20 in 10

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Wood pellet manufacture and transportation is how energy intensive?

A lot less energy intensive than oil drilling, transportation, refining, and more transportation.

There are three primary energy uses in pellet manufacture: chipping/grinding, extruding and drying. The wood starts out at 40 or 50 % moisture content and the pellet finishes with a MC of around 10%. The drying can be fuelled with gas, but it's more efficient to use excess wood (such as bark and fines) to fuel the dryer. The chipping and grinding will either be powered by a diesel or electric engine and the extruder is electric. I have numbers for these processes back at the office, as we've just finished a couple of pellet studies, but I don't have them here.

There's also energy used in the collection and transportation of the wood, but this is often being done already by the State and US Forest Services, utilities or private companies for fire mitigation, forest health, line clearing and landscaping work. In the Intermountain West there are millions of trees that have been killed (or soon will be) by ips beetles, mountain pine beetles, dwarf mistletoe, drought and blowdown. These trees are a huge fire risk, so there is already a lot of work being done to remove them from the forest. In some areas, such as Grand County, Colorado, up to 90% of the trees will be lost.