| dc.description.abstract | The current level of system understanding about the sawmill industry in central Norway requires an improvement to allow a robust assessment of the forestry industry in the region, which is required for the bioeconomy-boosting initiatives of Trøndelag fylkeskommune. Previous studies of the sawmill industry consider it as a single plant process, limited to the primary sawing of roundwood. This thesis performs a Material Flow Analysis of the production in Inntre Kjeldstad, a multi-plant sawmill company in the Trøndelag region. This allows quantifying the mass of wood used by each plant at every stage of the production, delivering a full picture of the flows of material in the company visualized in a Sankey diagram. Especial focus is placed on the interconnections between plants through internal trade, quantifying the use of transport (in tonne-kilometre) and the CO2 emissions associated: 15% of the mass of semi-finished products is transported to supply other plant’s production and 22% of the mass of post-processed products is transported between plants before being shipped to the end customers. This use of road transport causes the emission of 278 tonnes of CO2.
The detailed definition of the production highlighted the importance of accurately depicting the processing to achieve a proper consideration of the production limitations and a higher level of detail on by-products generation. The simulation of reducing the use of transport yielded that a 33% reduction of transport use and emissions would be achievable by reducing redundant routes (double flows) and changing the purchasing patterns of the company, but this would require a re-assessment of the company storage and redistribution of the production according to their geographical location. | |
