Hope for E. Millinocket ?

[sprucebunny]

A company called Ensyn wants to build a digester to produce a liquid wood fuel.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2022/10/10/mainefocus/liquid-wood-east-millinocket-biorefinery-joam40zk0w/

[Don P]

I hope it works out better than the one that vaporized here after the hoopla died down. Apparently it works in the lab.

[g_man]

Sounds interesting !

gg

[peakbagger]

The article is behind a paywall for me but here is some info.

Its more than a lab experiment. I was involved with converting the North Conway Memorial Hospital from #4 fuel oil to the product for heating the facility several years ago. Last thing I know they were still using it. I think Bates college uses it in their District Heating system. Its not a drop in for #4 fuel oil but pretty close. Its acidic (like vinegar) to the point where everything in contact with it need to be stainless. It also has to be warm and recirculated so it's always moving. If it leaks, it solidifies and everything joint has to be welded. It has a shelf life, not an issue for a place like a hospital that always needs heat but if it just sits around it deteriorates. There were making it in Ottawa at an R&D facility and trucking it to North Conway. They spent a lot of money building a new plant on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence at an old pulp mill site east of Quebec. Its long haul from anywhere. It smells like barbeque if it's exposed to air. When filling the on site tank it smelled just like a barbeque joint has opened up next door. Get it your shoe and it will smell liek rib joint for a few days. The same process used to make it is used to make Liquid Smoke flavoring. Its pretty "green", if it spills on the ground it does not float like oil, it just sinks into the dirt and solidifies and then eventually biodegrades. We installed a very expensive double wall stainles storage tank with leak alarms just in case.  

The economics only make sense if certain tax incentives stay in place and oil prices stay high. They cannot compete long term against $40 a barrel crude oil but if the OPEC keeps their target around $100 barrel, this product starts to look good. Ensyn gets a RIN certificate for every gallon produced in addition to any profit selling it. A RIN is tied to the Renewable Fuel Standard and any company selling fuel had to buy RINs to offset fossil use. Its been around for decade or so. 

They can turn any cellulose based waste product to the product. They were always looking to partner with another firm that was already handling lots of wood to co-locate a plant. There was another firm that was planning to make bio-char at the site but I think the volume would be low. Its been quite awhile since I have been by the site but last time I was there the old biomass boiler and the fuel handling systems were still in place along with the old power plant building so I expect Ensyn may be able to reuse some of it. East Millinocket had been scrapping things to pay for the site so not sure if anything is left.

Hopefully they do not need big state incentives or loans to build the plant as past history at both Millinocket mills has been very bad with Cate Street really leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth. 

The big gotcha is that there is growing portion of the environmental community that argue that burning biomass is not carbon neutral enough. It would be worth another thread but many states like Mass and VT are or have already phased out incentives and changing regulations to exclude any biomass energy being treated as green.    

[moodnacreek]

Good post. Just read about this stuff in the logger. It must take a lot of 'wood' to squeeze out the product. So it has a shelf life, that was one of the problems with vegetable oil, it will also try to dry like linseed oil.   I wonder if people realize how hard it is to replace petroleum products. At one time I sawed with a '48 Cat diesel on used motor oil and the stuff only gets better with time.

[Southside]

Well, I hope so, but honestly I have been hearing about something saving either Millinocket or E Mill for pretty much my entire adult life and it always seems to be right out of Peanuts where Lucy pulls away the football at the last second every time.  

[Joe Hillmann]

I have to pay to read it.  What is the process to make it? And what is the final fuel?

I'm guessing it is a combination of methonal and tars from dry and destructive distilling mixed together?

[customsawyer]

A company called Range fuel tried to do something similar here in Soperton, GA. about 10 or 15 years ago. They got some big grants and tax breaks well over 100 million. Worked the plant a little until the money dried up and then blew out of town. 

[Tarm]

This is nuts. They are taking 30 pounds of green wood and turning it into an 8+ pound gallon of heavy fuel oil. Depending on the moisture content of the green wood they are losing one third to one half of the thermal energy of the wood in the process. It would be better to just process the waste wood into wood pellets and install pellet boilers in the buildings. This makes no sense from an efficiency, carbon or waste utilization standpoint.

An idea in search of a subsidy.

[peakbagger]

Its a rapid pyrolysis process. Very dry wood is combusted with way less air then needed for full combustion forming a cloud of partial combustion byproducts then rapidly quenched. The celllose burns quickly while the lignins in the wood take longer to burn so they get caught in the quench. 

As mentioned, its a pretty good substitute for #4 fuel oil that is used in a lot of industrial and institutional boilers that either burn liquid fuel, natural gas or propane. A pellet boiler is a different type of boiler and usually the particulate out of wood boiler is much higher than oil, gas of propane.   

[Don P]

Is it another of these? This is what was proposed here , and elsewhere, and they never seem to gel.
Fischer–Tropsch process - Wikipedia

[kantuckid]

And speaking of industrial/institutional boilers, several states are banning them in the future. I remember NJ as one but forget the others? 

[moodnacreek]

They say in '24 most gen sets among other things can't be used within 50 miles of NYC. The quarry just over the hill must go on line. They need a $100,000 transformer they can't currently get. Recently they installed a 3512 Cat gen, 2000 kw. Oh well. I am just over the 50 mile line. What next?

[sprucebunny]

Here's a link to info about the process.
Overview - Ensyn - Renewable Fuels and Chemicals from Non-Food Biomass.

[livemusic]

This is interesting, thanks for posting. I hope they figure out how to make this work. I have always wished they could figure out how to use the slash from logging. There is so much waste! Feeds the forest floor, that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how much it benefits tree growth. I dunno if slash is applicable for this idea but maybe someday. The world needs all of the energy sources we can come up with. It remains to be seen if we can even exist as we know it without relying heavily on oil/gas. I'm all for e-cars and all that but we won't even know if we can pull this off as a planet for quite awhile. A gallon of gasoline (or diesel) is truly amazing! Often, when I am riding down the highway in my truck, it hits me how remarkable fossil fuels are.