Mill Product News - Elmia Wood Report: Pre-show Bioenergy Conference

Packed with information, the event, organized by the Swedish Bioenergy Association Svebio, was a stimulating and thought-provoking lead-in to the Elmia Wood 2009 trade fair.

Field trips and presentations provided a close-up view of the system Sweden has developed – and is still developing - for using slash to produce energy.

Some key themes appeared over the one-and-a-half day event. One is that although Swedish bioenergy solutions and systems work very well – 28 percent of Sweden’s total energy is from bioenergy sources – the general consensus is that there are still areas to be developed, especially as demand for this type of energy grows. Making better use of the resource, improving technology and systems and introducing innovations are ongoing efforts.

On the resource front, there is growing interest in adding stumps to logging residue as a biomass source. Currently, though they have excellent fuel value, virtually no stumps are being harvested. What’s needed to make more use of this resource are the technology, methods and practices to make it viable while ensuring its potential negative impacts on soil properties are avoided.

Fuel wood logistics, generally considered one of the industry’s major challenges, have taken a leap forward with the opening in late 2008 of a wood fuel and forest products (sawlogs and pulpwood) terminal near the city of Sävsjö. Located on the main southern railroad line, the terminal receives wood and chips by truck from local and regional forest operations and distributes the products by train to power and heat plants, sawmills and pulp mills in major cities. In its first 6 months of operation the terminal handled 85,000 tonnes of wood and chips and has the capacity for much more. The co-owners of the facility, the town and a local transport company, hope to attract wood-based and other industries to the area.

Another pioneering initiative is recycling the ash from biomass fired power plants to return nutrients to the forest, maintain the soil’s acid/base balance, and close the bioenergy supply loop. Currently, 40,000 tons of the 300,000 tons of ash produced each year are recycled so there’s room for growth. The technology and methods exist but landowners need to understand the benefits of the process and buy into it.

A number of experts shared their knowledge from the ground up, on biomass demand, the resource base, sustainability, harvesting and extraction methods, techniques and equipment, and the efforts of a large forest products company to go from being a net user to net exporter of bioenergy. There’s not enough wood to meet Sweden’s bioenergy goals, said Albin Andersson from Södra, and even if there were, it’s much more difficult to use compared to other energy sources, so the focus has to be on using less.

Provocative opinions, innovative ideas, useful information and lively discussion among the delegates from some 29 countries – the Bioenergy Conference was a fitting kick-off for what’s billed as the No. 1 international forestry trade fair.