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New page docs/steam-cooling.html (site /demos/steam-cooling/): the utility plant as a clickable process diagram. Steam side: raw water, softener and dosing, feed tank with heat-pump feedwater recovery, feed pumps, a bank of two 500 kg/h boilers (third for N+1 as an option), separator and metering, optional accumulator, blowdown, the 10 bar header with a valved, metered branch and trap per press, drip legs and condensate return. Cooling side: Newbilt's press outlets are open (max. 2 bar), so returns drain to a warm tank, pass the heat pump, an optional dry cooler and a plate heat exchanger to a cold buffer tank, and VFD pumps feed the 20 to 25 C header at ~10 bar to every press, the extruders and the central hydraulic oil cooler; the chiller loop (three 250 kW air-cooled modules at 40 C ambient, fourth as option) stays closed and clean. Galvanics cooling (12 to 20 C) is a separate circuit. Operating cases (launch, Duplex system 1, five presses, one module down) show demand against installed capacity; design basis with sources, equipment schedule, RFQ questions. Static SVG, no per-frame work. Design basis at Newbilt's per-machine figures: steam 750 to 900 kg/h, cooling 652.5 kW (625 presses, 15 extruders, 12.5 hydraulics), 305 to 540 l/min circulating. Also found: Newbilt's 53 l/min at ~60 C out is ~140 kW, above its 125 kW peak; listed as a re-quote question. Re-based in the same commit: - scale.md: electrical table (chiller bank ~210 to 325 kW electrical, plant peak ~430 to 700 kW, ~950 to 1,330 kW with electric steam), grid 800 to 1,000 kVA (1,250 to 1,600 with electric steam, Schedule 4 past 1,000 kW), tariff 4.5M to 6.8M THB/yr, battery ~1 h of chiller peak, boiler and chiller banks, biomass up to ~550 t/yr at 1.5 M records, utilities money line. - sustainability.md, biomass.md: same figures; electric steam 5.2M to 6.0M THB/yr mature, 1.6M to 1.8M early; fuel saving 4.0M to 5.4M. - utilities CSV: boiler bank, chiller bank with HX and tanks, softener and loop treatment re-sized; baseline 23.98M-41.63M -> 30.07M-51.33M. - total-investment.md: re-size as an added-scope row (+185k / +294k USD); headline 4.7M to 8.9M unchanged until the investment re-base. - pressing-line, equipment-suppliers, facility-security, fleet calculator (boiler 1000 kg/h, chiller 750 kW), plant page detail texts; README, landing page, build.sh.
163 lines
9.7 KiB
Markdown
163 lines
9.7 KiB
Markdown
# Biomass Fuel Strategy
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If the steam boiler goes the biomass route (see the options in
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[sustainability](sustainability.md) and the Getabec candidate in the
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[utilities CSV](finance/utilities-investment.csv)), the fuel comes from two
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sources: the team's own 60 rai of currently unused land, and northern
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Thailand's agricultural waste market. Figures below are planning estimates,
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plus or minus a wide margin, to be refined against the actual boiler choice
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and duty cycle.
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## Demand: what the boiler would burn
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The five-press fleet draws 750 to 900 kg/h of steam at full demand, ~510
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to 610 kW thermal, from a proposed bank of two 500 kg/h boilers
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([steam and cooling](steam-cooling.html)). Fuel follows records pressed,
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not presses installed. With the heat recovery architecture trimming the
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load and realistic duty cycles:
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- Mature plant (two shifts, ~300 days/yr, about 1.0 to 1.1 million
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records): roughly **350 to 400 tonnes of air-dry wood per year** (at
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~80% boiler efficiency and ~4 kWh/kg air-dry wood); the start fleet at
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its full ~1.5 million records needs up to **~550 t/yr**
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- Early operations (one press line, single shift): roughly a quarter of
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that, **~90 to 100 t/yr**
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- Bought as fresh wood chips (~45 % moisture, ~2.6 kWh/kg) the same heat
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is **~540 to 620 t/yr**, up to ~840 t/yr at 1.5 million records, which
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is what the fuel store and the monsoon
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stock have to be sized for (estimate)
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## The 60 rai: own-grown fuelwood
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60 rai is 9.6 hectares. Managed as short-rotation coppice (planted once,
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harvested on a 2 to 4 year cycle, regrowing from the stump), fast species
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proven in Thailand (eucalyptus, acacia, leucaena, bamboo) yield roughly 8 to
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14 air-dry tonnes per hectare per year. So the land can sustainably supply
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about **80 to 135 t/yr**:
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- Enough to cover **most or all of early operations**
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- About **a fifth to a third of mature two-shift demand** at ~1.0 million
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records, a seventh to a quarter at the start fleet's full 1.5 million
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That makes the land a meaningful supplement and a strong brand story
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("records pressed with steam from our own trees"), not a complete fuel
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supply. At the market prices below, 80 to 135 t of air-dry wood is worth
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only ~0.1M to 0.25M THB a year (estimate): the land's value is supply
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security and the story, not the fuel bill.
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### The classification check comes first
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The land is currently classified as forestry, and in Thailand that carries
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legal weight. Before a single tree enters the fuel plan:
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- Verify the parcel's actual status: clean Chanote title vs Sor Por Kor vs
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National Forest Reserve. Planting, harvesting, and transporting trees,
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even self-planted ones, can be restricted depending on classification,
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and some species are restricted regardless.
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- If eligible, register the plantation under the forest plantation
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framework, which legalizes grow-and-harvest cycles and the transport
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paperwork.
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- If the parcel carries actual standing forest, it should not be harvested
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for fuel: that would undercut the sustainability commitments the plant is
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built on. Coppice belongs on the degraded or empty portions.
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## Filling the gap: the northern biomass market
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The region fills the remainder easily and cheaply:
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- **Longan orchard prunings**: Lamphun is Thailand's longan heartland and
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prunings are an established traded fuel
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- **Sawmill and wood-processing residues**
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- **Corn cobs and rice husk**: abundant regional crop wastes; a
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Getabec-class solid-fuel boiler is designed for exactly this fuel mix
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- Buying from local farmers also strengthens the local-sourcing story that
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already runs through packaging and PVC
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## Fuel prices (market check, October 2026)
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There is no public price index for biomass fuel in northern Thailand. DEDE
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publishes lists of buyers and sellers (February 2026: 42 registered buyers
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wanting 2.09M t a year), not prices, so the figures below are reported
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market prices from bank research, a government industry unit and the
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press, all checked 7 October 2026. None is a quote to this plant.
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| Fuel | Reported price | Source | Heat cost (estimate) |
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| Wood chips, fresh (45 to 50 % moisture) | 1,350 to 1,800 THB/t delivered | [LH Bank Research, wood pellet outlook](finance/biomass/LHBank_Wood_Pellets_Industry_Outlook_2026-03.pdf), 9 March 2026: 1,700 to 1,800 THB per fresh tonne for export; a power-plant chip quota in Nakhon Ratchasima at 1,350 THB/t, at most 45 % moisture (undated trader post) | ~0.65 to 0.85 THB/kWh |
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| Firewood and rubberwood offcuts, air-dry | over 1 THB/kg at the farm gate, up from 0.55 to 0.70 before late 2025 | [OIE Rubber Intelligence Unit](https://rubber.oie.go.th/Article.aspx?id=66365), 2026; southern rubber belt, so chipping and haulage to Lamphun come on top | ~0.3 to 0.5 THB/kWh before chipping and haulage |
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| Corn cobs and stalk residue | 2 THB/kg, bought from farmers in Mae Chaem (Chiang Mai) | Sunsweet's "no burning, we buy" programme, [Prachachat](https://www.prachachat.net/economic/local-economy/news-1498508), February 2024; an incentive price set to stop field burning | ~0.6 THB/kWh |
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| Rice husk | ~1.5 THB/kg at past demand peaks | [FTI renewable energy group](https://re-fti.org/%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%9F%E0%B8%9F%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%8A%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%AA%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%B2%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%B8%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%87/) (undated); power plants compete for it and northern milling volumes are small | ~0.5 THB/kWh |
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| Wood pellets, domestic | 3,000 to 5,000 THB/t | LH Bank Research, March 2026; export FOB averaged 4,482 THB/t in 2025 | ~0.75 to 1.25 THB/kWh |
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Heat cost assumes an 80 % boiler (85 % on pellets) and ~2.6 kWh/kg for
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fresh chips, ~4 for air-dry wood, ~4.2 for corn cobs, ~3.75 for rice husk
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and ~4.7 for pellets (estimates).
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What it means for the plan:
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- **Planning price: 1.35 to 2 THB/kg delivered**, which is ~0.5 to 0.9 THB
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per kWh of heat. The earlier assumption of 1 to 2 THB/kg of air-dry wood
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(~0.3 to 0.6 THB/kWh) was too low at the bottom: the cheap end is
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farm-gate wood, not chipped fuel at the plant gate. At maturity the fuel
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bill is **~0.6M to 1.2M THB a year** (~0.15M to 0.3M early), still a
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quarter to a tenth of electric steam (see
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[grid tariff](sustainability.md#grid-tariff-pea-and-what-it-decides))
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- **Prices are rising and follow diesel.** With diesel near 40 THB/L in
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2026, chip traders feeding power plants parked trucks and cut purchases
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([Thai Post](https://www.thaipost.net/district-news/971839/), 30 March
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2026), and rubberwood firewood roughly doubled since late 2025. Haulage
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is a large share of a delivered tonne, so source within ~50 km and write
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a diesel clause into the fuel contract rather than a fixed price
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- **Supply is not the constraint.** Lamphun alone produces more than
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900,000 t of farm residues a year (Maejo University, via
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[ThaiPublica](https://thaipublica.org/2026/08/lamphun-reduce-pm2-5-agricultural-waste-biomass-fuel/),
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August 2026) against the plant's ~600 t. Buying them also counts against
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the burning season, which is part of the story
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- **The local price-setter is in Mueang Lamphun.** Ratch Pathana's
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[biomass buying centre](https://www.ratchpathana.com/th/our-businesses/related-and-other-businesses/biomass-business)
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at Pa Sak, Mueang Lamphun, buys wood waste, sawdust and corn cobs from
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farmers for Saha Cogen Green's 9.6 MW, 25 t/h steam cogeneration plant
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in the Saha Group Lamphun industrial park. It is the reference price to
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ask for and the main competitor for the same fuel. Further out, Clover
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Power at Wang Chin (Phrae) buys chips, corn husks and cobs, and bamboo
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([DEDE buyer list](finance/biomass/DEDE_biomass_buyers_2026-02.pdf),
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February 2026)
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- **Next step:** written quotes from the Pa Sak centre and two or three
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chip suppliers within 50 km, priced by moisture content (an oven-dry
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tonne carries roughly twice the heat of a fresh one), before the boiler
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decision
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## Logistics on site
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To reflect in the facility planning: a fuel storage shed (biomass
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must be kept dry; monsoon-season storage sizing matters more than dry
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season), chipping for coppice wood, ash handling, and the emissions stack
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that comes with solid fuel. These are the capex/opex adders that the
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biomass premium in the utilities CSV (roughly 4M to 7M THB for the boiler
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package vs 2.5M to 4M electric/gas) partially reflects; fuel handling and
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storage are additional.
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## Decision framing
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- Biomass makes the steam genuinely renewable and pairs with cheap northern
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fuel, at the cost of higher capex, fuel logistics, ash, and an emissions
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point
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- The 60 rai tilts the economics and the story further toward biomass, but
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only after the land-title check clears
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- The electric boiler remains the alternative: cleanest permitting, no fuel
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logistics, but effectively grid-powered steam at a ~520 to 625 kW draw
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for the five presses. On PEA's time-of-use tariff that costs ~5.2M to
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6.0M THB a year at mature load against ~0.6M to 1.2M of fuel for
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biomass, and ~1.6M to 1.8M (one 500 kg/h module) against ~0.15M to 0.3M at early load, because the demand charge follows
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the boiler's full-power draw (estimates; see the
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[grid tariff](sustainability.md#grid-tariff-pea-and-what-it-decides)).
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The electric boiler is the more efficient machine; biomass is the far
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cheaper heat
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- A staged path is possible: start electric (fast, clean permitting), plant
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the coppice now (first harvest in 2 to 4 years), and add the biomass
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boiler at the automated-line expansion when demand and the fuel supply
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have both matured. At the tariff above that is a permitting and logistics
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choice, not a cost one: every year on electric steam costs roughly 1.4M
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to 5.4M THB more than biomass, so the switch should come as soon as the
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permit and a fuel contract are in place
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