Seems to me we have driftwd far away from original thema 
There is a lot of speculations about different biomass thermal processing. I would like to share some comprehensive docs concerning the matter
Thermal Biomass Conversion A Review.pdf (2.1 MB)
Lewandowski_GB.pdf (143.6 KB)
Yes. I looked around the website, they are co-located with a sawmill. The Grayling plant burns sawdust, wood waste products like bark, and ground up auto tires. There is a natural gas peaking generator nearby. The company āNorthStar Clean Energyā also owns other natural gas-powered turbine generators in Michigan, of various sizes. If they are a profitable company, I wonder how much of that comes from burning āfreeā fuels which still must be processed and delivered to the plant?
Phillip, have you ever watched the documentary movie āPlanet of the Humansā by Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore? I think you would find it interesting. They talk about bio-mass generating plants quite a bit. There is a segment at about 55minutes:49seconds into the film that interviews residents of LāAnse, Michigan about how they feel about their local biomass generating plant. I have been to LāAnse, Mi. It is a small town in the āGreat White Northā, surrounded by beautiful nature, and not much else. Here is a link to the movie:
Planet of the Humans | A Michael Moore Documentary | Directed by Jeff Gibbs
Bah!!! It is not delusional. Most of the energy expended in gathering and processing the wood would not have to be from fossil fuels. We here on DOW know this. Heck just look at Toneās post on Tractor with gas? LINK I can believe they have not yet switched over to doing it that way, yetā¦
Rindert
Originally, it was a factory that make wood blanks for signs and art projects and they may have done the finishing and engraving too. Like the stuff that is laquered with the bark still on it and a funny saying. . They used grade b/c lumber logs. Then the energy crisis hit, and they tried to use woodgas but it tarred up their generator. Then they went bankrupt, then someone tried to revive it but put in a woodgas generator for the scraps, then northstar put in a ng plant next to it. The wood operation failed. Northstar bought up the property and fenced it up, so you couldnāt get back there anymore. I didnāt realize that was the place.
Thanks Mike, although the numbers are outdated (PV is doing 3 times better now), the key is to limit growth and be happy what we have so far. Difficult to give up that idea for some people.
Rindert: Please define the āItā you are referring to. Thanks!
We here on DOW are talking about small scale solutions for homesteaders, off-gridders, pioneers, experimenters and adventure-engineering hard-working folks. The majority of members of this forum are absolutely doing great and wonderful things for all of us, and I cheer them on. The Planet of the Humans film is primarily about all the āGreenā tech that is sold to the public as a miraculous solution for all of our problems, to a society that refuses to give up on any modern conveniences or luxuries. Yes, it is out of date in the details, the topics remain fresh. 
Ahhh. Now you guys are approaching the crux of it.
IT: being about useable practical energy.
Where does it come from.
How much boot-strapping energy must be expended to refine/capture it. And then concentrate it into a practical useable form.
This can be approached as a merely an engineering problem. Engineering needed, yes. But that approach is too myopically narrow. āYou will use up and expend out all of the found Cheese.ā faster with better engineering.
Even if you are a Haw; with some acknowledgement of social responsibly . . . you are still assuming always more concentrated energy wealth can be found.
That it is owed to you. Then that leads to you believing others actually do owe it to you. You are not actually stealing it. It was owed to you, in the first place.
Too complex my beliefs and thoughts, eh?
O.K. easy.
First there was human things, organizations and endeavors based on human sweat and toil energy. Built the Pyramids and all of the early great cities. Slave-power. Indentured humans power. Have to have Classes then. To have enough people working for just basic substance; and then have the concentrated energy left for the Great Endeavors.
Rather quickly that improved with various solar energies concentrates other than just foods. Water wheels. Wind mills and sail transporting power. Then domesticated working animals. Dogs, goats and donkeys. Horses and oxen. Mules. Elephants.
Just as with the human slaves/class-indentured the working animals had to be fed; so then have to till, grow and store to feed the working animals. Initial energy inputs; with management, to get a multiplying effect energy net output surplus in working animal power too.
And all along the way solar grown trees, and woody mass was suppling the nights and cold seasons heats. Supplied the energy for developing metals smithing into usable forms and tools.
Back to your point JoepK. Whole continental land masses and oceans were bio-stripped to build up the early great civilizations. Even later had to bootstrap-energy feed the mill-workers and the coal-miners and their families.
Yes. It was the long centuries metal working and then a 100 years of trial and error engineering that made the new-cheese energy concentrate of black-fossil-coal enabling civilization to go higher and higher; bigger and bigger; faster and faster, build up energy enabler. Steam ships and steam trains.
Then an even better new-cheese energy consecrate of petroleum liquids and gaseous fuels were developed. Faster ships; auto-mobiles and aeroplanes.
The common in all of these?? Solar was always the base energy.
Until Nuclear it has always been solar energy.
And even nuclear; to developed to practical usage was energy boot strapped by a huge solar energy base. For the mining of the base ores. For the super energy expensive concentration down of the specific needed uranium and other nuculoids.
Scale of needs is the defining point of practical trees and brushes using for you core energy needs.
Owning, controlling; and by your own sweat: processing your real needed inputs in bio-mass is the true, real ethical-use limiter.
Note. The guys who are significantly using wood as their daily personal and family energy needs own and control their own trees.
Any other; in my strong opinion is just being a Hurry, Scurry, Him, or Haw. A consumer of a found energy concentrate.
Steve unruh
The it Iām talking about is whatever the guy is saying is delusional in the segment at about 55minutes:49seconds.
Rindert
I remember this movie nowā¦this is a boomer angst fantasy perpetuated by the crowd that took over Traverse City Michigan. All the white people from Detroit retired there, and they brought all their suburban township zoning mentality crap with them. It was a really fantastic place to live back in the seventies. Morgan Cherry had a plant right on the beach at the bottom of West Bay. Greilickville had a full service ship building facility. Itās so gentrified, I doubt I would recognize anything anymore. My family came from Glen Arbor (Miller Hill).
Anyhow that Jeff Gibbs went to Michigan Tech, and tried to make a go of it in Toivola, down by Misery Bay. He called it quits, after getting eaten alive, and moved to Traverse city. Heās an off-gridder wannabe.
I moved up to Tech 28 years ago, from a place about 30 miles west of the Grayling plant. Now I live 40 miles north of the LāAnse plant.
Rindert, the guy sniveling about the Vermont plant should be jailed for trespassing. They think itās good journalism to do something illegal and then document it in the name of climate morality. I really hate that trend. I guess I hate trespassing. I am glad we donāt have Freedom to Roam laws like Europe. That plant was not public property and they had no right to be filming there. I have the same problem with people driving all over my property trying to hunt, even though they know itās private property. They have the right to get their ass kicked.
As far as those biomass plants go, the reason they stink is they burn wet wood chips. They have to keep the wood chips soaking wet otherwise they will catch fire. The chips are fresh so the bacteria are working in them and they get hot, really hot. They will spontaneously ignite. So they burn wet wood in a firebox along with used railroad ties. This sure makes for a stinky fire.
OK, I give up! 
Yes, Traverse City, Last time I was there, getting truly and thoroughly gentrified.
Yes, Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore are bleeding heart liberals, that trespass to make movies, it is their way.
I do not believe in extreme population control / limitation. (an additional theme of that movie).
Maybe I just watch it when I am depressed already.
How long would it take to convert the fossil fuel wood gathering infrastructure over to wood power? If we had to do that, what direction would it evolve to? Would it ultimately head for methanol and Fischer Troph wax production?
I used to be skeptical about clear cutting and chipping. I live on a 80 acre pile of Rhyolite cobble. There literally is no topsoil. They clear cut and chipped this place in 2007. Itās grown back in spades! I could make unlimited quantities of maple fuel blocks. I could chip it all again in two weeks if I had a couple of million dollar machines, but with my tractor an buzz saw, the processing time trends towards infinity.
As an aside, the robot chipper, working 24hrs a day, had to chip three 80,000lb van loads per day to break even. The whole system compromised of a tracked fella buncha, a grapple skidder, a Hood Slasher, a mobile slasher feeding the robot chipper, and three or four vans and two tractors. I lost track of the number of vans, so there could have been more.
The fella buncha, grapple, and Hood, were making saw logs and wind rowing the tops. They built one row that was a quarter mile long. (I got a few loads of oak firewood out of that row, before the chipper got there.
The chipper got there and worked that quarter mile row in three days.
My point about this is that these chips are renewable. The big question is at what rate are they renewable, and is that rate changing as the forest changes? I think our Nordic friends probably have the answers to that question. The Finns came here a few years ago and gave us classes on chipping, but I was too horrified to pay attention. Not so much now.
I think this is your point? Itās why they had to switch over to the model A in 1927, after 22 million T model Fords, people wanted better.
As far as Steveās Cheese cartoon goes, I hate to admit I am a āhemā. The new cheese is solar, not gasoline. Every time I fill my cans, I could have bought a solar panel or a LPF battery. I am a dufuss, and I need to break out of the old cheese rut.
I donāt think you should give up. I think you should demand cheap sodium ion batteries. As a last resort we can always charge them with chip-fired boiler power plants.
BruceJ. as you know well . . . there are wood chips; and then there are, wood chips.
The lessons from the Finns energy tree growers is to use only leaf dropping; and seasonal saps down deciduous trees.
Only harvest seasonally in sap-down, leaf-off.
And use a tree with thin bark to just be able for a heating fuel ignore the bark.
No de-barker needed then.
Never let the tree grow mature to not be able to be whole trunk&tree chipped.
Then they developed the spiral cutter chipper to be able to this whole tree chip without all of the sizing variations and fines that would require classify sorting. Not using a disc chipper able to shred leaf and needles. Not using an eats-all tub-drum chipper.
So count the machinery engines.
Cut and lay down; or grasp-bunch and feed into the spiral chipper.
The BIG chipper driven by a medium large IC engine and able to blow or conveyor belt fill hopper wagons or trucks.
It is a process designed right from the trees re-planting for minimal steps into boiler fuel.
Then there are street side and power-lines ALL chipped, chips.
Chipped year around: in-leaf and when high moisture sap engorged.
Yes. Yes. Me too buying the pump fuels weekly now with another H.S. sports playing exchange student.
But I am out cutting a winters worth of house heating fire wood. And I wait a year from tree down to cutting up of my conifers for the limbs to dry an lose all of their needles.
At best anymore I am replaced ~1/3 of our annual household energy needs, with our own site grown wood fuels.
Maybe you feel bad for the same as me . . .
Once, was, with made up fire wood I home heated and sold enough to pay the taxes and generate hunting and fishing moneys.
I am too damn old now. And it hurts too much.
There is the way you want the world to work. Hopes and dreams.
There is the way you think you know how the world works. Beliefs; all too often, later proving to be wrong.
Then there is the way the world actually does work.
Getting old and less youthful works capable is Door #3. Reality. The real job then becomes developing grace. Me? Sometimes, I think. Still a work in progress.
Steve unruh
Bruce, I assume weāre talking about growth. If Iām not mistaken I think our woodland was once estimated to produce 6 m3 per ha and year. Naturally it varies a lot depending on where you live, what type soil, speices and so on.
I suspect @Jan has good knowlidge in this field.
Thanks Jan,
I had to fool with that number because I donāt think in metric, so I get two pickup loads per acre.
I am no forester, but I think growth is exponential and nonlinear. My woodland is has hit that insane exponential stage, where it takes big machines to punch it down. Everything is coming in thick and fast.
The exception is the Balsam firs. They are dying.
it is non-linear. Usually you get fast growth early, then it slows and just adds girth provided the trees are spaced right.
I am not sure the Europeans are the ones to talk to. They do a lot of coppicing of birch. Finland just burned up half their forest for biofuel. Europe imports a lot of wood, from the amazon and africa.
There is already a wood/lumber shortage especially hardwoods globally. If you want a hardwood wood lot in Michigan, if you have at least 10 acres, then you can get a tax deferment for that property taxes until harvest in like 100 years. They have rules about thinning and such. The WORST thing you can do in a hardwood stand is clear cut. You need trees to grow straight up 60ft to get light, and the canopy slows vine growth. that is what I am dealing with, you donāt want to go there. Ideally, you selectively cut a few trees out. Then they grow straight up. Then you need the girth.
My guess is it would be cheaper, easier, and safer to do a gen2 biofuel with the wood
chips similar to the plant that was in either oregon or washington that went bankrupt.
It used fisher-tropsch reaction with wood chips. OR some of the machinery might be able to be converted to electric at some point like the semi tractors for hauling, or in the yard. I donāt think the heavy machinery could be converted. Farms have the same issue. Batteries donāt charge fast enough, and there is no power lines in those areas that can charge the batteries.
And right now, batteries donāt charge fast enough for a lot of people. Ideally even EVs are supposed to end up to be a drop in replacement for liquid fuels so you donāt have to change your lifestyle. Switching fuel sources is a big enough hurdle by itself, it doesnāt need additional drawbacks.
The problem with gen2 biofuels, is simply, we cannot produce enough raw material to replace all the oil we use. Even if they get the costs down to price competitive. We donāt have enough land. We can get -some- of it and we certainly do, there isnāt enough land to do all of it. Thus the push for EVs and solar, which can get some of it.
There is a bunch of surburban folks from detroit and chicago once they put the bigger airport in the 70s. It definitely changed. Ironically, Detroit was where the Nation of Islam was founded, then it moved to Chicago.
It is a PETA strategy which is an offshoot of Greenpeace. They did that with cow farmers, and slaughterhouses. Mink farms, etc. They are a front for the communists. They simply donāt care whether it breaks the law, they want to overthrow the government or at least handcuff industry and citizens to try and choke it off.
Bruce,
I love that part of Michigan. I have been to that area many times. My brother, Jamie and I used to go up near the lake and fly our R/C sailplanes off the dune cliffs at Empire Bluffs, tried to at Sleeping Bear, but could never find a good accessible spot with a favorable wind. I guess we didnāt look in the right places. South of Frankfort where the full size hang glider guys jumped off that platform was a good spot too!
