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Forest Friday: Remembering the Roseburg Forest Product (RFP) Missoula Composites facility

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12 May, 2024

This post was originally published on Healthy Forest

Editors note: Kyle Johnson is a forester with the Bureau of Land Management’s Missoula Field Office. Mr. Johnson is not affiliated with Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities but gave us permission to share his message.

Just over a year ago, a group of us from the BLM toured the Roseburg Forest Product (RFP) Missoula Composites facility. It jumped out to me at the time as one of the best tours I’d ever been on because of how clean, organized and efficient the operations were, besides how friendly all the staff were.  Sadly this operation is now in it’s final days and so in recognition of all the folks now unemployed, as well as the outsized impact this will have on our ability to manage Montana’s forests, I give you the Forest Friday I wrote about that tour.  Thanks for reading and have a great Friday.
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Forest Friday: Montana /Dakotas BLM Foresters tour the Roseburg Forest Product (RFP) Missoula Composites facility – originally published 3/3/23
The Missoula Composites operation sits on 200 acres in Missoula, nestled between the train tracks and I-90 near North Reserve Street. The site was originally owned by Louisiana Pacific, and has been in operation since 1968.  Roseburg Forest Products bought the operation in the early 2000’s, and it currently runs 24 hours, 7 days a week. Missoula Composites is a forest product manufacturing site,  but not a sawmill. Rather this site utilizes sawdust from area sawmills, and turns that waste in to valuable and versatile products which is ships nationwide. In years past, Teepee Burners were a common sight at sawmills where all the scraps and sawdust would have been burned. Those days are long gone and today utilization is the name of the game: nothing goes to waste.
The sawdust is sourced from sawmills all over western Montana, such as RY Timber in Livingston MT (Update: now owned by Sun Mountain Lumber), Pyramid Mountain Lumber (update: now closing), and Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge MT, as well as further afield in NW Montana and Canada. Once at the Missoula site, the sawdust goes through a rigorous process of drying and grinding to make it all uniform within the company’s exacting specifications. The material is then mixed with a binder and spread in a sheet where it is heated and compressed. Next comes trimming to dimension and finishing which includes sanding and/or applying a final white or colored layer for appearance and edging. The finished product is loaded by forklift onto trucks or railcars for distribution across the country. The plant loads out about 4 – 6 railcars and 20 over-the-road trucks everyday. Shelving available at Lowes is the primary market they supply, although more recently they have begun supplying products to more local, independent home improvement stores.
Over the years the RFP company has made large investments to keep the Missoula Composites operation state-of-the-art and a valuable member of the Missoula community such as installing a large earthen berm to stop sawdust from blowing on to neighboring properties and a multi-million dollar “bug farm” which uses natural organisms to clean emissions from the operation. Additionally, the RFP company makes large donations to locally active organizations such as the United Way annually.
The RFP Missoula Composites operation is an excellent example of a modern forest product company making use of what would have been waste in times past. This not only increases the utilization and carbon sequestration of the whole tree, but also reduces emissions from burning wastes. Additionally, by making the sawdust worth a value, it increases the value of the whole process all the way up to the timber sales offered from agencies like the BLM. That increased value comes full circle in helping to sustain and maintain the forest products industry and operators in Montana, which are critical partners in achieving our land management goals.
Our warmest thanks to the staff at RFP Missoula Composites for an excellent tour!

 

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Source: Healthy Forest

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ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB has gained Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) status for its Gearless Mill Drive (GMD) ring motor — technology used to drive large grinding mills in the mining industry.

An EPD is a standardised document that provides detailed information about the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Based on a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, the EPD highlights ABB’s commitment to transparency, environmental responsibility and supporting customers in making informed decisions on sustainability in their supply chains.

ABB analysed the environmental impact of a ring motor across its entire life cycle from supply chain and production to usage and end-of-life disposal. The study was conducted for a ring motor of a semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill with an installed power of 24 MW and was based on a reference service life of 25 years.

“Sustainability is at the core of our purpose at ABB, influencing how we operate and innovate for customers,” said Andrea Quinta, Sustainability Specialist at ABB. “By earning the Environmental Product Declaration for our ring motor, we emphasise our environmental stewardship and industry leadership for this technology. We adhered to the highest standards throughout this process, as we do in the ABB Ring Motor factory every day. This recognition highlights to the mining industry what they are bringing into their own operations when they work with ABB.”

The comprehensive LCA was conducted at ABB’s factory in Bilbao, Spain, and was externally verified and published in accordance with international standards ISO 14025 and ISO 14040/14044. It will remain valid for five years.

The ring motor, a key component of the GMD, is a drive system without any gears where the transmission of the torque between the motor and the mill is done through the magnetic field in the air gap between the motor stator and the motor rotor. It optimises grinding applications in the minerals and mining industries by enabling variable-speed operation, leading to energy and cost savings.

The full EPD for the ABB GMD Ring Motor can be viewed on EPD International.

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