The Yorkshire-based Drax Power Station uses millions of tons of woodchips per year to generate electricity, mostly from plants in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Before they can be used to generate electricity, the particles will cross the entire Atlantic through a series of well-planned, safe and efficient transport logistics. Their journey begins with trucks and trains to reach Drax near Baton Rouge, Louisiana Port facilities.
Road trip
The Amite BioEnergy Particle Plant in Gloucestershire, Mississippi, is about 60 miles from Baton Rouge. With distance in mind, trucks are the best choice for moving pellets from the factory to the port. 'Each truck can carry 25 tons of pellets at a time , Which takes about 90 minutes, which means the truck will slow down as it passes through the city, meaning that a driver can get three trips on any given day, "said Lloyd Wedblad, logistics director at Drax Biomass.
Morehouse Bio-Energy Inc. in Bastrop, Louisiana, presented a more challenging scenario as the team needed to find a quick and economical way to transport particles to ports 221 miles away. They had a strong railroad base in the area A solution was found in the facility that included rail lines in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The ALM railway line opened in 1908 from Monroe, Louisiana to Bastrop on the South Arkansas Line .
The train leaving Morehouse Bioenergy was a slightly modified enclosed grain cart instead of an open top coal car to protect the particles from contamination. "Each of these carts has a design carrying capacity of 286,000 pounds 129.7 tons), but because of the weight restrictions on local bridges and along the road segments, we are limited to 263,000 pounds per car (about 119.3 tons), which is still a lot of particles.
Once the train arrives in the port, it takes about 24 hours to complete the unload and then 20 hours to return to Bastrop. A train departs about every three days, so more than 110 trains a year are required to produce the facility Particles are all shipped to the port.
Morehouse Bioenergy currently has 45-seater trains, but that will change soon and they plan to design a new loading dock for the port that will allow the team to transport pellets on an 80-kilometer train, With nearly 1 mile in length and twice the carrying capacity of existing trains, the new train will save Morehouse bioenergy companies substantial fuel and costs and increase the efficiency of the overall supply chain at Drax Biomass Inc. The company's Louisiana-based uranium mine The newest plant LaSalle BioEnergy will also be equipped with a new railway system.
Prepare for overseas trips
The final phase of the pellet journey started in Porton-Rose, on the Mississippi River. When the pelleted truck arrived from Amite, they drove into a customized bay and took about six minutes to unload the cargo to the conveyor belt before returning to the Gloster plant on.
When a train arrives at a port, it is divided into shorter units, and each unit is sent to an unloading facility. The car holds the goods on separate conveyors, like the belts under the truck's brackets, Deliver to two 40,000-tonne dome warehouses at the port.
Once the dome holds enough cargo, a trans-Atlantic freighter will arrive in the UK Another belt conveys the pellets from the domed bin to the dock's loader, which fills each cargo hold with the pellets until the vessel is ready to sail .
Drax Biomass President and Chief Executive Officer Pete Madden said: "We track the emissions at each stage to ensure Drax Group's supply chain is as low as possible, even considering all supply chain emissions, Drax Power Station in the United Kingdom Carbon emissions from electricity to thousands of miles away are still 80% lower than coal, and the journey from the forest to the port will become more efficient and sustainable. '
Author: David Marks
Director of Policy and Communication, Drax Biomass
David.marks@draxbiomass.com
