[Vision2020] Fuel Cells

[Bill Strand]

Tom,

Considering Mr. Douglas works for the pulp and paper industry, you might
have chosen a better example. As I would prefer that he concentrates on
keeping the Spruce Falls newsprint mill running, I thought I might
answer this one.

Is hemp a viable source of fiber? Certainly! But how about straw (that
exists in abundance in the Palouse). How about all the hybrid cottonwood
around Wallula and Boardman. All these fiber sources have significantly
higher yield than "timber" as you have used in a general fashion.

Being able to produce paper from hemp, straw or cotton wood does not it
economical to do it in bulk. The Canadian industry has legalized hemp,
but there are no major new mils being built to utilize hemp.
 
For most paper, wood is 10-20% of the total cost. For example the cost
of newsprint is about $500/ton. The cost for the wood is about $80/ton.
The rest is energy, chemicals, personnel and capital costs. For chemical
pulping (like Potlatch in Lewiston), it is the capital costs that
dominate.

To begin with, increasing the yield per acre does not necessarily reduce
the cost of delivering the fiber. My father started the first cottonwood
plantations outside of Boardman Oregon when he was working for Crown
Zellerbach in the late 70s and early 80s (yields that are 2-5X the
normal timber yields). But if you have been watching these plantations,
many are not being harvested.

So why don't we use straw, hemp or cottonwood even though it can have 5
- 10X the yield?

- Straw and hemp are seasonal crops that don't store long term.
- Straw, hemp and cottonwood are low density fibers that are extremely
expensive to transport (with the exception of barging). When Ponderay
Newsprint (north of Spokane) ran out of chips in December of this year,
they could not afford to ship cottonwood chips from Wallula because of
the transport costs for the low density fiber.

Once the fiber is delivered, the pulping costs increase:

- The pulping process requires significant changes to be able to process
hemp or straw (or even cottonwood). This is extremely expensive.
- The capital investment to build a mill in the area of hemp or straw
inventories would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Even modifying pulping processes to handle cottonwood is expensive.
Changing the pulping equipment not to mention the washers (anyone
remember the 100 million dollar lawsuit that Potlatch was involved with?
This was about the washing equipment) has high costs associated with the
changes.
- Hemp and straw pulping result in a significantly higher pollution load
(are you ready for this in the Palouse?)

The paper produced from these fibers can be of poor quality

- Hemp fiber is a combination of what they call bast (long fiber) and
hurds (short fiber). The hurds are unsuitable for papers requiring any
tear strength.
- Paper machines and press rooms can be run slow enough so that this is
not an issue, but this greatly increases the capital costs. Cottonwood
suffers from the same issue of low fiber length.
- Cottonwood results in significantly lower strength as compared to
softwood fiber. When making milk cartons (as Potlatch does) this is a
critical parameter. Having "soggy bottoms" makes cottonwood a difficult
fiber to use.

If the "suppression" of hemp paper is the best example of corporate
conspiracy, I think we can throw this one out of court.

Bill Strand