110,000 tons of annual torrified wood production sounds like a lot, but it is not. If a rail car holds 60 tons of torrified wood and the plant runs 7 days a week, this only produces 5 carloads per day by my math.
If a ship holds 40,000 tons, there would only be three ships a year calling at Searsport. If a truck holds 20 tons of wood, then this is 15 truckloads per day. The bigger need I would assume
would be a storage facility that would need to hold 4 months of production for each of the ships and a fast loading system.
The plant is the first of several that are planned, from what I have read. It would seem that this project will require some kind of storage and loading system at Searsport. They say that England will be where
this product will be shipped but I am wondering that perhaps they might have some domestic users in mind. Torrified wood burns like coal, so perhaps it could be readily used in the Northeast somewhere at coal
fired power stations that need to reduce CO2 emissions.
