Enhanced forest biomass utilisation through the Forest Power project

Forest Power was a cross-border research project that has produced numerous biomass research bulletins.

The project ran from 2009 to 2012, and has recently been completed. The project manager was Metla’s Juha Nurmi. Collaboration took place between Finland, Sweden and Norway, with the aim of increasing the utilisation of forest biomass in the Botnia-Atlantica area. The project had the goal of increasing the value and quality of products and services within the forest fuel supply, feed-stock conversion and combustion chains. The information obtained during the project is focussed on forest owners, heating plant managers, machine entrepreneurs and other forestry professionals.

The project was divided into 11 themes, categorised into six main headings. These are as follows:
 

• Thinning – Geometrical bioenergy-thinnings in young stands, multi-tree bioenergy-harvesting on difficult sites, and bioenergy from late thinnings.
• Final harvest – Logging residues from final harvests, and stump extraction.
• Fuel quality – Survey of small scale heating plants, and validation of combustion know-how.
• Conversion – Feed stock management, and feed stock characteristics.
• Briquetting – Upgrading forest fuels into briquettes.
• Business models – Self-employed energywood contracting.

The various bulletins produced are too numerous to list in this newsletter. However, Logging-on has previewed one bulletin in the following article. Anyone involved in biomass supply chains should invest the time to browse through the bulletins, as there are bound to be a few which will add value. The bulletins can all be downloaded from www.forestpower.net