Sustainable Development Goals
Project Status:
Operating | Project Development & DFS
Organizations Involved:
Klean Industries, Confidential Client
Services / Equipment:
Feasibility Studies, Design & Engineering
The timber leaves as a product. The residues could help power what happens next.
Every forest-products business understands the value of its saleable timber. The energy opportunity begins with another question: what could the eligible material left behind contribute to the business that produced it?
West Fraser’s British Columbia installations give that question industrial scale. Four organic Rankine cycle units across two sites carry a combined installed rating of 26 MWe, connecting wood residues with electricity sales under a long-term power purchase arrangement.
Our work in Australia brings the opportunity back inside the manufacturing operation. We are developing a confidential Detailed Feasibility Study with one of Australia’s largest forest-products companies, examining biomass gasification and combined heat and power, to assess how its own residues could supply electricity and industrial heat.
Canada provides a commercial biomass-power reference. Australia gives us a project-specific question: how much more value could the manufacturing business retain by putting its residual resources to work?
A mill handles material flows and energy purchases every day. Residues must be collected, stored, and directed to suitable uses, and electricity and process heat must arrive when production needs them. Assessing those flows together can reveal an opportunity neither the residue budget nor the utility bill shows on its own.
The starting point is the material genuinely available for energy recovery after accounting for suitable material uses and existing commitments. Moisture, contamination, preparation, and seasonal supply determine what each tonne can contribute: a stockpile is only the beginning of the assessment, and a dependable fuel strategy is what supports the plant. The energy customer is just as important—export generation requires a buyer and a viable grid connection, while onsite use must match the manufacturing operation’s electrical and thermal needs. The most valuable configuration depends on those relationships, rather than the largest generator that can be fitted to the site.
West Fraser shows what a defined energy customer makes possible.
At Chetwynd and Fraser Lake, two 6.5 MWe organic Rankine cycle units were installed at each site, with commissioning reported in 2014–2015, creating a biomass-to-electricity model that serves BC Hydro and gives the recovered energy a commercial destination beyond the mill gate. The project’s engineering account describes reciprocating-grate furnaces and thermal-oil heat exchangers supplying the ORC units: the wood supplies the thermal energy, and the ORC converts part of it into electricity through a separate organic working fluid that vaporizes, drives a turbine-generator, and returns through a closed cycle.
That distinction matters when assessing another site. West Fraser is a purpose-built biomass-power reference, while a project using surplus heat from an existing process starts with a different fuel and heat balance. Both may use ORC, but their investment cases must reflect where the heat comes from and what other duties it could serve.
The commercial plant extends well beyond the turbine.
The Canadian engineering scope included electrical and control systems, vendor integration, utility coordination, and commissioning the connections that turn individual equipment packages into an operating energy asset, and nameplate performance was reported shortly after start-up. The operating lessons also reach into the utilities: a Chetwynd water-treatment upgrade followed cooling-system fouling associated with untreated well water, with filtration, softening, and other treatment measures addressing that local interface.
For a new development, this knowledge is valuable to carry forward. Fuel handling, cooling-water quality, heat rejection, controls and grid requirements belong in the project scope from the start, because they affect dependable output and operating cost as directly as the generating equipment.
Our Australian work starts with the manufacturing duty.
In our Australian wood-waste-to-energy development, we are assessing gasification and CHP around the host operation’s needs, with client identity and project-specific details remaining confidential; the DFS determines the configuration, and ORC is not presented as an option for this project. The lesson from Canada is the importance of connecting fuel to an energy customer: for an industrial self-use project, that customer may be the production line, the drying process, or another thermal duty within the same business. Electricity can displace purchases; useful heat can replace separately supplied energy; export may offer another outlet where connection terms support it.
We compare these uses within a complete operating model, heat required for fuel preparation remains in the balance, energy consumed by auxiliary equipment is deducted, and maintenance and backup requirements are included, to choose a plant around the value it can deliver over a year. Our contribution is to connect the resource, the equipment and the manufacturing business before capital fixes those decisions in place.
West Fraser provides a documented commercial application of biomass ORC generation. Its installed rating demonstrates scale; it does not establish the annual output or return another project will achieve, and we use that reference to inform the questions a new investment must answer.
For a forest-products operator, the potential extends across the business: eligible residues can become a local energy input, electricity can support production or a contracted export market, and useful heat can contribute directly to manufacturing, so more of the resource’s value can remain with the operation where the full system performs economically. Our Australian DFS is developing the basis for testing that opportunity, bringing feedstock, conversion and industrial demand into one investment decision and a defensible basis for deciding whether, how and at what scale to proceed into FEED.
A long-lived energy asset needs more than today’s residue forecast. We test changes in host production, moisture, alternative supplies, competing material uses, and delivered fuel cost; on the demand side, operating hours, energy prices, and useful heat requirements can change, and we assess which configuration performs best. The carbon assessment follows the same discipline; sourcing, transport, preparation, conversion, and displaced energy determine the outcome for the complete system. A mill’s next energy investment could begin with a resource it already handles. Our job is to establish the configuration that gives that resource a dependable, productive role.
1. Give the energy a customer before choosing the power cycle.
Export electricity and onsite heat-and-power demand create different design priorities. Establish the valuable uses, then compare suitable configurations.
2. Build the fuel strategy for the life of the investment.
Residue volume, moisture, competing uses, and changes in host production affect dependable supply. Test the conditions beyond today’s operating plan.
3. Put the whole plant into the economics.
Fuel preparation, cooling, water treatment, controls, and connection requirements influence net output and operating cost. Develop these interfaces alongside the generator.
These takeaways highlight selected lessons from this case study, not an exhaustive account. Klean brings deeper technical expertise and commercial insight to each project through tailored engagements.
Before you commit to the next energy purchase or residue-handling investment, assess what those two parts of your business could achieve together. If your operation produces wood residues while buying electricity and process heat, Klean can define a paid Detailed Feasibility Study around that opportunity: dependable fuel supply, conversion and power-generation options, usable heat and net electricity, and the capital, operating and environmental basis for an investment decision.
The work provides a route into FEED once the project case supports it, and earlier-stage opportunities may begin with a paid Detailed Equipment Quotation for preliminary equipment definition and budgetary costs. Share your location, residue types and volumes, typical moisture, existing material uses and energy requirements.
Develop Your Mill’s Wood-to-Energy Strategy with Klean >> GO.
ABOUT THE INFORMATION PRESENTED
West Fraser is an independent commercial reference; Klean’s contribution is the confidential Australian Detailed Feasibility Study described here. Supplier and engineering-company names are not disclosed. These case studies present selected information authorized for public disclosure, and Klean’s engagements apply its expertise to your project while respecting those boundaries.
This case connects with Goals 7, 9, 12, and 13 through renewable wood-residue power, industrial energy, and responsible resource recovery.
