Dirty Biomass Facility Proposed for Nebraska

- by Erin Voegele, April 25, 2014. Source: Bio­mass Magazine

A pro­posed project under devel­op­ment by South­west Renew­able Resources aims to devel­op a unique bio­mass fuel pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty and up to 25 MW of bioen­er­gy capac­i­ty in South Sioux City, Neb.

Ear­li­er this year, the Nebras­ka cities of South Sioux City, Wake­field and Wayne, along with the North­east Pub­lic Pow­er Dis­trict, entered a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) with SRR. Under the MOU, the four pub­lic enti­ties and SRR have agreed to work togeth­er to sup­plies elec­tric­i­ty to the three cities and NEPP via a bio­mass-fired cogen­er­a­tion system.

Tra­cy Will­son, senior part­ner of SRR, told Bio­mass Mag­a­zine his com­pa­ny has been work­ing with South Sioux City on the project since last Octo­ber. The pro­posed facil­i­ty is expect­ed to house a man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tion for the SRR’s patent-pend­ing South­west Renew­able Fuel. The result­ing biobased fuel would be fed direct­ly into a cogen­er­a­tion pow­er unit. Will­son said the exact size of that unit it still being deter­mined, with 15 MW and 25 MW of capac­i­ty cur­rent­ly under consideration.

Accord­ing to Will­son, the sol­id bio­fu­el devel­oped by his com­pa­ny is a mix of bio­mass and poly­eth­yl­ene plas­tic. While he was unable to offer specifics on the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, he did note that the result­ing fuel is water­proof. In addi­tion to wood and oth­er types of cel­lu­losic bio­mass, the process can also incor­po­rate non­re­cy­clable munic­i­pal sol­id waste into the fuel. Will­son also stressed that the fuel is not pelletized.

“Our [fuel] burns so con­sis­tent­ly and clean that it’s a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to divert waste from a land­fill,” Will­son said. He also added that SRR is also look­ing at incor­po­rat­ing ani­mal fat and grease into its fuel for use at the South Sioux City facility.

Accord­ing to Will­son, SRR’s bio­mass fuel has been test­ed by inde­pen­dent labs and an engi­neer­ing firm that designs cogen­er­a­tion sys­tems. Infor­ma­tion sup­plied by SRR indi­cates that the mois­ture con­tent of the company’s fuel is 3.9 per­cent or less, com­pared to 20 per­cent or greater for stan­dard bio­mass. An esti­mat­ed 0.0625 MW of ener­gy can be gen­er­at­ed from one met­ric ton of SRR bio­mass fuel, com­pared to 0.03625 MW for stan­dard bio­mass. Over­all, SRR’s fuel is esti­mat­ed to gen­er­ate 42 per­cent more ener­gy than stan­dard biomass.

In addi­tion to the pro­posed Nebras­ka facil­i­ty, Will­son said his com­pa­ny has plans to estab­lish sim­i­lar bio­mass fuel man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties all around the coun­try. SRR is also work­ing to minia­tur­ize its fuel pro­duc­tion process and mobi­lize it so that the tech­nol­o­gy could be used to cre­ate fuel for use dur­ing dis­as­ter situations.

In addi­tion to man­u­fac­tur­ing its patent-pend­ing bio­mass fuel, SRR is also active in the pel­let space. Ear­li­er this year, the com­pa­ny pur­chased the for­mer Pre­ci­sion Pel­let facil­i­ty in Snowflake, Ariz.