Drax Biomass, a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK’s Drax Group, recently commissioned a brand new biomass handling and storage facility at the US port of Baton Rouge. It was built purely to store sustainable biomass for short periods, before shipment to the UK, where end-user power stations provide sufficient capacity to undertake the necessary longer term storage role.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile storage systems in both countries share many common features, they are not identical,\u201d says Lloyd Wedblad, \u200evice president of logistics at Drax Biomass. He notes that the Port of Immingham facility, which handles the bulk of the imported biomass, is just one of four ports that the company currently uses in the UK.<\/p>\n
However, the Baton Rouge facility does have the potential to be the main generator of inbound biomass traffic for Drax, having been engineered with exports annually of up to three million tons of the commodity in mind.<\/p>\n
Drax points out that shipping wood pellets from the US to the UK is a very carbon-efficient mode of transport, claiming that the carbon footprint of shipping one ton of biomass from North America to the UK is almost the same as transporting one ton of biomass 200 miles (322 kilometres) by truck. Given the ability of a bulk carrier to handle loads of around 60,000 tons, sea transport is essentially therefore viewed as a very green option.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Moving on<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Once in the UK, consignments are moved to Drax Power Station at Selby, in Yorkshire, exclusively by rail using the companies bespoke designed and built rail wagons. In contrast, the Baton Rouge facility is fed by both road and rail.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the US operation, we make use of a travelling belt ship loader with an extending conveyor,\u201d Mr Wedblad tells Port Strategy<\/i>. \u201cWe did also look at a rubber-tyred ship loader, but preferred the belt ship loader as it has the ability to speedily load vessels up to panamax size.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds that there were other factors, too, which influenced the final decision, including river draft changes, vessel size, and dock weight loading. At Baton Rouge port, the biomass is stored in two, 40,000 metric ton capacity domes.<\/p>\n On the fire risks, Mr Wedblad says that while biomass isn’t classified as being highly flammable, any organic material does have the potential to self-heat. \u201cAs a result, the conveyor system we use incorporates a spark detection facility along with a linked deluge system to enable any smouldering material to be quickly doused. As the rail cars and trucks are unloaded, a temperature probe warns of potential hazards if a consignment is particularly hot,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Additionally, in the domes, a spark detection system has been positioned on the inlet and a matrix of temperature cables put in place to alert staff of any temperature rises. \u201cShould any sections of the dome be seen as getting too hot a controlled emptying of the heated area of the dome can be initiated,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n To date, no fires have broken out, so the safety systems have yet to be used in anger. On the choice of fire suppression system at Baton Rouge, Mr Wedblad says that \u201cafter careful consideration, it was chosen based on an identical system already successfully operating at Drax Power Station\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Rotterdam rules<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The Port of Rotterdam is also looking to become a major player in the biomass market. At present, it handles around 500,000 tons annually, the majority of which is wood pellets. Almost all of this traffic originates on the US East Coast, although some is also imported from Canada, Portugal and the Baltic.<\/p>\n In general, the pellets are shipped in smaller handysize and handymax ships, but as the import market continues to grow, especially in the UK, large panamax ships are expected.<\/p>\n On the landside, Rotterdam is able to leverage its good inland waterway connections to ship consignments close to end users. Silo trucks are used, too. Although rail does not yet play an important role, discussions are under way to possibly ship pellets by rail in the future to Italy in containers.<\/p>\n Rotterdam has several dry bulk terminals that store and handle biomass. Indeed, dry bulk stevedores have invested both in dedicated biomass storage and also in multi-purpose facilities that can accommodate both biomass and agribulk or industrial minerals, depending on market demand. Those utilities that have power plants in the port are also looking into building biomass storage facilities.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Looking ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Crucially, with the future in mind, a part of a 80-hectare site has been reserved on Maasvlakte 2 to accommodate bio-based industries. This could also involve construction of a dedicated terminal for biomass. \u201cAll the terminals involved in biomass handling use grab cranes to discharge ships with consignments of wood pellets on board,\u201d says Hugo du Mez, advisor to the port authority on dry bulk and energy. \u201cThereafter, pellets usually go on a conveyor belt to be stored in sheds or silos.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the stevedoring companies themselves that are responsible for investment in fire and explosion prevention and they use a combination of cameras and heat sensors for monitoring, he explains.<\/p>\n Surveillance systems, including those from Peterson\/Control Union, have been installed to check on biomass storage at several stevedoring companies. However, while he is unable to recall any major incidents taking place in recent years, a fire did break out at the EBS terminal in the Botlek area and had to be extinguished, explaining the need for investment in suppression systems.<\/p>\n \u201cThe need to provide such systems doesn’t automatically imply that it is more expensive to handle biomass than coal,\u201d says Mr du Mez. \u201cWhile both are discharged using grab cranes, coal can be stored outside. Wood pellets can’t, thereby requiring the construction of sheds, silos or domes, which does imply slightly higher investment.<\/p>\n \u201cNevertheless, open storage of coal generates its own major problem: dust emissions, which means having to have systems in place to spray consignments with either water\/cellulose to contain dust pollution,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Still not at critical mass<\/strong><\/p>\n Biomass potential is still to be exploited in the US, where there is currently little demand for industrial wood pellets, due mainly to a lack of federal support and the high availability of abundant fossil fuel resources.<\/p>\n To make matters worse, there is little in the way of financial incentives or subsidies to develop biomass for energy production. Hence the US has become a net exporter of wood chip. The Netherlands is similarly struggling to build up a biomass market, with traffic at Rotterdam in 2012 double what it is today.<\/p>\n Nowadays, although some biomass is still used by co-firing power stations, these mainly burn coal now that subsidies aimed at promoting more use of biomass have been cancelled. However, Mr du Mez says that: \u201cThe Port of Rotterdam still sees a lot of potential for biomass, even though so far this has not materialised.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the import biomass traffic at the port is targeting commercial heating outlets, where wood pellets are burned in large boilers to heat offices, swimming pools, hotels and so on. Nevertheless Mr du Mez stresses that Rotterdam wants to make a transition to being a more sustainable energy port, which means handling more biomass.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think that biomass throughput could increase to around 8m-10m tons in the coming years. This would feed three key markets: energy (power plants), heating (both industrial heating as well as residential) and also the bio-refining of woody biomass into fuels and chemicals,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Significantly, last year, a national Energy Agreement was signed by the government, utilities and NGOs. One of the initiatives is the use of biomass for power and heat production. Power companies can now apply for subsidies under a new scheme, which the port believes will be the main driver for biomass growth at Rotterdam in the near future. Indeed, according to Mr du Mez, \u201cthe new coal-fired power stations of Engie (formerly GdF Suez) and E.ON, on the Maasvlakte, are both capable of co-firing using 20% to 30% biomass.\u201d So, the potential is clearly there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ports on both sides of the Atlantic are making their biomass presence felt, finds Alex Hughes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}