of pulp, including kraft and thermomechanical pulps (TMP), suitable for paper products. With the rise of digital technologies, the pulp and paper industry has seen its market shrink, prompting the closure of many facilities and a search for new uses for forest thinnings. At the same time, limited thinning and forest management – particularly in private, non- working, and public forests – has worsened an already serious environmental concern. Renewed forest management and forest thinning are beginning to result in additional feedstock availability. Forest thinning is also a crucial wildfire prevention strategy that involves selectively removing trees and underbrush to reduce combustible material and wildfire risk (see Figure 2 ). Private working forest practices have demonstrated how to use thinning to control the risk of wildfires and result in healthier and larger timber. Improved forest management practices in non-working forests will minimise carbon emissions, reduce fire risks, and lead to an increase in standing forests. Dual challenges: one sustainable solution The dual challenges of needing alternatives to fossil fuels and preventing wildfires can be addressed through a complementary solution: utilising woody residue from forest thinnings in gasification processes to produce renewable fuels and chemicals. SunGas Renewables (SunGas), a company dedicated to transforming organic waste into advanced clean fuels, has designed a system that offers this solution. SunGas’ technology uses a bubbling fluidised bed gasifier and cyclone as core components. This process has been proven across a variety of process conditions, including solid feedstocks, scale, operating pressure and temperature, and bed materials. Based on the extensive developmental work and feedback from 21 commercially operating gasifiers, SunGas has established sophisticated process and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. The Aspen-based process modelling tool is used to establish gasification cases for all the various conditions as referenced earlier and validated against the experimental/field data. The comparative analysis, as shown in Figure 3 ,
Private forest
800 900 1 , 000
10%
National forest and parks
700 600
25%
4%
73%
500
State and county forest
400
22%
71%
300
49%
200
17%
100
29%
0
% of carbon sequestered in forest stands each year
% of carbon sequestered in wood products each year
% of carbon emitted from
mortality each year
thinning and wood processing industry – offers a lower cost and practical option for renewable fuels and chemicals manufacturing, as it is a clean and readily available feedstock. According to the US Department of Energy’s 2023 Billion- Ton Report, nearly 150 million dry short tons of forestry wood are currently used each year for energy (DOE, 2023). This quantity alone can produce about 20% of the total sustainable Figure 2 Better forest management leads to lower carbon emissions Source: WFPA, 2023 “ Woody biomass offers a lower cost and more suitable option for renewable fuels and chemicals manufacturing, as it is a clean and readily available feedstock ” aviation fuel (SAF) demand of the US or about 10% of the total methanol demand of the world. Traditionally, forest thinnings are a significant source of feedstock for the pulp and paper industry. Removing the younger trees and underbrush allows the remaining trees to grow larger, producing high-quality material for construction lumber. The woody residues generated from the thinning provide a sustainable raw material source for the pulp and paper industry to produce various types
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