Ingrid Clark, Town & Country Ontario
A partnership is forming in Renfrew between the hewers of wood and high-tech 'green' company. Ensyn Corporation is taking the wood waste from saw mills and turning it into green energy; the process that uses waste bio-mass to make bio-oil and other chemicals.

Bill Hall, Opeonga Forestry Service - President
Every time two loads of logs arrive at the saw mill, we unload them. We de-bark them, run them through the saw mill and make them into lumber. And the products come out of that, about 50% is lumber and the other 50% is split between bark, sawdust and wood chips. So overall, about half of all the material that comes to the sawmill ends up as a type of residue that can go to pulp mills, board plants or for combustion for products made from heat like electricity or the type of thing Ensyn will be using in their operation to make bio-oils and other bio-products.

Bob Graham, Ensyn Corporation - President & CEO
The technology is called rapid thermal processing. If you can just imagine, we're injecting wood and other bio-mass, into a cyclone, into a tornado of hot sand. And very quickly, in less than half a second, the wood comes into contact with hot sand and it's just vaporized. It's like water turning into steam. The solid wood turns to a vapour very quickly and that vapour is condensed, just like steam can be condensed on a window and become liquid. So now we have liquid wood or liquid biomass, and there is so much more you can do with liquid than a gas or a solid.

Ingrid Clark
Sustainable development of Ontario's forests and a competitive forestry industry are vital to Renfrew County. The industry is traditionally relied on for local employment and economic growth.

Leo Hall, Opeongo Forestry Service
I like to think of it as a significant regional advantage that we have. We have all these forests that grow around us which produce some high value and important wood products which can be sustainable managed for continuous economic prosperity.

Ingrid Clark
Ensyn Corporation partnered with the County of Renfrew the Opeonga Forestry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs though Ontario's Rural Economic Development Program. The funding provided through this program was key in the start up for the new, green energy operation.

Barry Freel, Ensyn Corporation, Chief Technology Officer
Two reasons (for) the big allure for Renfrew: number one the building was available; it has the space that we required for our equipment. Secondly, the availability of feed stocks and in particular the flooring manufacturer next door, where there was a ready source of hardwood sawdust.

Barry Freel
We've been able to take the RTP concept literally from the bench scale to all the way up to the facility you see in the background with a capacity of a 100 tons per day. We know now that we are getting to that level where RTP can start to get out into the world and be used to start to help environmental concerns to be able to replace fossil fuels products, for instance.

Bob Graham
We take the wood; we make a liquid about 75% yield - looks like coffee. Then out of that liquid we extract food flavourings, resins, concrete additives so that especially in Canada, your asphalt remains nice and plastic in cold weather, and a number of other chemicals we're looking at from a development point of view.

Ingrid Clark
Global environmental efforts recognize biomass as CO2 neutral, meaning that the wood waste used to produce energy can be recycled by planting new trees which capture carbon dioxide form the atmosphere; a benefit to the environment.

Bob Graham
And so when you are using biomass to produce chemicals that would otherwise be produced from petroleum or to generate power, heat or electricity that would otherwise be generated from petroleum, you are truly CO2 neutral. And the rationale is that every time you use biomass - use an amount of wood in a process - that wood is being regenerated somewhere in the forest.