Arterran Renewables

Industrial wood pellets (IWP) are gaining market share in the coal replacement space due to their availability and cost as the only renewable fuel produced cheap enough to compete with thermal coal.

However, due to IWP’s susceptibility to moisture, higher logistical costs, and expensive thermal plant conversion costs the decision to simply switch from fossil to renewable generation faces economic impediments.
That’s where Arterran Renewables is making a difference with its Arterran Advanced Fuel (AAF).

Leveraging a decade of research, Arterran Renewables has created a lower cost process to convert various renewable feedstocks into an ideal “drop in” coal replacement that eliminates all of the wood pellets pain points and all importantly at no greater cost to the end user. This result in a more easily adopted and lower cost renewable solution to replace the world’s #1 climate problem – thermal coal.

“Nature required a process that began 300 million years ago, converting biomass into coal. The Arterran process can do the same in less than an hour and sustainably” says Lloyd Davis, founder, Arterran Renewables. “We produce a coal replacement with none of the toxic emissions or hazardous waste products with the energy density required to make carbon-neutral energy.”

AAF is a one-for-one drop-in replacement for the coal used to produce heat and electricity. This means no expensive thermal plant conversion costs are required prior to renewable fuel adoption. It’s also hydrophobic just like coal and thus does not need the added storage cost or special handling requirements as do wood pellets. Actual cases have shown these increased costs can be as high as $800,000 per MWh of capacity (Drax Energy in Shelby England, and Ontario Power Group at two locations in Canada). This is an impediment to a renewable coal replacement/climate solution.

When shipping by truck, rail or Handymax ships, AAF’s greater energy and mass density allows for more energy to be shipped in less space. For example, to ship 30,156,300 GJs, the annual amount of energy required to power a 450MW power plant, requires 71 Handymax vessels per year to ship this amount of wood pellet energy but only 42 vessels for Arterran’s Advanced fuel. This results in considerable and ongoing logistical and GHG savings both during shipping and during combustion as a renewable coal replacement solution.

Arterran Renewables is not limited to biomass from forestry residue, sawdust from sawmills, or non-merchantable timber. This means lignocellulosic biomass like bamboo, giant grasses, palm plantation waste, and agricultural waste are available for its process and as an biologically inactive fuel AAF does not self-heat like wood pellets. This solves the self-combustion problem of wood pellets plants burning down.

Less cost and more margin for producers and less cost for thermal generators equates to an all-around lower cost renewable solution to address the world’s #1 climate problem.

“We knew we had to be part of a solution that reduces or eliminates those pollutants. We did the hard work, research and development, trial and error, and many experiments to try and create a solution,” says Davis. “After eight years of dedicated work by some of the smartest and best people I have ever worked with, we had an ideal solution. A more easily adopted, lower cost drop-in renewable replacement for coal used to produce heat and electricity.

Watch our video here:: vimeo