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SUSSEX -

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Peter deGraaf and Rick Roth of Fuelwood Technology Innovations display a wood briquette.

A steering committee is now in place to plan a strategy for building a wood briquette plant here to utilize wood feedstock from local private woodlot owners.

The 12-member committee meets May 15 to identify its main priorities for the next few months, said interim board chair Rick Roth of Sussex.

"We had a really good discussion, people asked some intelligent questions," he said of an April 24 information meeting in Sussex attended by three dozen people, during which the steering committee was formed.

Roth and Peter deGraaf of Millstream formed a business plan for Fuelwood Technology Innovations last year and since then have been promoting the concept of opening a wood briquette manufacturing plant.

They presented two proposals to Fundy Model Forest April 30, one asking for help doing a market study, another seeking advice on resolving some manufacturing challenges.

"We also had a group of UNB graduate students evaluate our business plan as a project, and they will present that to us soon," said Roth.

Wood briquettes can be an effective, convenient and affordable alternative to oil, gas and electricity for home heating fuel, deGraaf, interim chair of marketing, said in an interview last year with the Kings County Record.

The briquettes are made from wood chips pressed into hard, dense logs with about 10 percent moisture, which burn like dry hardwood. Conventional hardwood has a typical moisture content of 20 to 25 per cent when dry and 50 per cent when green.

They're made of nothing but wood no adhesive is used to hold them together. The wood particles area first dried, then compressed and heated into sausage-like ropes held together by lignin, a resin naturally present in wood fibre. The hot, pressed wood is then cooled and cut into the required lengths.

The plant's environmental "footprint" would be minimal as its main byproduct is steam.

It's similar to the process used to create tiny wood pellets which can be burned in hopper-equipped pellet stoves. While pellet stove require electricity to run the auger and fan, wood briquettes can be burned just like a stick of wood in a furnace or stove, deGraaf explained.

Roth and deGraff say a three-pound, log-shaped briquette, about 10 inches long, can burn for about three hours. Briquettes are clean, resistant to mold and easy to store and handle with their uniform size, shape and weight.

High-quality briquettes can be made from what is, by the standards of existing markets for lumber and pulpwood, low quality wood. Second-grade pulpwood and waste wood from sawmills can be formed into briquettes that can burn as effectively as a prime saw log.

Wood briquettes and regional briquette plants have been in Europe for years and are just developing a presence in Canada.

Once the envisioned plant is in production, all transportation would be within this part of New Brunswick, as both the raw materials and the market for the clean-burning fuel are right here.

Roth and deGraaf say Sussex is an ideal place for a briquette plant because there are many woodlot owners within about a 50-mile radius of the local market area, with the tri-city area of Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton as potential markets beyond that.