Download (4Mb) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern Queensland

• The mallee oil would be extracted utilising relatively low technology steam extraction at the
nodal processing site. The extracted leaf could be sun-dried utilising low tech strategies such as
shallow bed drying.
The dried leaf could then be utilised for a number of potential uses, including baling for lower cost of
transport to higher value potential uses and local use for local thermal or electricity production.
4.5 Summary and Recommendations.
The development of a viable industry based on oil mallee cannot happen overnight, however analysis
of the potential for downstream products to support a large scale industry is promising.
The industry cannot, however, develop on the back of current products such as the boutique oil
industry. The magnitude of the potential supply will overwhelm the current market. Extracted oil is
seen as an important potential product, but as an industrial product, and as a strategy to “value add”
the leaf material. At the projected prices, it is not a viable product in its own right.
Similarly, a number of local options exist which can offer very attractive markets for limited
production quantities. Such markets include local thermal for abattoirs and feedmilling, and local
electricity. The former displaces LPG and diesel as heat sources, and the latter displaces local diesel
fuelled systems, or perhaps when used on-site as an alternative to retail electricity purchased off the
grid. Both these will remain as markets, but are limited in size. Significantly, technologies such as
“combined heat and power” and the technology development to incorporate harvested mallee as a
feedstock will be important pre-cursors for the technologies for the larger scale industry.
As the Industry expands, most significant potential market will probably involve emerging
technologies such as liquid fuels via pyrolysis. On the basis of current information, this market is
seen as offering good returns, with the technology being appropriate for major regional centres, thus
managing transport costs. Initial process and oil extraction would be undertaken at nodal points, with
value added product forwarded to the major centres.
Whilst co-firing of coal fired power stations with mallee is potentially a very large market which
could nominally consume the entire projected annual harvest, the location of coal fired power stations
relative to mallee production areas means that co-firing will not be a major market for the bulk of the
projected industry, because of transport costs.
Products such as metallurgical charcoal and bio-char are potentially significant products, but of lower
value, and unlikely to drive major industry expansion unless costs of harvest and transport were
significantly reduced relative to projected levels.
The development of a long term viable project can be driven by actively targeting small but
potentially highly profitable niche markets in the short term, and supporting these to further develop
the technology envisaged for a larger scale industry.
Apart from continuing development of harvesting technology, the components in a model of a full
scale industry must be further developed. This will involve further analysis of potential product
streams and the opportunities for maximising the synergies from the production of different products.
Whilst further development of the overall industry model is required, a number of enabling
technologies will almost certainly be required to be developed and optimised. It is probable that the
technologies will include:
122