Catamount, Vermeer Collaborate to Produce Optimal Wood Chips for Pulp and Power

Catamount has set up a unique operation at its wood yard in Vermont that produces high quality wood chips well suited to make quality pulp as well as to burn clean in biomass boilers. 

In the U.S., many forests are actually under-harvested below levels of what can be considered proper management. In the southeast, many investors who purchased forest land are finding that the supply of wood is far greater than the demand leading to low dollar sales of harvests, affecting what the owners of land were once expecting would provide them with a solid retirement. In the Western states, particularly California, a lack of forest management, according to arguments presented by various scientists and industry experts, has led to an abundance of diseased trees and dry debris not found in a managed forest that can more easily spark devastating forest fires. In the northeast, however, a trend is starting to emerge creating more value for their forests by increasing demand through practical diversification of harvested wood sources both for pulp as well as biomass energy / heat and power production for municipalities. The northeast is likely where this new method could probably first be commercially applied. 

Five years ago, the northeast branch of Vermeer Corp. (headquartered in New York state) began work with Catamount Forest Products in central Vermont to assist the company in supplying wood chips suitable for pulp as well as meeting the requirements to be burned clean for biomass energy. Important to this development is the fact that this new method is economical to produce and much cleaner to burn without screens. 

"Our equipment is so efficient, our whole operation in our yard is run with a skid-steer loader..."

The idea was based on blending two different concepts that, at first glance, didn't seem compatible. A screener designed for sorting rocks and aggregate was paired with a wood processor.

 

"We figured if we could screen little stones from big stones, we would be able to do the same thing with wood chips. Our struggle with it was that wood was a lot lighter than rocks. The general functionality of an aggregate screener is shaking. That's how they break rocks apart. Because wood is a lot lighter, it became more violent and aggressive and harder to control the flow. We did some things with matting to create a dry space or a tight space for those chips to come through. It didn't allow a space for the chips to get violently tossed in and out of the machine. We were able to contain them, allow the chips to run uniformly, and lay flat to get a better blend of the product."

Vermont is a state which uses quite a bit of wood chips to burn in biomass boilers for heat. These boilers are able to operate much easier and more efficiently if they do not require a screen or filter that requires constant management and resetting when continually refilled with rejected pieces. The uniformity and quality of Catamount's wood chips enables users to feed them directly into their boilers, bypassing the need for screening equipment. This method also cuts down on the fines that cause troublesome ash buildup when running power boilers. 

Because the process is designed to not only produce a more suitable, high quality wood chip for biomass power boilers but to do so in a more economical way, this makes their wood yard a very effective dual use source for wood pulp production as well as preparing wood-for-energy biomass chips. The state of Vermont uses biomass heavily and is near other U.S. states such as Maine that have a significant forest product industry established well before the relatively new advent of processed biomass boilers being used for medium scale municipal power generation. States like Maine have a well established pulp and paper industry as well as the manufacture of other forest / wood constructed products where these chips can be used to make pulp or turned into composite board for construction.

This type of model may eventually serve as an example for more efficient operations in the southeast when the need arises. Currently, in the southeast, the extreme availability of forests for harvest as opposed to demand from forest product mills has led to a significant infrastructure for high-volume biomass harvest to be processed into pellets for export, at least for now, mainly to Europe. A dual purpose wood yard style being implemented could open up the door for states like South Carolina to be a leader in biomass for energy export while also managing their forests in a way that provides a streamlined, affordable source for quality pulp for use in additional facilities producing tissue paper, packaging papers, and other grades that are maintaining their market share in the pulp and paper industry unlike printing and writing paper which has leveled off with digitalization in developed nations.