equates pellet making with the discipline and process controls of a fuel refinery. He recommends that mill owners seek as-sistance from a consultant or OSHA (in Canada, the Canadian Centre for Occupa-tional Health and Safety, CCOHS) to make sure all potential hazards and compliance issues are adequately addressed. “If we, as owners, don’t take this seriously, that alone could end a business and end it in a very disastrous way with people getting hurt. That is inexcusable,” he says. second exPansion As the demand for pellet fuel grew, NEWP began to expand, starting up its Schuyler facility in 2008. It has proximity to the wood resource, easy highway access, and consumer markets in major metropolitan areas in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Walker is a self-taught engineer and has done all the engineering and design for each plant. Much of the pellet mills’ ma-terial handling and emission control sys-tems have been designed and fabricated at NEWP’s fabrication shop in Jaffrey, which was built in 2006. That shop has helped to reduce project costs, keeping the total investment in the Schuyler plant at $13 million. The mill is currently operating on a 24-hour, five-day workweek with a three-man team per shift. Green and dry chips and sawdust are purchased from local mills. Arriving trucks cross a Fairbanks scale and unload at a Peerless truck dump. Operator Rick Waterbury uses a Volvo L110 bucket loader to carefully blend raw materials to achieve the right proportion of hardwood chips, green sawdust, pallet grindings, soft-wood, and other dry trimmings. Targeted moisture content for the blended material is in the mid-30% range, and the feedstock is stored under cover to maintain that level. Moisture is measured several times throughout processing to ensure proper levels for binding quality pellets. A live floor infeed delivers the material to a conveyor belt, which passes under a large Industrial Magnetics magnet and through BM&M shaker screens to remove oversized wood slabs and fines. Oversize wood is ground and used in pellet produc-tion, whereas the fines feed the biomass furnace that supplies process heat for the dryer. The pellet feedstock is processed by a 500-hp Bliss hammermill, which grinds it into a uniform pea size. The material then enters an M-E-C triple-pass dryer capable of drying about 10 tons/hour. Targeted moisture content at the dryer outfeed is 15%. Fines are removed by two Kice cy-clones, and the dry feedstock is stored in two storage silos. The storage silos were built in-house to address previous issues with frozen wood and concerns about meeting safety codes. The units feature a metering system and robust silo motors that continuously mix the contents. Dried wood that is purchased from local sawmills and furniture and floor-ing factories goes directly to two storage silos. Reclaimers incorporated with each silo feed the fibre into a 500-hp Bliss hammermill for final sizing. From storage and initial processing, the fibre enters a large distribution bin, where augers distribute it to each of three Bliss pellet mills. Drag chain conveyors deliver the pellets to the cooling tower and then to the pellet storage silo. Fines and oversized pellets are removed by a BM&M shaker screen before the pellets go to the automat-ic Hamer bagging system. Filled bags fall to a conveyor belt on the packaging line that’s xt i s e n ng Com i s u e! 2011 Pe llet M i ll Guid e 14 Canadian BIOMASS MAY/JUNE 2011
Canadian Biomass May/June 2011: Page 14
