Wood Pellet Plant Gets Global Partner

Monday, February 15, 2010 01:55 PM

Pacific BioEnergy wood pellet plant Willow Cale Forest Road

Prince George, B.C. - Pacific BioEnergy’s wood pellet plant in Prince George is set to become the largest such plant in Canada and the second largest in North America...

In announcing a $24-million dollar expansion of the facility, Vice-President of Operations, Brad Bennett, says Pacific BioEnergy has entered into a strategic partnership with GDF Suez, Europe’s largest publicly-traded utility.

Bennett declines to go into specifics of the deal, but says a GDF subsidiary will become a minority owner and the partnership has allowed Pacific BioEnergy to secure funding for the expansion.

The details – Jobs:

- 10 direct jobs, bringing the total number of employees at the pellet plant to 30

- 25 indirect jobs in bush procurement, getting residual wood waste from the bush to plant

- 100 person-hours of labour on construction of the plant, which will more than double its size

Capital Improvements:

- a third in-feed line. The two existing lines handle sawdust and shavings, the new one will handle bush grind – wood waste residual from the bush which, Bennett, says the company is moving to as a more secure source of fibre

- two new dryers which are more efficient in air circulation and more effective at getting the waste to the pelletizers

- a bank of five new pellet machines to double the total to 10

Bennett says today’s announced partnership is win-win-win: for PacificBioEnergy, GDF Suez, and the environment. (Photo: Bennett on the left, plant General Manager, Tim Knoop, on the right)

“It’s a secure sales agreement, (our) biggest customer now has an ownership position in (our) company. It’s pretty exciting, it puts us in a secure position.”

Bennett says with mills holding on tighter to chips, the company has been working hard to secure future fibre – buying the sawmill in Kitwanga, purchasing a large forest licence in the Quesnel area (originally held by Ainsworth Lumber) and working with with B.C. Timber Sales for residual waste in the bush. He’s confident Pacific BioEnergy is well-positioned to meet a growing demand for its wood pellets.

For its part, Bennett says, GDF Suez has secured a source of carbon-neutral wood pellets – 2.5-million tonnes over the next 10-years – as it transitions its electrical generating plants in Belgium from coal to meet the Kyoto Accord’s 2020 deadline. Using wood pellets will reduce the utility’s CO₂ emmissions by 4-million tonnes.

As for local air quality, that’s the third win. Bennett says new electrostatic precipitators at the plant in Prince George mean that while wood pellet production will double, air emissions will fall to 30-percent of where they’re at now.

Some preliminary work on the expansion has already begun and is expected to ramp up in the spring, with a November completion.

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Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 01:55 PM in News by Michelle Cyr-Whiting

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Comments

Posted by: blue_sky_blue on February 15 2010 3:20 PM

100 person hours to build the plant? Should that be 100 thousand?

Also, are the precipitators mentioned near the end of the article part of the upgrade, or are they separate?

Posted by: gus on February 15 2010 4:50 PM

100 person years? Too many?

100,000 person hours = 48 person years.

Probably still too many.

I understand they are part of the upgrade. They were allowed to build without them and given till this year to put some in place, In addtion, no expansion without them.

I find this phrase interesting: "As for local air quality, that’s the third win ..."

As I recall, their study showed that it would not impact anyone in the airshed other than a bunch of postal workers nearby.

So now they are claiming their will be an improvement. LOL ... go figure, eh? If there was no impact in the first place, how do you improve on no impact? How logical are these people?

Spin, spin, spin, lovin' the spin I'm in.

Posted by: truewitt on February 15 2010 6:10 PM

That is no spin, as they totally ignore their air dischage permit, running the fans way above permitted levels to gain production and have been doing so since the plant opened.
Maybe once the new equipment is in they will operate within the law. Till then COUGH COUGH a little more PG

Posted by: interceptor on February 15 2010 6:24 PM

You have proof of that accusation truewitt?

Posted by: truewitt on February 15 2010 7:23 PM

Yup. With one slight correction from last post- they do run in compliance when stacks are being tested for MOE.

Posted by: Resident on February 15 2010 9:09 PM

When drying wood in a dryer particulate is defined as front 1/2 and back 1/2. One being the solid particulate matter and the other being the VOC's or blue haze. Only a wet precipitator will remove both condensibles and non-condensibles and a dry electroctostatic precipitator as used on a power boiler would not work. The old NCP plywood plant had a wet precipitator which treated the VOC's generated from the drying process. If the precipitator is being used on the dryer circuit then it needs to be a wet precipitator and if it is a dry precipitator and used elsewhere in the plant then the dryers will still only have cyclones to remove some solid particulate matter and the VOC's will be vented to atmosphere. It would be nice to know the actual particulate level the plant will be permitted for. A little more detail on equipment being installed and permitted emission levels in the news release would be good PR information to release. If the plant emission levels are at 300 mg/DSCM and is going to be reduced to 100 mg/DSCM that is hardly earth shattering. Is the drop in particulate matter of 2/3 per dry standard cubic meter of flue gas or when the plant expands will the drop be 2/3 from the presently permitted level? Big difference.

Posted by: Eagleone on February 16 2010 6:31 AM

If we had an industrial yard outside of the city airshed most of the air quality issues would be nearly irrelevant. Instead we have a wedge for ever more air issue concerns....

Posted by: northern boy on February 17 2010 9:35 PM

Prince George does not really need another factory venting pollutants into the atmosphere. Industies of this nature need to be away from residential areas and while they may be located in an industrial park they are still dumping all kinds of particulate and voc's into a seriously compromised air shed.

I thought our new mayor campaigned for improving the air quality. While Pacific Bio Energy wants to give this project a clean air spin, the bottom line is that an expanded plant will only further compromise PG's bad air.

A plant like this quite simply needs to be out of the bowl. Governmental officials at both the provincial and municipal level need to put peoples health ahead of the opportunity to build a cheaper plant.