Flexible Biomass Conveyance

biomass magazine. ^ | August 2008 Issue | By Ron Kotrba

[Kevin J waldroup]

The biomass gasifier at Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. is fuel-flexible by design. Thisrequires a handling system engineered to move feedstocks of varying volumes and densities. Biomass Magazine speaks with Rapat Corp., the engineer of the bulk conveyance system, and equipment vendor Robert White Industries Inc., about the project.

The idea was fairly simple. Use the organic material left over from processing an agricultural product, such as potatoes or sugar beets, to produce methane. The methane can then be used as a heat source for the processing facility, or turned into electricity and sold back to the power grid.

A team of researchers in the University of Florida’s biological engineering department thought it would be an environmentally friendly way for processors to use waste material and to add another source of revenue. The researchers contacted American Crystal Sugar Co., a sugar beet processing cooperative headquartered in Moorhead, Minn., to provide them with the feedstock and set to work so they could prove their theory.

From the Lab to the Plant According to Jeff Moritz, facility services superintendent of technical services at American Crystal, the partnership started when the sugar processing plant began sending samples of sugar beet tailings to the university’s lab. The “tailings” consist of all of the organic material that remains after the sugar is processed from the beet—plant skins, greens from the tops that weren’t cut off during the harvesting, stray weeds, etc.

Initial university lab results were positive, as expected. “It’s a simple process,” Moritz explains. “It’s basically the same thing that would happen eventually in nature, in a compost bin or something.”

[elephantlips]

When I saw the title I thought it was for a better way for obese people to get around.