{"id":3618,"date":"2013-05-28T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3618"},"modified":"2013-05-28T10:01:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T14:01:40","slug":"uk-biomass-plant-exploded-from-waycross-wood-pellets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/uk-biomass-plant-exploded-from-waycross-wood-pellets.html","title":{"rendered":"UK biomass plant exploded from Waycross wood pellets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nExplosions in Tilbury, England, explosions in Waycross:\r\nsouth Georgia wood pellet dust blowing up here and there and\r\nproducing CO2 when burned there.\r\nWhy is\r\n“the world’s largest wood pellet plant”\r\na better use of Georgia foresters’ resources than solar farms,\r\nwhich don’t pollute and don’t explode?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nJosh Schlossberg wrote for The Biomass Monitor 24 May 2013,\r\n\r\nBiomass Industry Plays With Fire, Gets Burned<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nA massive fire raged inside wood pellet silos for RWE’s Tilbury\r\nPower Station in Essex, UK, on February 27, 2012. The biomass\r\nincinerator—the largest in the world at 750\r\nmegawatts—had just been converted from coal to woody biomass a\r\nmonth earlier. RWE claims no single cause can be attributed to the\r\nfire, but suspects that smoldering wood pellets triggered the dust\r\nfire.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn a recent editorial (apparently not online),\r\n\r\nRobert Farris<\/a>\r\nExecutive Director of the\r\n\r\nGeorgia Forestry Commission<\/a>,\r\nwrote that Georgia has nine wood pellet plants.\r\nHe didn’t name them, but\r\nBiomass Magazine has \r\na list of U.S. wood pellet plants<\/a>,\r\nincluding these in Georgia (I added the City column):\r\n\r\n
Company <\/th>Plant <\/th>City<\/th>State <\/th>Feedstock <\/th>Capacity<\/th><\/tr>\r\n
Enova Energy Group – Gordon<\/a><\/td>Enova Energy<\/td>Gordon <\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>550,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
Enova Energy Group – Gordon<\/a><\/td>Enova Energy<\/td>Warrenton <\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>550,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
First Georgia BioEnergy <\/a><\/td>First Georgia BioEnergy<\/td>Waynesville<\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>38,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
Fram Renewable Fuels LLC <\/a><\/td>Appling County Pellets LLC <\/td>Baxley<\/td>GA <\/td>Hardwood and Softwood <\/td>200,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
Fram Renewable Fuels LLC <\/a><\/td>Fram Renewable Fuels – Hazlehurst <\/td>Hazlehurst<\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>500,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
Fulghum Graanul Oliver LLC <\/a><\/td>Fulghum Graanul Oliver LLC <\/td>Oliver<\/td>GA <\/td>Hardwood and Softwood <\/td>200,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
General Biofuels <\/a><\/td>General Biofuels – Georgia <\/td>Waynesville<\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>440,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
RWE Innogy <\/a><\/td>Georgia Biomass <\/td>Waycross<\/td>GA <\/td>Hardwood and Softwood <\/td>825,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
SEGA Biofuels LLC <\/a><\/td>SEGA Biofuels LLC <\/td>Nahunta<\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>150,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n
Varn Wood Products <\/a><\/td>Varn Wood Products <\/td>Hoboken<\/td>GA <\/td>Softwood <\/td>80,000 <\/td><\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

\r\nThat’s ten; maybe another has opened lately.\r\nBiomass Magazine lists RWE Innogy as in Savannah, but according to\r\nGeorgia Biomass PR of 26 May 2011<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nGeorgia Biomass held its official ribbon cutting ceremony in mid-May\r\nat its new operation just outside Waycross, Ga., hosting dignitaries\r\nand officials from around the world at the opening of the world’s\r\nlargest wood fuel pellet plant. The facility, scheduled to be at\r\nfull capacity by this fall, can produce up to 750,000 metric tons\r\nannually.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe facility is a venture of major German utility RWE and its\r\nbioenergy subsidiary, RWE Innogy. According to RWE Innogy CFO Hans\r\nBunting, the Georgia Biomass project came in two months ahead of\r\nschedule and under budget. RWE COO Leonard Birnbaum noted the almost\r\n$200 million plant is only a small part of the $8 billion a year RWE\r\ninvests worldwide, but is very important to the company, which is\r\nthe world’s largest biomass buyer and biomass power producer. The\r\ncompany operates more than 50,000 giga watts of power capacity, “But\r\nthe challenge is provide more of this energy sustainably,” he added.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nA good portion of the plant’s output may be heading to RWE’s\r\nexisting coal-fired plant in Tilbury, United Kingdom, which is being\r\nconverted to biomass and would become the largest biomass-fired\r\npower plant in the world.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd less than a year later the Tilbury plant got fired up all right,\r\nburning and exploding using south Georgia wood.\r\nThat February 2012 Tilbury explosion was after the Waycross plant\r\nexploded in June 2011.\r\nTeresa Stepzinski wrote for Jacksonville.com 21 June 2011,\r\n\r\nExplosion damages Waycross plant; no injuries reported<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAn explosion damaged the Georgia Biomass wood pellet processing\r\nplant near Waycross early Monday, crippling production at the\r\nfactory that began operations a little more than a month ago.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNo injuries were reported in the blast that occurred about 8 a.m. at\r\nthe plant in the Waycross-Ware County Industrial Park about five\r\nmiles west of Waycross off U.S. 82 and U.S. 1.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“It did extensive damage to the processing end. … They’ll probably\r\nbe down an extended period of time,” Ware County Fire Chief Dennis\r\nKeen told the Times-Union.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAn explosion here, and explosion there: pretty soon we might be\r\nwondering why we want\r\n“the world’s largest wood pellet plant”\r\nin south Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nGeorgia Biomass claims it’s carbon neutral, which we know isn’t true\r\nfor biomass from trees.\r\nIt was\r\n\r\nour local Industrial Authority making that very claim<\/a>\r\nthat convinced me as a tree farmer that biomass was a bad idea.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThey didn’t just try to pass off a stack of powerpoint slides as peer-reviewed research,\r\nthey also, \r\naccording to the VDT, made up a fake timeline<\/a>.\r\nLack of carbon neutrality is one of the reasons\r\n\r\nthe VSU faculty senate voted to oppose that plant<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFortunately, the Executive Director who tried to bring us\r\nthat local biomass project is gone,\r\nand the Industrial Authority has since moved on to solar projects.\r\nBut there’s still a wood pellet plant in Waycross,\r\nturning our local forests into fuel for a biomass plant in England,\r\nproducing more CO2 and making climate change worse,\r\naffecting us back here that way, too.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhen I paid my annual dues to the\r\n\r\nGeorgia Forestry Association<\/a>\r\n(GFA is a private organization not to be confused with the state agency Georgia\r\nForestry Commission), I wondered whether Georgia tree farmers\r\nmight find solar panels a better investment.\r\nI was told GFA is constantly talking to Georgia Power, so we’ll see.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEver heard of an exploding solar panel?\r\nMe neither.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explosions in Tilbury, England, explosions in Waycross: south Georgia wood pellet dust blowing up here and there and producing CO2 when burned there. Why is “the world’s largest wood pellet plant” a better use of Georgia foresters’ resources than solar farms, which don’t pollute and don’t explode? Josh Schlossberg wrote for The Biomass Monitor 24 […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[120,141,16,740,18,741,23,73,24],"tags":[8738,8745,8706,8801,8701,8708,8802,8702,12,7,8713,8731,8714,6],"class_list":["post-3618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-co2","category-environment","category-forestry","category-georgia-power","category-gfa","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-solar","tag-biomass","tag-co2","tag-environment","tag-forestry","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-gfa","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-renewable-energy","tag-safety","tag-solar","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Wm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3618"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3624,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions\/3624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}