Forest Concepts Technology History and Evolution

Forest Concepts was established in 1998 by seasoned forest and natural resource industry professionals, as an innovative and environmentally friendly forest products company with a new way of thinking about the industry and markets for wood-based materials. As you read through our history of innovation and market development, there are themes of underutilized wood resources, environmental protection and enhancement societal needs, and logical extension of core processing technologies, equipment innovations and market evolution to continuously grown the company in a coherent manner.

Forest Concepts was founded with the simple ecological mission to make it easier to do salmon habitat restoration in urban and suburban areas of the Pacific Northwest. Our launch product in 1998 became known as engineered large woody debris. ELWd® (pronounced "el-wood") structures are designed to accommodate readily available wood materials, low-tech manufacturing methods, and work-crew-based installation. ELWd® structures (US Patents 5,823,710, 6,402,426) combine sound science with disciplined engineering to replicate the functionality of native woody debris and downed logs for wildlife habitat enhancement on burned-over lands, wildlife preserves, naturescapes, wetlands, and similar applications.

Our work with wildland restoration specialists identified a need for highly effective, long lasting erosion control materials to replace agricultural straw mulch. Up until then, all of our products had been designed to use solid roundwood materials. After four years of research and development WoodStraw® wood strand mulch was proven through laboratory and field studies that resulted in peer-reviewed publications. Commercially released in 2005, WoodStraw® engineered wood-strand erosion control material is designed for use in fire rehabilitation, wildland construction, watershed restoration as well as road/trail/mine/pipeline construction and decommissioning. WoodStraw® (U.S. Pat. 6,729,068) materials exceed the functionality of agricultural straw without the risk of introducing noxious weeds, pesticides, and non-native materials to wildlands. The science behind WoodStraw® was jointly developed by us and the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station in Moscow, ID under funding from the Forest Service and the USDA-CSREES-SBIR program.

In 2005, we were awarded a USDA SBIR contract to analyze the problem of collecting and delivering urban woody biomass to distant bioenergy facilities. Our proposed solution was to adapt our deep understanding of baling WoodStraw® wood strands to the challenge of baling brush and other woody biomass. A Phase II USDA SBIR contract was awarded to us in 2006 to develop the science and engineering design data to enable baling, handling and transportation of cellulosic biomass. By early 2008, we completed construction of a prototype biomass baler that was fully instrumented for design validation and data collection. The resulting knowledge benefits not only biomass baler technology licensees, but feeds back into the design of our own next-generation WoodStraw® balers.

Our current externally funded bioenergy related research is developing methods and equipment to clean "dirty" biomass chips to recover the clean fraction for use in residential grade fuel pellets, bio-ethanol production and other uses where clean fiber is required. A side benefit of the project is that we are characterizing many biomass streams as potential feedstocks for our own next generation erosion control materials.

The next technological investments will continue our venture into precision cellulosic biomass feedstock supply with the adaptation of our WoodMuncher™ wood comminution technology for low-energy production of precision particles for use in syngas and bio-oil production facilities. Our WoodMuncher™ technology was profiled in Biomass Magazine early in 2008 as one of the promising new technologies for bioenergy.