Investment Needed For Oil-Mallee Harvester

Times have changed since early 2006 when PWF wrote about WA’s mallee eucalypts being good for producing oil, electricity and burning biomass, with the challenge for Narrogin’s Integrated Wood Processing (IWP) bio-energy plant being to prove that the technology exists to make these three products economically viable.

What Does The Bio-Energy Plant Do?

• The plant partially burns the wood producing charcoal
• steam activation technology converts the charcoal to activated carbon
• eucalyptus oil is distilled from the leaves
• spent leaves are then ‘gasified’ to produce fuel for the boiler.

A Cost-Effective Harvester Needed

The October Industry Update reports that the Oil Malley Company of Australia (OMC) has overseen a lot of profitable private plantings across the WA Wheatbelt with significant landcare benefits and improved farming systems.

With markets being clearly identified WA alone now has 12,000 hectares of farmed oil-mallees but the industry is being held back by the lack of a harvesting system and the necessary machinery, says Rick Giles of WA’s Dept of Environment and Conservation (DEC) who has been working on such a system.

A Lead From Sugar

For sugar cane as for oil-mallees to be a viable crop growers must be able to harvest at a relatively low cost so, taking note of cane harvesters, a new prototype harvester has been developed by Rick Giles and engineer Harley Pederick.

• The self-propelled prototype used many of the components of the old cane harvester and was modified to travel continuously while harvesting
• Unlike the cane harvester the modified machine cuts the trees at the front of the machine and feeds them to a wood chipper
• During this transfer the mallees are held upright so the height and width of the mallee crown does not influence the process and trees only enter the machine as they pass through the chipper.

Reality And The Future

• During 2002 Western Power contributed funds which helped continue the development of the prototype, but since then Rick’s project has become part-time and progress slow. To develop a commercial harvester over three years the cost is estimated at around $5 million.

  Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre CEO Kevin Goss believes his organisation, with the backing of the Oil Mallee Company and the DEC is well placed to develop a prospectus for further investment.

• OMC has won a Commonwealth Government grant to commercialise an integrated process to convert residue mallee biomass from eucalyptus oil production into fuel briquettes. Fuel briquettes are an environmentally friendly, low ash, low pollution, carbon neutral renewable fuel. OMC is working with innovate mallee growers and eucalypt oil producer group “Kalannie Distillers” and a briquette manufacturer from south west WA to develop this integrated value adding process.
• OMC raised capital ahead of schedule after keen interest shown by the public in the availability of new shares in the company.

For more info: info@oilmallee.com.au