Registration

Welcome & Introduction
   - Doug Heym, MSAF 2007 Chair

Lunch and Chapter Meetings

Break

Economics and Policy Considerations
   - Ken Skog, USFS Forest Products Laboratory      
     FPL Website       Slide Show (pdf)

Break

Lunch on the Tour Bus

Field Tours

   Energy Plantations at the U.P. Tree Improvement Center
   Poplar, Willow, Switchgrass
     - Ray Miller    UPTIC website      Plantation Handout  
Energy plantations on abandoned crop land could produce about 6 million dry tons a year in Michigan. Yields in northern Michigan have been running about 3 - 4 dry tons per acre each year. That's the equivalent of about 3 cords per acre per year. Poplar hybrids, native aspen, and willows seem to have the best potential for this area.

   Biomass Harvest Technologies, Nelson Logging
   Chipping and Bundling
     - Brian Nelson
Economically gathering and hauling logging residue and other unmerchantable materials will be a challenge. Various methods for doing this will be demonstrated in a young red pine plantation.

   NewPage Corporation Wood Energy Boilers
     - Bob Aschbacher   Corporate Website
This major U.S. pulp & paper mill produces coated fine papers. It also produces process heat and electricity from mill wastes and fuel chips. The Escanaba, Norway, and Ontonogan paper mills produce 40% of all the wood-generated electricity in Michigan.

   BioDiesel Plant, AgSolutions
     - Richard VandeVusse  
This plant is Michigan's first biodiesel facility. It has the capacity to produce up to 10 million gallons of biodiesel annually. It uses soybean oil as a feedstock.

Field Tours

  Messersmith Industrial Biomass Combustion Systems
     - Galen Messersmith   (website)
These units burn wood chips, sawdust, and other clean biomass very efficiently. Units can be sized for building demands for 500,000 to 20 million BTUs. Messersmith Systems include storage, walking floors, conveyance, metered augers, boiler, and are computer-controlled. These systems have low emissions.

  Vulcan Wood Products Pellet Mill
     - Jeff Goudreau
Wood pellets have gained in popularity world-wide in the last few years. They are burned in high-efficiency stoves and furnaces that ignite the fires only when needed. Pellets can be made from a variety of biomass feedstocks but here they are using sawmill residues.

  Louisiana-Pacific OSB Mill
     - Jon Lamy    (OSB sheathing in corporate website)
Here we discussed the energy management system in place at the mill.

  North Dickinson Schools Wood Boiler
     - Dan Nurmi, Principal  (school website)        Heating Costs
This school has been burning wood for heat for many years. We heard about the savings they realize and the logistics of operating a heating plant like this in a municipal building.