previous owners, and, for the most part, was in good working condition when Arrow, the Nak’azdli Whut’en and Nexus acquired the plant, Madia says. But, they made a few upgrades before restarting the plant. “One of the major upgrades that we’ve done thus far is improv-ing the processed water quality into the plant,” Madia explains. “We were able to locate an aquifer that’s providing very clean water into the process. The legacy water was latent with high mineralization and high iron content, so it had very high connectivity, which cre-ated its own set of challenges. The water has to be essentially free of any mineralization and contaminants prior to entering the boiler, ancillary equipment and turbine. Poor water quality will result in fouling of pressure parts and scaling of critical components. This will lead to high maintenance costs and poor plant availability.” They also replaced eight high-pressure valves that were leaky and had been bypassing, leading to higher than expected effluent discharge levels. Overall, bringing the facility back online was a fairly quick process, taking just over a month from the time the companies acquired it in early December. However, the cold weather conditions in the area in the first week of January this year posed a few challenges, Madia admits. “It was -34 C for several days in the first week of January. We strug-gled with cold weather-related issues. Starting up a biomass plant that relies on processed water is challenging at the best of times, let alone at -34,” he ai1633019768215_ibce22-RegisterHALF-CaBiomassMag.pdf says. “But, I think the crews did a really good job of com-1 pleting their capital upgrades and ultimately starting the plant up.” The plant is now operating at 75 per cent capacity, and the com-panies plan to do some more upgrades in June which will help them reach full capacity. For example, they plan on installing a tipper to help offload trucks more efficiently, Madia says. They will also im-prove the overall process control infrastructure of the facility. “We are thrilled to have hired a seasoned professional, Rock Doyer, to lead and mentor the BioNorth operations and main-tenance teams,” Madia adds. “We are extremely blessed to have Rock as part of our squad!” TREMENDOUS IMPACT The impact of bringing the plant back online has already been felt in the community, adding 35 direct jobs in the facility and another 60 to 70 indirect jobs through suppliers or fibre providers in the area, Madia says. It also helps local sawmills have an end-use for their waste products. BioNorth Energy is also the single largest tax base for the mu-nicipality, bringing a big economic boost to Fort St. James. Additionally, for the Nak’azdli, the BioNorth Energy plant is “one of the largest investments they’ve made as a Nation,” Madia says. “This is one of the most significant private sector investments in the forest products sector where a First Nations band owns a significant interest [40 per cent] in the venture. “So, we’re quite proud of that, and proud to be working with the Nak’azdli. It’s very impactful for their community to have a significant manufacturing investment within close proximity to 9/30/2021 11:36:10 AM their community.” • C M Y CM MY CY CMY K CB_BBI International_Winter22_CSA.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2022-01-24 1:09 PM 19
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