host posted on December 14, 2009 08:12
By Adam Smith
The North Jefferson News
Fultondale’s ongoing efforts to turn wood waste into electricity is continuing to see positive results.
The project was launched last year through a $150,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs. The city has also worked with Alabama Power and Auburn University on the feasibility of turning biomass at a city landfill into electricity.
Fultondale building inspector Darryl Aldrich, who heads up the city’s efforts on the project, said in addition to creating a clean source of electricity, burning the biomass could add up to 50 years to the landfill.
“I really think this is the wave of the future,” Aldrich said. “I think we’ll eventually see more buildings using this kind of power.”
Students from Auburn’s Center for Biology and Biproducts have been regular visitors to the landfill over the last seven months. The students collect chipped biomass into five gallon buckets and later test the chips for how many British Thermal Units [BTUs] can be obtained. BTUs are used to measure the power of heating and cooling systems.
Aldrich said the average citizen would be surprised at how much power can be generated from the process. He said Fultondale’s wood waste is producing the highest BTU rating of any other material the students are currently testing, at 1,800 BTUs per gram.
“I have a bunch of wood pellets in a peanut butter jar equal to 100,000 kilowatts,” he said. “One ton of biomass produces one megawatt [1 million watts] of electricity.”
To help Auburn researchers determine which of the city’s biomass waste would be more suitable to burn, GPS units have been installed on city trucks that pick up waste. Aldrich said that allows researchers to determine what parts of the city the most usable waste is coming from.
When the project ends in about eight months, Aldrich said it will have been successfully proven that the biomass can be burned and used for electricity. He said researchers should also be able to determine a consistent BTU rating for the city’s wood waste. However, he said other factors will have to be determined, such as how much carbon monoxide is released during the burning process.
To further educate the public on the process, Auburn’s mobile gasification lab will make a return visit after the first of the year. The lab shows how gas from the burned biomass is transformed into electricity.
“What I like about it is we’re using all this waste material that would otherwise be thrown away or burned,” Aldrich said. “It’s very promising.”