Production Costs and Markets for Pellet Chips: Case Studies in Northern Sweden

Abstract

Increasing use of woody fuels requires that nontraditional types of raw materials are exploited, including logging residues and small-diameter trees. Although medium-scale combustors often use pellets, they could conceivably use dried chips of sufficiently narrow size distribution (henceforth pellet chips). The influence of the following factors on the relative cost-effectiveness of producing pellets and pellet chips was investigated for three plant sites in northern Sweden: (1) harvesting and transporting of forest residues; (2) the potential of existing energy plants to supply drying heat in periods of capacity surplus; (3) the distance to potential end-users. Data from the national forest inventory were used to estimate raw material costs. The resulting production costs were 144-176 $ per oven-dry tonnes (OD t) for pellets (27.4-33.5 $ MWh −1 ) and 143-173 $ OD t −1 (27.2-33.0 $ MWh −1 ) for pellet chips, with harvesting, forwarding, chipping, and transporting of logging residues to the sites amounting to 114-122 $ OD t −1 (21.7-23.2 $ MWh −1 ) for both fuels. Even though the differences in production costs were minor, the production of pellet chips requires significantly less electricity input per OD t of produced fuel. For cost reductions improved methods for wood fuel procurement, compacting and transporting of chips, small-scale low-temperature drying and foliage and bark separation are needed.

Procurement costs of cereal straw and forest chips for biorefining in South-East Finland

“…Also the fluctuation in the annual level of industrial roundwood removals in regeneration fellings have regionally an impact to the technical harvesting potential of by products such as logging residues and stumps (Asikainen et al 2001;Ranta 2001;Thorsén et al 2011;Eriksson et al 2012;Berg et al 2015;Börjesson et al 2015;Eriksson 2016;Nivala et al 2016).…”