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Biofuels Technical Committee Holds First Session at UACh

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• This group was composed of private actors representing the regional pellet industry, the Chilean Biomass Association, PymeMad, Aprobosque, and forestry contractors. Professionals from the public sector were also present.

The need to involve different stakeholders, gather contributions, and combine efforts led the team of the FIC 23-12 project—funded by the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness (FIC) of the Los Ríos Regional Government and its Regional Council: "Forest Waste Biofuels in Los Ríos"—to form a technical committee focused on pellet generation as an alternative for residential heating. This group held its first session at the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources at UACh and included private actors representing the regional pellet industry, the Chilean Biomass Association, PymeMad, Aprobosque, and forestry contractors. Professionals from the public sector, such as the Regional Ministerial Secretariats of Energy, Agriculture, and Environment, CONAF, and INFOR, were also present.

For the project director and UACh academic, Dr. Marco Contreras, "this is a great way to ground the work we are carrying out and receive feedback that allows us to better guide activities to increase the likelihood of operational-scale implementation, as well as coordinate and identify potential synergies with public instruments and other related programs. We intend to take the project beyond academia and gather input from key players in the wood-based solid biofuels industry."

This first meeting focused on informing attendees about the project's objectives, activities, and results, as well as progress to date.

During the session, challenges and opportunities were discussed. The team's main observation is that there are residues from native forest and plantation management that are underutilized or unused and could be allocated to pellet and woodchip production. The issue lies in their moisture content and the logistics of transportation.

This is where the UACh Faculty of Engineering Sciences will play a key role, as Dr. Rogelio Moreno is responsible for designing and building a biomass dryer to produce these products.

This interdisciplinary initiative has already made progress, which was shared during the session. "We are making headway in determining biomass availability, analyzing the physical and chemical properties of the types of biomass to be collected. There is also significant progress in the dryer design," stated the project's research team.

PymeMad praised this effort and the intention to utilize forest byproducts for better economic and environmental alternatives. "I believe it is critically important to provide small and medium-sized wood entrepreneurs with alternatives for using byproducts, whether from forestry operations—such as branches that do not meet the required size and shape for transport and commercialization—or sawmill byproducts like chips, sawdust, or trimmings. These green byproducts mostly have very low value and often accumulate, taking up space," said Álvaro Contreras, a forestry engineer.

The benefits of this project for producers are clear: "It will systematize information on each of these byproducts, studying the best way to dry them, first on-site and then through a biomass dryer," he commented.

This dryer will be a prototype that could be replicated for use by small and medium-sized wood producers and entrepreneurs. "The idea is that by the end of the project, owners of wood industry and forest byproducts—often mislabeled as 'waste'—can choose the most suitable alternative to improve the profitability of their forestry business. It's also important to emphasize that selling these byproducts sometimes makes the difference between an activity being profitable or failing," affirmed Álvaro Contreras.