Biomass Power Plant Supports Efforts in Sustainability at CNRE

 Blacksburg, VA. December  10, 2012. The Department of Sustainable Biomaterials (SBIO) at the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE) recently acquired a biomass power plant to support the SBIO Department’s academic and outreach goals. The unit is capable of generating 10 KW (Kilo-Watts) by using biomass feedstocks such as wood chips, nut shells, coconut shells, corn cobs, and manure. The unit is capable of producing 1KWh for every 1.2 kg of biomass.

power plant commissioning
Rick Caudill, SBIO Department’s Technician, takes notes from biomass international consultant Yaov Palatnik during the generator’s commissioning process.

The unit’s generator is powered by a 3-cylinder combustion engine that uses syngas as fuel. Syngas is produced from carbonaceous materials, such biomass, that reacts with steam or a limited amount of oxygen at temperatures above 750 C to produce mainly nitrogen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gasification process dates back to 1800s where it was used to produce town gas for lighting and cooking. Wood gasifiers were also used to power motor vehicles during World War II fuel shortages. In general the gases produced from the gasification process can be used in other applications such as gas turbines for electrical production, burned for heat generation, or as a source for hydrogen source cells.

The biomass power plant is a great addition to the current and future academic efforts in sustainability at the SBIO Department. There is an increasing interest in the community to learn more about renewable materials and their potential use in energy production and how technology can be integrated in a small-scale system. Also, the SBIO Department’s research efforts will benefit from using the unit to test, characterize, and optimize many of the different type of biomass feedstocks available in the state and beyond. Finally, the undergraduate program at the SBIO Department strives in acquiring and developing systems and technology to support teaching efforts in order to form the best specialists in Sustainable Biomaterials.

If you have questions, or like to see the power plant performing, please contact Dr. Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu or 540 231 0978.

Integrating Lean Manufacturing Techniques and Energy Saving Practices Boost Productivity and Cuts Costs

By Dr. Henry Quesada and Dr. Brian Bond

This article was published in the November 2012 issue of Pallet Enterprise.

Cutting energy costs remains a way that many wood products firms can trim operating expenses while continuing to develop new business prospects and serve existing customers. This article reviews the most commonly implemented energy recommendations for both the U.S. manufacturing sector and the wooden pallet sector. This comparison will then help in determining how lean principles can be implemented into your energy management practices and will provide a self-assessment to guide your energy audit process.

Although the majority of wood products manufacturing businesses continue to use multiple sources of energy such as wood waste, natural gas, coal, diesel, and waste oil; electricity represents the highest energy cost (62.5%). There are many resources available to the industry to assist in identifying energy saving opportunities. One of the most helpful energy saving resources is the database of energy recommendations created by the Industrial Assessment Centers at the Department of Energy (DOE), which are research centers tasked with spreading ideas relating to industrial energy conservation.

The full article can be downloaded by following this link.

Third Innovation-based Manufacturing Workshop: A great success!

The third innovation-based manufacturing workshop was held on November 13, 2012 at Virginia Tech. Over 40 participants came to the workshop to learn from entreprenours and academics the critical aspects to consider when starting up a business. The workshop held also a student innovation competition where five finalists had the opportunity to present their ideas to a panel. The winner received an award of $5000 in funds to further develop his idea into a commercial product.

Dr. Henry Quesada welcomes participants and speakers.

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RESEARCH BRIEF: Marketing Segmentation

by Melissa Brenes-Bastos, mbrenes@vt.edu

There are many different consumers in the world, each one have their own needs, behaviors and preferences. Kotler (2012) defines segmentation as grouping of costumers by related needs and behaviors inside a market.  The main focus behind marketing segmentation is to allow business to invest and focus on real consumers behavior and patterns. (Gillian, 2011)

Marketing segmentation. From http://www.12manage.com

Although there are different cultures and populations around the world, some people need and aspire for similar things even thought they belong to different countries. (Russell, 2011). The principal objective of segmentation is to complement consumers with products that satisfy their individual set of needs and behavior patterns even if they do (http://www.12manage.com/description_market_segmentation.html) not belong to the same geographic location. (Gillian, 2011).

Today with the fast growing of consumer diversity is more important to business to differentiate their products or services from their competition. Gillian (2001) and Wood & Ehrlich (1991) agree in four different types of consumers market segmentation:

  • Geographical:  a market divided by location such as region, state, country, etc.
  • Demographical: a market divided by demographic factors, such as age, nationality, occupation, etc.
  • Behavior: a market divided by the end use of their products or services.
  • Psychographic or understand risk: a market divided by correlate personality with brands.

Marketing segmentation does not have a formula that you can apply, because every business has different consumers that have special needs. But Wood & Ehrlich (1991) briefly describes 5 steps to segmenting a business-to-business or industrial market:

  1. Eliminate any segments you don’t want or need.
  2. Break the remaining market into smaller groups, using factors like geographic, demographic, personality and behavior as guidelines.
  3. Consider the risk and rule out segments that seem to be too risky to tackle- at least for now.
  4. Carefully evaluate the opportunities the remaining segments overall.
  5. Prioritize to find the most attractive market segment overall.

Ones you know and target your segment, you’re ready to set a marketing and sale strategy for each segment that you decide to fit in.

There is a lot of work that combines marketing segmentation and industry in general, but when search about wood industry and marketing segmentation there’s few information about it. That gap need to be fill by researching in marketing segmentation technics with sustainable biomaterial industries such as wood.

References

  • Martin, G. (2011) The Importance of Marketing Segmentation. American Journal of Business Education. The Clute Institute. Vol. 4, No. 6, 2011.
  • Russell, A. (2011) Fragmentation and Segmentation: Marketing Global Benefits. International Business & Economics Research Journal. The Clute Institute. Vol. 10, No. 9, 2011.
  • Wood, M. & Ehrlich, E. (1991) Segmentation: Five steps to more effective business-to-business marketing. Sales & Marketing Management. Proquest. [Online]
  • Moriarty, M. & Venkatesan, M. (1978) Concept evaluation & market segmentation. Journal of Marketing. Proquest. [Online]
  • Kotler, K. (2001). A framework of marketing management. Prentice Hall.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Benefits of Using Value Stream Mapping to Record Electrical Consumption

by Shawn Crawford, MF candidate, 
Email at shawn88@vt.edu 

The Forest Products Industry has made a concerted effort to reduce operating expenses in order to stay competitive in the global marketplace.  Manufacturers have applied lean thinking and energy management programs to help them identify and address inefficiencies but the systems work independent of each other which diminishes their overall value and benefit.  Developing a methodology that applies lean thinking to correlate energy consumption with throughput would provide a valuable resource for the industry.

Figure 1. Example of Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

 

Lean thinking is a process improvement that focuses on increasing value-added processes and decreasing non-value-added processes (Womack and Jones, 2003). Value is determined by the customer (Womack and Jones, 2003). Eliminating or reducing non-value-added processes can increase production rates for value-added-processes (Liker, 2003). By eliminating or reducing non-value-added processes, energy efficiency is improved.

After a company has bought into the concept of becoming “lean” they must first identify both value added and non-value added steps within a process.  However, identifying value added contribution of various process steps is difficult to do without seeing the entire process.  Value stream mapping (VSM) is a way of showing how material/products and information flow through the entire production process (Rother and Shook, 2003). When taking a value stream approach it is important to focus on the big picture and not just individual processes.  Rother and Shook (2003) state that “a value stream is all the actions (both value added and non-value added) currently required to bring a product through the main flows essential to every product.”  When mapping out the current process it is generally recommended to start the map beginning with the customer and then mapping subsequent upstream processes to the supplier or raw materials.  In doing so, it allows production to view the process from the customers view point thus, allowing the customer to determine value and non-value added processes.

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