Keeping home fires burning ( Logging for Bio Mass Fuel )

Rocky Mountain News ^ | November 9, 2007 | Roger Fillion

[george76]

New mill to turn dead trees into pellet fuel.

Colorado's first wood-pellet mill owes its birth to pine beetles that are killing millions of trees near the town of Kremmling and across northwest Colorado. The diseased trees will be the new Kremmling mill's chief input - a new twist for the pellet-fuel industry.

The 18,000-square-foot plant is billed as the largest west of the Mississippi. It's slated in February to start grinding trees into environmentally friendly pellets for wood-pellet stoves and industrial and commercial pellet boilers.

Many of the trees are too skinny or too cracked and old to be valuable as lumber.

"The dead and dying beetle kill was just piling up and was going to be a fire danger," ...

The plant will process trees as small as 2 inches in diameter and from as far as 100 miles away. When fully operational, the mill will produce up to 120,000 tons of pellets a year for homes, schools and buildings.

The region is estimated to contain 600,000 to 700,000 acres of dead and dying trees. The outbreak is expected eventually to cover more than 1 million acres.

Lovgren said the mill gives land managers more options to dispose of beetle-killed trees, particularly since the lumber often isn't attractive to commercial mills.

"There really aren't a lot of options to take your wood, especially the smaller-diameter logs and the dead and dying timber,"

[george76]

Logging is good.

.

[madvlad]

Hey! Hasn’t there been an argument AGAINST burning wood per
a fireplace because it is too polluting? bwahahahahahahahahaha

MV

[IronJack]

This same kind of pelletization can be done with corn cellulose waste (cobs, husks, stalks) and used to fuel the distillation process for ethanol, further reducing the energy footprint for that alternative fuel. When you think of the billions of tons of yard waste that could be pulped and pelletized instead of going into landfills, this becomes an even more attractive way to wean ourselves from the Arab tit.

[RSmithOpt]

Yeah!!! It eats up our carbon credits too fast to burn dead / diseased timber. We must spend money for ethanol manufacturing to burn fuel in our autos at $7/gal. It doesn’t use up carbon credits because the greenies say so.

[VOA]

Logging is good.

And when replacement tree seedlings are planted for the future harvests.....

LOGGING IS GREAT!!!

(funny, here on the internet, I can't make that sound like
Tony The Tiger pitching Frosted Flakes)

[VOA]

When you think of the billions of tons of yard waste that could
be pulped and pelletized instead of going into landfills,
this becomes an even more attractive way to wean ourselves from
the Arab tit.

Amen to that!
Of course, I'm a bit biased having a sister-in-law that a plant science
professor (specialities in molecular biology of corn/maize).

[george76]

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Pellets burn much, much cleaner than logs. I had a pellet stove for several years & it produced next to no smoke. Previously, I had an airtight log stove & learned how to burn with minimum smoke — the pellet stove burned cleaner all by itself. Pellet stoves use an auger to feed the pellets in at just the rate they burn — they also pump in combustion air, so that there is never any smoke caused by a lack of sufficient oxygen. Also, pellets are several times dryer than even well seasoned, air-dried logs.

[Vince Ferrer]

Hey! Hasn’t there been an argument AGAINST burning wood per a fireplace because it is too polluting? bwahahahahahahahahaha

Colorado has some pretty scrict restrictions on fireplaces, but the pellet stoves are usually designed to be low emmission.

[george76]

The mill will employ 18. Logging and trucking jobs are expected to bring Confluence Energy’s employment to between 40 and 50. Pay will start at $34,500 a year.

“We wanted the starting pay to be 25 percent above the average paying job in Grand County,” Mathis said.

[george76]

The liberals will not be happy.

LOGGING IS GREAT!!!

[LurkingSince'98]

A unit I’m working on now called a Stratified Downdraft Gasifier converts the pellets to horticultural grade charcoal and producer gas which is a low btu version of natural gas.

I love it - it’s a gas!

Lurking”

[MD_Willington_1976]

Further up North on the Island you can get a permit from the Ministry of Environment or the Local Canfor etcetera and head out to the slash and collect up as much wood as you can haul home in your truck... we paid for our Graduation party that way in ‘94 for Robron in Campbell River... IIRC $50 for an unsplit cord

[Library Lady]

A beetle (think it was called something like the Southern Pine Bark Beetle) was destroying red spruce trees on Mt. Rogers a few years ago, and my husband got the job to clean out infected trees. He had stories almost daily about libs driving by and shouting “tree killer.” Idiots wouldn’t recognize genuine conservation if it bit them.

[george76]

” Tree killers “ removing already dead trees ?

Tree hugging liberals are so nice.

/s

[LurkingSince'98]

tagline

[Balding_Eagle]

that are killing millions of trees near the town of Kremmling and across northwest Colorado

The nugget of coal in the story.

We need DDT, or we aren't going to have any trees left in Colorado. These beetles can kill a thousand acres before breakfast.

[Age of Reason]

Colorado has some pretty scrict restrictions on fireplaces

If Colorado has so many homes with fireplaces that they have to make using them against the law, then they are overpopulated and I wouldn't live there for anything.

(The right to have, and the freedom to use a wood burning fireplace, is second only to the right to bear arms in my book.)

[Vince Ferrer]

Suit yourself as to where you would like to live, but the pollution in Denver has more to do with its geography than the population size. Denver and the suburbs were built in a basin where it is nearly surrounded by higher ground. In the winter, temperature inversions prevent the air from circulating out of this basin, and particulates collect in the atmosphere. This causes the infamous "brown cloud." This happens in the same season that wood burning is also happening, hence the strong desire to reduce smoke from fires. By implementing tough restrictions on wood burning and cleaning up the streets quickly after a snow, this ugly visible pollution has been cut dramatically, even though the population has exploded.

For years, brown cloud fouls Denver image

[Age of Reason]

Denver has more to do with its geography than the population size. Denver and the suburbs were built in a basin where it is nearly surrounded by higher ground

Another way of saying that kind of geography cannot support so many people living in it.

And so it is too overpopulated for people to live more freely.

They have to make rules and enlist rules police to ration the air.