Beneficiation of Chipped and Shredded Woody Biomass

Tens of millions of tons of prunings, land clearing debris, logging slash, and urban greenwood are chipped or ground each year as a means of volume reduction and disposal. Commingled chipped whole plant materials have little value other than as compost, mulch and direct combustion energy. Capture of clean wood fiber from commingled shredded and chipped wood will increase the fiber supply to composite wood products facilities which manufacture particle board, fiberboard and related products and thus improve their sustainability in a time when traditional sawmill sources for fiber are in decline. Reprocessing chipped logging and forest management slash into higher value intermediate products improves the return from forest management and has the potential to reduce the public cost of stewardship and wildfire protection projects. Separation of the bark and wood content of commingled woody biomass feedstocks may improve the yield of second generation transportation liquid fuel processes and improve the economics of producing both residential and industrial grade solid fuel pellets. Across all of these applications, the implementation of reprocessing technologies is likely to stimulate creation of new jobs and economic activity in timber dependent communities as well as in industrial neighborhoods of the urban centers.