UMaine to Study “Trashanol” Effect in Maine

- by Grady Trim­ble,  Octo­ber 24, 2014, WLBZ

A team of Uni­ver­si­ty of Maine researchers are gear­ing up to study the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing new tech­nol­o­gy called “Trashanol” to Maine.

“Trashanol” is a waste-to-ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by Mary­land-based com­pa­ny Fiberight. Basi­cal­ly, it is a process that con­verts house­hold waste into fuel.

The tech­nol­o­gy is spark­ing inter­est in East­ern Maine, because pret­ty soon, near­ly 200 towns in the region will face sub­stan­tial­ly high­er costs to dis­pose of their trash at the PERC plant in Orring­ton. The long term con­tracts for those towns is up in 2018, and they are all expect­ing PERC will dras­ti­cal­ly increase their fees.

Those towns, which are rep­re­sent­ed by the Munic­i­pal Review Com­mit­tee, or MRC, hired UMaine researchers to explore “Trashanol” as an alter­na­tive. While the deal has­n’t been final­ized yet, MRC will spend $20,000 for the research. Dr. Hemant Pendse with UMaine’s For­est Biod­prod­ucts Research Insti­tute will lead it.

The insti­tute has a lot of expe­ri­ence in cre­at­ing ener­gy from pulp wood and oth­er wood prod­ucts, and Dr. Pendse said the chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste are very sim­i­lar to wood.

“Trashanol” is a fuel derived from the cel­lu­losic sug­ars from waste prod­ucts. It is an addi­titve to the gas we put in our cars.

Dr. Pendse and his team will vis­it Fiberight’s “Trashanol” project site in Vir­ginia. Right now that is just a pilot-scale oper­a­tion, but both Pendse and MRC offi­cials said they think “Trashanol” will be ready for full-scale oper­a­tion in Maine by 2018.

“Tech­ni­cal exper­tise that they bring to the table in projects such as this will just give us addi­tion­al con­fi­dence that we have a full and com­plete under­stand­ing of what the capa­bil­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy are,” MRC Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Greg Loun­der said.

As far as pay­ing for a “Trashanol” facil­i­ty in Maine, MRC offi­cials said Fiberight will be respon­si­ble for rais­ing most of the mon­ey to build it and will look for pri­vate investors.


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