C&D News

HEATING UP A NEW SCRAP WOOD MARKET

Mixed C&D processors and other recyclers who handle sizable amounts of scrap wood are almost always eager to have additional end markets for the commodity they produce.

Charlie Cary, president of Biomass Combustion Systems Inc., Princeton, Mass., www.biomass-combustion.com , believes he offers an additional market that can serve as a stable consumer of scrap wood.

Cary has been marketing his wood-fired furnace and boiler systems to forestry companies and consumers of wood fuel for more than 15 years. The furnaces and boilers are sold to manufacturers who need a constant heat source, and often the forestry companies who will supply the wood are brought into the sales process as partners who will guarantee a steady supply of wood to keep the boiler stoked.

Now, Cary is attempting to set up similar arrangements with C&D recyclers and their wood fuel customers and "move the technology into the big city." He says the cooperation of a key wood supplier is often critical in convincing potential boiler customers to make a purchase.

"The ability to find a supplier who can promise up to about two truckloads of clean wood per day is essential," says Cary, who says that the energy and cost savings of using a Biomass Combustion System can be demonstrated clearly to most potential buyers.

"If dry wood can be delivered for $10 per ton, our systems can produce heat at $1.04 per million British thermal units (Btu)," says Cary. That will save measurably over oil, natural gas and propane-burning technologies, he contends, even at today’s low energy prices. He notes that these wood boilers are not required to replace the existing boilers but will lower and stabilize energy costs while diversifying and securing energy supply.

Cary is attempting to find wood recyclers who are interested in finding long-term guaranteed markets for material. He says having a Biomass Combustion Systems boiler nearby allows a wood recycler to "match local fuel supply with local energy demand."

An example he cites is of a rendering plant in Iowa that has installed a boiler and is paying $26 per ton for its wood fuel and still finding the boiler to be cost-effective. In fact, he says the plant owner remarked that without the boiler the company may well have had trouble keeping its operations going last winter in the face of spiked propane prices.

"It certainly is an opportunity for a market that a lot of recyclers may not be thinking about," says Cary of the small industrial boiler market.