is one of the few ways that we can control it by putting it through scrubbers and a burn-er to create electricity and utilize it.” Economically, hauling and grinding the fibre allows LP to secure their fibre supply in a different way, which gives the plant more options to stay viable, King explains. “The pressures of a shrinking fibre source will always be there,” he says. “This increas-es utilization better, which is also viewed quite positively. And then, of course, there are all the jobs that are associated with this.” As such, LP has seen a lot of community buy-in from local politicians and the forest industry. Moving forward, King says LP will continue to look at ways to increase their fibre utilization. “The whole idea of the FESBC funding was to provide seed money so you could try projects like this and see if there was a different way of making something work and helping to streamline the efficiencies, so that when the funding stops, you’re able to learn from all of this and continue on,” he explains. • PROOF OF CONCEPT Some of the FESBC funding also helped LP test a “proof of concept” project using logs from the Kinbasket Lake (a reservoir created by the Mica Dam) to power their generator. This project was in partnership with BC Hydro, which runs the reservoir. “Annually, through the raising and low-ering of the reservoir as power is used, BC Hydro will collect 20,000-40,000 cubic metres of wood floating on the south end of the reservoir, and then they would burn it,” King says. “Our provincial government has made it well-known that they want to reduce the amount of slash pile burning in the province. So, we thought that we should talk to BC Hydro about the burn-ing and see if we can’t come up with an alternative solution.” According to King, various companies in the area have tried to do different proj-ects, such as manufacturing different wood products with logs from the lake. But the logs were full of silt, making them difficult to process and therefore uneconomical for the companies. “So, what we had to do was figure out a way to try and limit that dirt, to see if we could burn it,” King says. The company decided to try pulling the logs straight out of the reservoir and onto a truck, to limit the amount of time the wood comes into contact with soil on the bottom of the reservoir or the beach. They then put the wood through a merchan-dizer, and measured the moisture of the wood. “It actually ended up burning quite well, and I learned a few things, person-ally, about the fact that once wood dries out, it doesn’t stay saturated – it can produce a fair amount of heat,” King says. “It was a really interesting project, but it’s BC Hydro’s fibre and ultimately some-thing BC Hydro has to take care of. The point we wanted to make is that it can be utilized.” • Biomass boilers capacity up to 8 MW • High fuel flexibility • High hand quality design with a long service life • Steam or hot water operating medium • Fully automatic operation and ash removal • Advanced combustion controller Distributor and installer of Schmid biomass boilers 1-888-379-2954 RBQ : 5697-7952-01 460, rue Dessureault, Trois-Rivières, Qc G8T 2L9 [email protected] I www.combustionexpert.com CB_Combustion Expert energie_Spring_22_GWJ.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2022-04-26 11:27 AM 15
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