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MU Power Plant generates power from biomass
Posted: October 23, 2007
A load of waste wood chips arrives at the MU Power Plant.
In the latest effort by Campus Facilities – Energy Management to find and use more efficient energy sources, the MU Power Plant will replace up to 5 percent of its coal supply this year with waste wood chips. Burning wood chips will lower both the campus fuel bill and greenhouse gas emissions.
"We are testing different biomass fuels to learn more about fuel handling, mixing, and burning characteristics," said Gregg Coffin, MU Power Plant superintendent. "We are learning what it will take to make renewable biomass a regular fuel source."
To date, Energy Management has tested the burning of corncobs and switchgrass with coal.
A conveyer belt carries wood chips mixed with coal to the boiler.
Burning 7,000 tons of waste wood chips with coal this year will reduce the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by 7,000 tons, or about 4 percent; ash will be reduced by 220 tons. Since the wood chip supplier is closer than the plant's coal supplier, delivery costs will be reduced by 90,000 trucking miles, which will save about 16,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
Energy Management is purchasing the waste wood chips from Missouri Mulch in New Florence, Mo., a subsidiary of Independent Stave, the world's largest supplier of barrels for wine and whiskey producers. White oak used in the barrels is harvested from Missouri and is also available in nearby states. Excess wood left over from the barrel-making process is chipped to size for use in the MU Power Plant.
The power plant currently has a two-year permit to burn wood chips, but EM hopes to make this pilot program permanent, like its successful Tire-Derived Fuel program. Used for the past decade, the TDF program annually saves more than $200,000 a year in fuel costs and reduces source emissions by over 250 tons.
Fire inside a Power Plant boiler.
"Based on the availability of viable biomass fuels, our biomass-development program will continue to evolve, and solely on a voluntary basis, as there are no regulations that tell us we must burn biomass," said Coffin. "Using biomass is environmentally efficient: It reduces MU's fuel costs, and improves the environment."