WOODLOTS
Fuel from the Forest

by Patrick White

Vermont’s first wood pellet plant wants to heat local

COURTESY OF VERMONT WOOD PELLET CO Employees inspect the wood pellets. In addition to the 15 jobs created in the plant, there are four times that number of people working in the forest to harvest the wood needed for production.

Vermont is 75 percent forested, but it wasn’t until last September that the state’s first wood pellet plant came online. That may sound surprising, until you consider the challenges involved in getting such an operation up and running.

Because the wood pellet industry is still in its infancy in the U.S., putting together the right equipment and processes was “a huge challenge,” says Chris Brooks, who along with Katie Adams co-owns the Vermont Wood Pellet Co. in Clarendon. As just one example, not only did he and Adams look for exactly the right chipper to use, that chipper then had to be precisely adjusted. “The angle that the wood hits it had to be just right; the number of knives and feed rate had to be right for the type of wood we’re using; and the distance between the knife and the anvil had to produce a very small, uniform chip.”

Borrowing from existing technology in the wood products and agriculture industry, they were able to put together the proper systems. They even put together a complete test mill to confirm that everything worked, and to help them come up with the right “recipe” for making wood pellets.

PHOTO BY JIM WHITE. Vermont Gov. James Douglas prepares to cut the ceremonial ribbon at the official opening of the Vermont Wood Pellet Co. in Clarendon, Vt., in September. The plant is the first of its kind in the state.

“Early on, we looked at the European market, which has been around for quite a while, and tried to match their highest specification. We have a spec that is 6 percent or less moisture; 8,300 BTU or more per pound; fines of less than half of 1 percent; and ash content of less than one-third of 1 percent,” Brooks explains.

Everything that happens at the Vermont Wood Pellet Co. is designed to meet those fairly tight specifications, beginning with the type of wood it takes in, to the way that wood is chipped and hammered and dried and conditioned.

“We use a mix of some hardwood and quite a bit of softwood—we mix for BTU,” says Brooks. “The mix we use allows us to hit our end target, without having to add anything. You can boost the BTUs by adding oil, but that’s counter to what we’re all about.”

Borrowing a phrase popular in community-based agriculture these days, Brooks says the Vermont Wood Pellet Co.’s mission is to “Heat Local.” The company’s primary source of wood comes from within a 30-mile radius of the plant, and most of the finished pellets are delivered within a 50-mile radius, a dramatic departure from the model followed with oil and gas heating products, and even larger wood pellet plants in the southern U.S. that ship most of their products overseas.

Indeed, many of the wood pellets being imported into Vermont come not from neighboring New England states, but from Colorado or British Columbia, says Brooks. “That sort of defeats the purpose of pellets being carbon-neutral. Our approach is different. It really is about Vermonters keeping Vermonters warm. And we have some very good working relationships with loggers,” says Brooks. “It’s nice to know where the wood is coming from. And we now have a short survey for them, asking if the wood is coming off land that is being managed by a forest use plan. So we know if the wood is coming from sustainable forests.”

A log, with the bark already removed, enters the chipper, which has been precisely set up to achieve the proper angle and chip size required for pellet production.

Brooks says that while most of the wood coming in is brought by loggers, the slow economy has also led farmers and woodlot owners to bring in smaller loads themselves, as a way of helping ends meet. “And, in Vermont, most of those lands are in some sort of land use program,” he points out. “We actually have had people drop off wood from a dump trailer being pulled by a pick-up truck. It’s one of the neat things about a local economy—we can work with those guys.” For area loggers, it also represents a much shorter trip than to paper or pulp mills in New York or Maine.

Regardless of the supplier, the Vermont Wood Pellet Co. has an open call for deliveries of logs. “We make pellets three shifts a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. So we need wood on an ongoing basis,” says Brooks. Payment is made by weight.

The company’s first-year goal is to produce about 10,000 tons of pellets (enough to heat about 3,333 average homes). To do so will require about 20,000 tons of green wood. “It takes about a 2:1 ratio,” explains Brooks of the weight lost, mainly water, during processing.

Unlike many wood pellet mills that start with a secondary product—chips or sawdust, etc.—the Vermont Wood Pellet Co. begins with whole logs. (In part, that’s because of the value of sawdust to dairy farms in the state.) The first step is to remove the bark using a Morbark peeler. The main reason for removing the bark is to get rid of any dirt, which can become glass-like “clinkers” in customers’ pellet stoves.” The bark is used later as a commodity for making mulch.

COURTESY OF VERMONT WOOD PELLET CO. Vermont Wood Pellet Co. sells its products in 40-pound bags, as well as 1,000-pound agricultural super-sacks and bulk.

The clean logs are then chipped and the chips are dried using a triple-pass drum drier. From there, the chips go into a hammer mill, which produces a roughly sawdust-sized consistency. “That is then fed into the mill, where the pellets are produced,” says Brooks. That involves the use of pressure and heat. The resulting pellets are then quickly cooled. “If we don’t quickly get the pellets down to ambient temperature, they will puff up again,” he explains.

The Vermont Wood Pellet Co. sells to individual homeowners (some purchase the pellets directly at the plant, taking away pickup truck-loads or even a few bags in the trunk of their car), as well as institutional customers and energy co-op buyers (the latter delivered on semi-trucks). “We try to take care of everyone,” says Brooks. “And we have a great relationship with Bourdeau Brothers in Middlebury, a farm supply company. The beauty of that is, in the fall, their trucks weren’t running very much. Now, those same trucks that deliver bulk feed can now deliver bulk pellets. And the trucks that can deliver bagged material to farms can be used to deliver bagged (1 ton super-sacks) pellets.”

Brooks says that homeowners with wood pellet stoves represent the largest end-user of the company’s pellets. “But, we’re seeing a growth in the number of wood pellet furnaces,” he adds. “Buyers are starting to install larger hoppers and wood pellet boilers—we’re seeing more of that.” He adds that wood pellet customers in the U.S. are beginning to become a bit savvier about inquiring and comparing the specs (in terms of moisture content, BTU, ash, fines, etc.) between various wood pellet products. “A lot of producers don’t publish their specs—they just say it’s a ‘premium’ or ‘super-premium’ pellet,” he explains. “But that doesn’t mean a lot.”

Demand for wood pellets is strong, and Brooks estimates there currently are about 18 wood pellet plant projects in various phases of planning throughout Vermont. “There are a lot of folks thinking about it, or looking at it,” says Brooks. He offers others considering such a venture his support, and something to think about: “If you go into it thinking you’re a wood processing facility, you’re going to have huge problems. We’re actually a refinery—we take materials and refine them further and further into a known specification,” says Brooks.

His company is also expanding its horizons beyond wood. The Vermont Wood Pellet Co. recently signed a contract with the Grass Pellets Fuel Institute in Middlebury to make pellets out of grass. “They shipped us canaryreed, switchgrass and a mulch mix,” says Brooks. “We’re also working with the Biomass Energy Research Center.” Much of the technology at the plant that’s used for making wood pellets will translate to grass, he explains. The trick will be to get the grass from Vermont farms to the plant. “Anyone who has done any haying knows that grass is difficult to move, especially when it’s not in a compact form. So we’re trying to find ways to take existing technology on the farm and modify it to do what we need it to do. I’m excited to see what the outcome will be.”

Mostly, though, Brooks seems excited to be a part of a business that’s using local resources, supplying local heat and providing local jobs. “We have 15 employees here—and for every one of them, there are four guys working out in the woods supplying us,” says Brooks. “We have a lot of local faces working with us.”

Patrick White is a freelance writer and editor who is always on the lookout for interesting and unusual stories. Comment or question? Visit www.farmingforumsite.com and join in the discussions.