Des Moines Business Record, IA
03-04-07
Powered partially by corn
By Jason Hancock
jasonhancock@bpcdm.com
Ames Assistant City Manager Sheila Lundt stands in front of the Ames Power
Plant. Research is currently under way at Iowa State University on a new
technology that will produce oil from corn stalks and filtered trash.Photo by Eric
Rowley
Ethanol gets all of the alternative energy headlines in Iowa, but a study by the
city of Ames and Iowa State University could make the city the first in the
nation to utilize a revolutionary technology that produces oil from corn stalks and
filtered trash.
The process would produce bio-oil to complement coal in producing power for
Ames.
"There are indications, in the long term, that this could conceivably be refined like
crude oil - that you might be able to extract other valuable compounds from it,"
said Jim Cooper, coordinator of Prairie Rivers of Iowa Resource Conservation
and Development, the group overseeing the research.
The process uses pyrolysis, the decomposition of organic materials using high
heat and low oxygen. Converting cellulosic fibers to energy has received national
attention, but Ames Assistant City Manager Sheila Lundt said another exciting
possibility exists with the city's trash.
At the Resource Recovery Plant, a municipally operated waste-to-energy facility
that began operating in 1975, trash from the city and other Story County
communities is filtered and converted to "refuse derived fuel," a fluffy product
resembling papier-mâché.
The plant produced 30,000 tons of refuse derived fuel last year.
Lundt said the downside to this, however, is that the amount of heat the garbage
produces varies depending on the type of refuse being burned. So only 10 to 15
percent of the mixture put into the boilers is garbage. The rest is coal.
"The hope is that we can combine the refuse with organic materials, like corn
stalks or switchgrass, to be turned into bio crude, which is a thick material that
will burn much more evenly," she said. "That will give us a much more consistent
heat value."
The benefits to the bio crude could be numerous, Lundt said.
First, the burn would be cleaner, limiting the number of times the boiler has to be
shut off for cleaning, which in turn will limit the amount of power the city would
have to buy from other vendors.
"It can be quite costly to the city and its customers when we have to shut down
the boiler," she said. "So the less we do that, the better. And it will lower the
maintenance costs overall."
Secondly, and some say most importantly, the mixture should lower the plant's
emissions.
"One day, we might be able to cut back on the amount of coal we burn in the
boiler," she said. "That would be good for all of our customers."
Cooper said the use of bio crude in the Ames plant could help "jump start" the
industry by proving the commercial viability of bio products for fuel.
"In the long term, we hopefully won't be talking about this as just boiler fuel," he
said. "The hope is that one day we will replace crude oil completely. This process
won't do it alone, but neither will ethanol. There is not a silver bullet out there. It
will take a number of different sources to wean us off of petroleum products."
Cooper said the next few months will be used to produce a small sample of bio
crude to test how it reacts in a lab setting. The next step is finding a producer to
make enough of the product to test it in the city boiler.
Two companies in Canada produce similar products.
"Locally, we can only make about a gallon right now, so we'll have to ship it in
initially," he said.
Lundt said the goal is to try to test the product in the city's boiler by this summer.
If it turns out to be a viable product, the city hopes companies that can produce
bio crude in large quantities might relocate to Central Iowa.
"If it is commercially viable, we certainly have enough corn in the area," she said.
"This could become a wonderful opportunity here and across the entire State of
Iowa."