(Canada) Products like turpentine already come from wood – it‘s a byproduct of wood pulp, Leitch said.
“Pulping produces a heck of a lot of chemicals when it breaks down the wood,” he said. “We can distill wood and get ethanols and methanols, which people are using corn for, but you can also use wood.”
Wood waste will likely produce more of those chemicals than something like corn. “The problem with (corn) is that you need a whole bunch of it to get anywhere, and yeah, you‘re potentially taking food off people‘s tables, especially in poorer countries where corn is a fairly significant crop.”
Here in the North where forestry is such a significant industry, “we produce an awful lot of waste.”
Some of that slash already goes to pulp mills or to produce steam for mills‘ power.
But there is a great deal of bark, sawdust and chips that never makes it to boilers or the pulp process, said Leitch.
Another project has the two scientist determining how to produce wood pellets to fire boilers, powering turbines for power.
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