Grinding Project “It’s very challenging to compete with the cost of striking a match. If somebody is typically used to burning, and the eco-nomics of burning are cheap, then trying to incentivize other means – in this case, CO2 emissions, smoke and all of that – is always going to be a challenge,” he explains. “It’s thinking outside the box. It’s one of those things that’s as much an education program as anything else.” Pratt agrees, noting that one of the big-gest difficulties that FESBC has seen with all of their incremental haul projects is overcoming the mentality of “this is the way we’ve always done it.” But, “FESBC’s funding has allowed peo-ple to take the risk out of change and to try something different to achieve a common goal,” he says. COMMUNITY BUY-IN ran into some issues. “When you live in the mountains like we do, roads go up and down the sides of the mountains, and chip trucks don’t have a lot of clearance, so it’s very difficult for them to travel on a lot of our roads,” King explains. It was also difficult to get mechanics to the forest if equipment or trucks broke down. As well, the company was worried about the potential of sparking a wildfire while grinding in the bush. Ultimately, moving their grinding oper-ations to the plant made their operations more efficient and safer. However, this meant the company needed to get new truck configurations to haul shorter logs. “That, obviously, meant co-operation, discussion and buy-in from our truckers and our loggers,” King says. “But, the re-sponse has been really positive.” Beyond these logistical difficulties, King adds that it’s hard to make people see the benefits of hauling and grinding residual fi-bre to be used for electricity when it’s cheap-er to burn it. And the economic and environmental ben-efits outweigh the costs. From an environmental standpoint, de-creasing the amount of slash pile burning reduces the hazards associated with pile burning and improves the quality of the airshed. Burning the fibre in a generator is a cleaner, more controlled burn, since the generator has a scrubber that removes par-ticulates from the air, King says. Additionally, when slash pile burning is done, venting and indexes – automatic read-ings produced by Environment Canada – must be followed. According to King, these readings can sometimes be wrong. Grinding the residual fibre instead of burning it also reduces human or computer error. These types of fibre utilization projects also help to reduce the wildfire risk, which is a big plus for the community. “What happened in Lytton was devas-tating, and we don’t want that to happen here,” King says. “So, people are very much on board, and if we can do this, then that is also a huge feather in our cap. When we talk to the B.C. government Wildfire Branch, they’ve always reminded us that you’re go-ing to get smoke – it’s just a matter of how you choose when you’re going to get it. This RecuDry® -Low-temperature belt dryer with heat recovery system RecuDry ® Maximum drying efficiency due to energy recovery system High energy saving of 35 -55% Low exhaust airflows and emissions www.stela.de 14 Canadian BIOMASS CB_Stela_Winter22_CSA.indd 1 SPRING 2022 2022-01-24 1:04 PM
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