cnx_vinyl/docs/biomass.md

Biomass Fuel Strategy

If the steam boiler goes the biomass route (see the options in sustainability and the Getabec candidate in the utilities CSV), the fuel comes from two sources: the team's own 60 rai of currently unused land, and northern Thailand's agricultural waste market. Figures below are planning estimates, plus or minus a wide margin, to be refined against the actual boiler choice and duty cycle.

Demand: what the boiler would burn

The 400 kg/h boiler is roughly 300 kW thermal at full fire. With the heat recovery architecture trimming the load and realistic duty cycles:

• Mature plant (semi-auto plus automated lines, two shifts, ~300 days/yr): roughly 350 to 400 tonnes of air-dry wood per year (at ~80% boiler efficiency and ~4 kWh/kg air-dry wood)
• Early operations (one press line, single shift): roughly a quarter of that, ~90 to 100 t/yr

The 60 rai: own-grown fuelwood

60 rai is 9.6 hectares. Managed as short-rotation coppice (planted once, harvested on a 2 to 4 year cycle, regrowing from the stump), fast species proven in Thailand (eucalyptus, acacia, leucaena, bamboo) yield roughly 8 to 14 air-dry tonnes per hectare per year. So the land can sustainably supply about 80 to 135 t/yr:

• Enough to cover most or all of early operations
• About a quarter to a third of mature two-shift demand

That makes the land a meaningful supplement and a strong brand story ("records pressed with steam from our own trees"), not a complete fuel supply.

The classification check comes first

The land is currently classified as forestry, and in Thailand that carries legal weight. Before a single tree enters the fuel plan:

• Verify the parcel's actual status: clean Chanote title vs Sor Por Kor vs National Forest Reserve. Planting, harvesting, and transporting trees, even self-planted ones, can be restricted depending on classification, and some species are restricted regardless.
• If eligible, register the plantation under the forest plantation framework, which legalizes grow-and-harvest cycles and the transport paperwork.
• If the parcel carries actual standing forest, it should not be harvested for fuel: that would undercut the sustainability commitments the plant is built on. Coppice belongs on the degraded or empty portions.

Filling the gap: the northern biomass market

The region fills the remainder easily and cheaply:

• Longan orchard prunings: Lamphun is Thailand's longan heartland and prunings are an established traded fuel
• Sawmill and wood-processing residues
• Corn cobs and rice husk: abundant regional crop wastes; a Getabec-class solid-fuel boiler is designed for exactly this fuel mix
• Buying from local farmers also strengthens the local-sourcing story that already runs through packaging and PVC

Logistics on site

To reflect in the facility planning: a fuel storage shed (biomass must be kept dry; monsoon-season storage sizing matters more than dry season), chipping for coppice wood, ash handling, and the emissions stack that comes with solid fuel. These are the capex/opex adders that the biomass premium in the utilities CSV (roughly 4M to 7M THB for the boiler package vs 2.5M to 4M electric/gas) partially reflects; fuel handling and storage are additional.

Decision framing

• Biomass makes the steam genuinely renewable and pairs with cheap northern fuel, at the cost of higher capex, fuel logistics, ash, and an emissions point
• The 60 rai tilts the economics and the story further toward biomass, but only after the land-title check clears
• The electric boiler remains the alternative: cleanest permitting, no fuel logistics, but effectively grid-powered steam at a ~300 kW draw
• A staged path is possible: start electric (fast, clean permitting), plant the coppice now (first harvest in 2 to 4 years), and add the biomass boiler at the automated-line expansion when demand and the fuel supply have both matured