requiring masks, and more, Keery says. “We tried to respond to the COVID threat early when it started – some of our management team saw that this was go-ing to be a big problem,” he explains. “So, we started implementing protective mea-sures at a point when people were actual-ly not viewing COVID as a big problem.” Since then, Skeena has revised its safe-ty standards three or four times, taking increasingly strict measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission, Keery says. For example, two operators normally work in a control room at the plant. To ensure employees in the room would be safe, Skeena installed a partition, divid-ing the room in half, and installed air ex-change systems to maintain fresh air. Consequently, the company hasn’t had any stoppages in production due to COVID-19, nor have they reported any positive cases among their employees. Of course, outside of a pandemic, safety is still critical for wood pellet operations. Skeena has therefore installed multiple safe-ty systems. The material handling systems, for example, have rock traps on the green and dry end, as well as metal traps to re-move contaminants from the raw material. Skeena has also installed oscillating fans throughout the plant to prevent dust ac-cumulation on horizonal surfaces. The Swiss-Combi dryer also has spark detection systems in the burners and wa-ter-deluge systems to control fires. “All of our components have been de-signed to the NFPA safety rules,” Keery says. “That means there’s spark detection systems anywhere there is an explosion possibility, as well as exploding ports in many of the structures that could have an internal explosion occur. A lot of atten-tion has been paid to ensuring that the rules around handling wood dust, which is explosive, meet the NFPA regulations.” Additionally, any piece of equipment that Skeena felt was a potential liability for explosion, such as the dry storage unit, is housed outside of the main building, Keery says. And, throughout the plant, systems have been installed that allow op-erators to stop production in the event of a fire or other disruption, to remove the potentially hazardous material. Part of this focus on safety is borne out of experience – a belt dryer fire in July 2019 forced the plant to shut down for a month. “We’ve since had to undertake a num-ber of protective measures to identify and stop fires,” Keery says. Now, any sparks that do break out are quickly dealt with and often don’t result in a stoppage of production, he adds. Skeena has also formed a working group to con-tinue improving their ability to prevent belt dryer fires and respond to them effectively. “That’s going to go on for some time,” he says. “We probably made six or so changes to improve the situation and we still have several more that we’re planning to implement to further improve that.” Skeena Bioenergy is not alone in expe-riencing a belt dryer fire. This is an indus-try-wide issue – one that Keery would like to see addressed in the future. The indus-try has put together a task force to work on this issue, and the Wood Pellet Associ-ation of Canada held a belt dryer sympo-sium in November last year, where Skeena Bioenergy spoke about their experience. GROWING THE BUSINESS After overcoming these challenges, Keery is excited to get a year of normal operation under his belt. This will allow the team at Skeena to better understand how well the plant performs on an ongoing basis, estab-lish the basic economics of the business, and focus on training employees, he says. Looking further down the line, Skeena is exploring the possibility of producing specialized grades of pellets. In general, wood pellets are made to a single stan-dard, designed as a fuel. “But, we think given the variations in the type of fuel that’s available, there’s some op-portunity to make more specialized grades that fit other uses better, and, to do that, you have to be able to deliver a differentiat-ed product to customers,” Keery explains. “We think we could do that and we’re ac-tively looking at doing those things.” The company is also looking at enter-ing new markets, such as China. Skeena Bioenergy is owned by a family that im-migrated from China, and therefore has strong connections with the country. Currently, most of Skeena’s pellets are exported to Japan, although the company also provides pellets to some local com-mercial customers. This is another mar-ket Skeena wants to build upon. “I think that there’s a real opportunity in Canada to use wood pellets as a renew-able resource for our own domestic use,” Keery says. “Canadians aren’t doing that at any scale, and I really think that’s a missed opportunity.” To address this issue, Keery says the industry needs to build public awareness about wood pellets as a renewable resource. “That’s something I’m quite passionate about for us as an industry and as a com-pany. It’s important to us that we support local community uses of pellets and try to grow those,” he says. • WINTER 2021 12 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass Winter 2021: Page 12
