The WoodTechno company, created at the end of 2021 in Cantal, was presented on Thursday March 24 by the Pulsalys incubator, which is supporting its project, on the Doua university campus in Villeurbanne.
It was born from the meeting between a professional in the sector and a researcher from the Polymer Materials Engineering laboratory (Universities of Saint-Étienne and Lyon, Insa and CNRS).
The idea? Use extrusion technology for wood, usually used in plastics processing. This thermomechanical process consists of advancing a material in a tube, casing or profile, to the dimensions of the product to be obtained, by playing on the pressure and the temperature to transform it during its progression.
A challenge "because extrusion is made for materials that react to heat, whereas wood does not like that", underlines José Brunet, president of WoodTechno, based near Saint-Flour where he owns a sawmill.
Eighteen months of research "have made it possible to demonstrate that we were able to extrude wood to produce pellets for the heating market", thanks to innovations that have been patented.
This technology can be used for both hardwoods and softwoods, whereas pellets currently come from softwoods only, hardwoods - with harder wood - not adapting well to traditional roller presses.
Other advantages: the pellet obtained has a reinforced calorific value, it is less expensive to produce and the process developed is “accessible to all sizes of sawmills”, whereas large investments are currently necessary.
“Many small and medium-sized sawmills have to sell their residues to big economic players, with no added value,” explains José Brunet. WoodTechno's objective is to enable these SMEs to produce their own pellets to sell them locally, "closer to forests and consumers".
The market is growing, with pellet boiler sales doubling last year in France depending on the sector. Consumption in Europe amounts to 30 million tonnes per year, 23 of which are produced on the continent.
WoodTechno, supported by the Region and the BPI, is seeking to raise 700.000 euros to install a semi-industrial pilot in Saint-Étienne and produce 300 kilos of pellets per hour at the start of 2023 - before a demonstrator in Cantal, with a capacity of 4 tonnes per hour by 2024.