AURI ENERGY CENTER NEWS

STORIES BY E.M. MORRISON

Morris, Minn. — Corn stalks will provide “fuel for thought” on a college campus in west central Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota, Morris plans to build a $6 million biomass gasification plant that will heat and cool the school’s two-dozen buildings. The gasifier will convert corn stover and other plant materials into renewable energy. And it will serve as a national model for rural schools, factories and communities interested in producing green power from local agricultural resources.

The biomass gasifier — the first in the state to run on crop residue — is part of UMM’s new Renewable Energy Research and Demonstration Center in Morris. Besides biomass power, the center will demonstrate wind energy systems, renewable hydrogen generation and storage, and methane power. The center’s goal, says Charles Muscoplat, dean of the U of M College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, is to create opportunities for rural communities to develop their own local renewable-energy resources.

Making location an asset
UMM is a small public liberal-arts college set amid farm fields near the state’s western border. Here, fertile glacial soils produce abundant crops of corn and soybeans and support a robust livestock industry. But these bountiful farm fields are far removed from the world’s oil fields. “Our location is a disadvantage in terms of energy,” says Lowell Rasmussen, who directs UMM plant services and planning.

So, when natural gas prices soared in 2000, squeezing the college’s operating budget, school officials began asking, “How can we turn our location from an energy negative to an energy positive, an energy resource?” Rasmussen says. At the same time, he says, UMM’s 2,000 students began pushing hard for a “greener” campus. “That’s what started the discussions of a biomass gasification plant.”

Working with scientists at the university’s nearby West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC), UMM officials began looking at alternative energy sources. “We had a lot of expectations,” Rasmussen says. The fuel had to be clean, renewable and available on demand. It had to be price-competitive with natural gas. And it had to be locally-produced, to “keep our energy money in the rural area.” As it turned out, alternative fuels that fit the bill were growing just outside the college doors.

The Morris region produces more than 650,000 tons of potential gasification feedstocks a year, according to a 2003 survey by the Energy Environment Research Center in Grand Forks, N.D. The most plentiful: corn stover (the stalks and leaves left in the field after harvesting) and distiller’s grains, an ethanol byproduct.

An emerging industry
Gasification systems heat organic materials in a low-oxygen environment, producing a synthesis gas, or syngas, that can be substituted for natural gas. Large commercial gasification facilities, such as municipal garbage incinerators, have been used in this country for many decades. Wood- and forest-product gasification are also well established. But crop-residue gasification is a new technology that hasn’t yet been commercialized, says Michael Sparby, AURI project director.

AURI, a state leader in renewable energy development, helped UMM evaluate the feasibility of using this emerging technology to heat and cool the campus. In January, Coaltec Energy of Carterville, Ill., performed pilot test burns of 30 tons of corn stover and distiller’s grains in a commercial gasifier. Test results were encouraging, Rasmussen says. The corn feedstocks handled well and gasification efficiency was 99.6 percent, according to an April 2005 report from Recovered Energy Resources, the marketing arm of Coaltec Energy. Also, emissions with proper controls and ash quality were environmentally-acceptable, with high heat-recovery.

Rough-cost estimates suggest that corn stover gasification for heat can be price competitive, if natural gas prices rise above $5 per million Btu’s, according to Rasmussen. UMM’s 2005-2006 forward contract price for natural gas is twice that, he says. “As the price of natural gas goes up, we’re seeing even more incentive to continue exploring renewables.”

This spring, the Minnesota Legislature provided $6 million to build a biomass gasification plant at UMM. Rasmussen expects the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) permitting and licensing process to take at least a year. Crop residue gasification is so new, in fact, that MPCA has not yet developed permitting procedures, he says. Officials hope to have the new plant on line by winter 2007.
The biomass plant will generate a new ag business, too, which will harvest and supply corn stover to the campus, Sparby says. He estimates that UMM will buy about $300,000 of corn stover and other feedstocks a year.

A sophisticated research tool
The gasification system will not only produce syngas to run UMM’s existing steam plant, it will be a sophisticated scientific tool, says Mike Reese, who directs WCROC renewable energy programs. “It’s unique, in that it will be both a working production facility and a research platform.”

WCROC scientists will use the biomass facility for a range of renewable-fuels research projects, Reese says. In the next five years, the research station will test gasification of perennial grasses, hybrid poplars and other potential crop feedstocks. University engineers will study biomass collection, transportation, storage and processing methods.

Scientists at the USDA-ARS soils research lab in Morris will work on related problems, such as using gasification ash for fertilizer, and how much corn stover should be removed from farm fields. “There will also be a strong economic research component,” Reese says. Longer-term research goals include processing syngas for transportation fuels and hydrogen.
 

A national model
The biomass plant will be an educational and outreach tool — a working prototype for others interested in adopting this technology, Reese says. Real-time operating data from the facility will be available via the Internet. And there may even be Web-cameras inside the gasifier, Reese says, “so you can see the syngas being produced.” In this way, what scientists in Morris learn about using agricultural biomass for energy “will be available to the world.”

Sparby expects UMM’s pilot plant to stimulate a lot of interest in making energy from farm products. This technology could bring new economic opportunities to rural areas, especially for farmers, he says. He foresees Minnesota farmers growing special biomass crops to supply locally-owned gasification plants — just as they do now for local ethanol plants.

“Farmers growing crops for energy, in addition to food and fiber — that’s the biggest economic promise of biomass technology.”

 

Grass power

Northern Minnesota farmers look at generating green power from grass seed chaff.

Williams, Minn. — Grass seed chaff could provide renewable energy to run a northern Minnesota seed-cleaning plant.

Northern Excellence Seed, LLC and AURI’s Center for Producer-Owned Energy will test the feasibility of generating power from gasified grass-seed screenings. The project could transform what is now agricultural waste into a renewable fuel — saving growers both disposal costs and energy expense.

Northern Excellence Seed, a group of 30 grass-seed producers in Roseau and Lake of the Woods counties, operates one of the state’s three main grass-seed processing plants. Minnesota is the nation’s number two producer of grass seeds, a crop that generates $120 million in economic activity for the state, according to a 2005 AURI estimate.

Northern Excellence Seed, which last year reported sales of $5 million, cleans and packages Kentucky bluegrass, ryegrass, timothy, reed canary and other grass seeds. The cleaning process separates the tiny seeds from the heads and straw, which are now hauled to a local landfill and burned.

Gasifying this waste material, instead, could potentially generate enough power to run the factory, says Michael Sparby, AURI project director. Gasification tests will be conducted this summer at the Energy Environment Research Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The research will look at how grass chaff and rye grass straw perform in a small, modular gasifier. Data will be collected on energy production, emissions and ash, as well as power-generation costs.

Gasification converts solid biomass into a synthetic fuel gas that can be burned like natural gas in a furnace, turbine or engine. Large-scale commercial biomass gasifiers, such as municipal solid waste incinerators, have been around for many decades, Sparby says. But small-scale biomass gasification technology is still developing.

However, small on-site crop-waste gasifiers hold great promise for generating renewable power for factories, schools and other buildings, Sparby says. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that Minnesota has enough renewable biomass fuel to power three million homes.

Northern Excellence is the first in the nation to explore gasifying grass-seed processing waste, Sparby says. If it proves feasible, “this would definitely add value to a product grown in this region.”
 

Sweetening corn

Minnesota beet co-op to study adding sugar to corn ethanol process.
 

Renville, Minn. — Could sugar beets sweeten corn ethanol manufacturing?

Minnesota beet farmers hope the answer is “yes,” when a study sponsored by AURI’s Center for Producer-Owned Energy is completed. The study being conducted for the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative will determine if adding sugar during fermentation speeds up ethanol production. The research could benefit both the corn and sugar beet industries by boosting ethanol plant efficiency and offering a new use for excess beet sugar.

The Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative was founded in 1972 by about 300 sugar beet growers. Today its 584 farmer-shareholders operate 12 beet-receiving stations in southwest Minnesota. The cooperative employs about 350 full-time workers during the beet-processing season and an additional 320 during the fall harvest.

The co-op’s Renville refining factory has the capacity to produce 400,000 tons of sugar a year. That’s about 30 percent more volume than it is allowed to market at federally-supported prices. Growers are looking for new outlets for the excess sugar, says Dennis Timmerman, AURI project director.

Laboratory tests, which will evaluate 2- to 7-percent sugar concentrations in corn mash, will start this summer at Greenway Consulting in Morris, Minn. If lab results look promising, the cooperative will do several plant-scale tests at a Minnesota ethanol facility.

The co-op will also evaluate the economics of using its excess sugar for ethanol. Under current federal trade quotas, Timmerman notes, the extra sugar is worth considerably less than it costs to produce.
Timmerman emphasizes that sugar beet growers are not seeking to displace corn in ethanol production. Rather, he says, the goal is to improve the efficiency of corn-ethanol manufacturing — in effect increasing the capacity of the state’s ethanol plants.