Addressing Marketplace Durability Issues with Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) Infected Wood (Summarizing Byrne & Uzonovic (2005))

Since I started working with wood pellets, I always feel that MPB wood has inferior quality than regular non-infected wood. The blue-stained wood of MPB wood made the wood appears "unnatural", which leads me to think that the wood is no good, i.e. lack of strength and durability.
But it is not true!

According to the work done by Byrne & Uzonovic (2005) and other wood scientists, the temperate bluestain fungi, unlike tropical bluestain fungi, does NOT damage the wood structure. Bluestain fungi are harmless and do NOT attack the wood itself but live on nutrients stored in a small proportion of wood cells.

Temperate Bluestain fungi on the wood surface (Byrne & Uzonovic, 2005)

Furthermore, According to tests done at Forintek Canada Corp, and other research laboratories, there is NO practical difference in strength between stained and non-stained pine. Bluestained wood is commonly used for construction in North America. The only concern is that bluestained wood has a higher water permeability which might cause the wood to retain more moisture ONLY if it is not well dried and stored. But wood is an perishable organic material at the right moisture content, whether it is bluestained or not.

Anyhow, well-treated bluestained wood CAN be used interchangably with non-stained wood. If the blue color is NOT desirable, the right combination of dark finshes can be used to hide any bluestain. The picture below is an example of dark finish that can be used to cover any bluestain.

I hope the general public is more receptive to the idea that bluestain wood is as good as non-stained wood, at least in the strength and durability point of view.

News summary II

News 1: European pellet consumption expected to triple by 2020

The latest report of consumption forecasts for 2020 range from 35 million metric tonnes for Western Europe (Pöyry) to 50 – 80 MMT for the total EU (AEBIOM). German is the largest producer of wood pellets in the EU, which produced 2 million metric tonnes in year 2013. Sweden comes second with total production of 1.35 million metric tonnes in year 2013. The production is expected to remain stagnant in the future years due to "weak investment climate and the limited availability of feedstock supplies".

Canadian wood pellet exports, 2012

News 2: US may cover half share of total European wood pellets imports by 2014
Quoting the new, in 2012, U.S. wood pellets exports were boosted by seventy percent to nearly 1.8 MMT, representing a value of US$ 331 million. That means the report gave a price estimates of $185 per MT.

Note: MMT is million metric tonnes; MT is metric tonne.

News 3: Korea looks to Indonesia for wood pellets
According to data from Korea, Indonesia offers the cheapest pellet, with the cost, insurance and freight (CIF) price of US$ 131 per ton, below Vietnam’s US$ 144 per ton, and Malaysia’s US$ 141 per ton.
Following this news, I checked the quality of the Malaysian wood pellet (because I'm a Malaysian). After a quick google search, I found the specification of wood pellet for this company, TG Quantum Wood Pellet.

TG Quantum Wood Pellet Specification

the gross calorific value is 5299 kcal/kg, or 22.2 MJ/kg. That is at the higher end of dry mass calorific value of woody biomass. My wood pellet from Pinnacle pellet, which has no binder, has a dry mass gross calorific value is 20.3 MJ/kg. I am quite sure they added some extra binders into their wood pellets that causes the gross calorific value to be so high.