Stories

From Waste to Wattage

Our Golden, British Columbia, mill’s main product is Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), a structural support used in the building industry. But a byproduct of making LVL in Golden is producing electricity using waste wood for fuel.

The mill uses the bark from logs as well as the unused parts of logs and wood scraps generated in the production and finishing processes to fuel its powerhouse. The mill’s waste is sometimes supplemented by wood waste from nearby lumber operations. It is ground to a powder and compressed into biomass pellets that fuel the powerhouse’s boiler.

Steam produced by the powerhouse is used in the production process, and it also turns the turbine on a three megawatt power generator that supplies much of the mill’s electrical needs.

There are times when electricity production outstrips the Golden mill’s needs and the output is sold back to the grid for use by other consumers. In the past two years, about 6% of the electricity produced at the Golden mill went into the grid.

The powerhouse also uses recycled oil as fuel. But oil is usually only used at start-up, when the ash is cleaned from the boiler or the rare instance when there’s not enough biomass fuel available.