The White Mountains Community college in Berlin is preparing students for a new, green economy, with a little help from its friends.
The college has received some new biomass generator which can do alot more than just burn wood.
NHPR correspondent Chris Jensen has the story.
CHUGGING NOISE.
Outside the White Mountains Community College in Berlin recently, a big black contraption chugs away.
It looks a little like the engine that powered Humphrey Bogart’s boat in the 1951 movie “The African Queen”.
But when college officials look at it, they see the chance to teach north-country students a skill in emerging, green technology.
“It” is a biomass gasification plant.
Biomass plants are pretty common. But the difference here - the important word - is “gasification.”
Like a regular biomass plant, it burns materials such as wood and then uses a boiler and a turbine to produce heat or electricity.
But the gasification plant goes beyond that.
The gases it creates by the burning – and their subsequent treatment – can be themselves burned in an internal combustion engine. That engine powers a generator and that produces electricity.
Richard Bain is a top research engineer at the National Bioenergy Center in Colorado.
“If you want to look at a gasification system in essence it is a two-stage combustion process, where in the first stage we make a gas and in the second stage we burn the gas.”
Done properly it can more efficient and cleaner than a conventional biomass plant.
Bain says the concept is not new.
Early models were around 50 years ago in Europe, but they never really caught on in the US because oil and gas have been relatively inexpensive.
And biomass gasification plants aren’t cheap.
Jim Lagana is with the company American High Temp of Manchester which is donating the biomass plant to the Community College.
“I think it is safe to say that the construction costs of one of our gasification plants is approximately three times that of a normal, biomass burn plant.”
American High Temp owner Jack McDevitt says his plants have ranged from about $150,000 to about two million.
American High Temp has been manufacturing and selling units in Germany where a government subsidy makes the green technology fiscally feasible.
But they hope to start selling plants in the US by the end of next year.
Lagana says he doesn’t see people buying the units to sell electricity to power companies. He imagines them being used to power and perhaps heat a hospital or school or business.
They would be ideal for The North Country where wood is available.
But they would work anywhere and they can help get rid of all sorts of things including human or animal waste.
“This is a very attractive use of things like sewage sludge, plant waste and other fuels like that. So, we don’t have to be as close to a wood fuel source as certainly a chip plant would be to be cost effective. We could be next to a waste treatment plant or a place that produces an awful lot of farm waste, agricultural waste and things like that.”
Officials in Orlando, Florida are planning to use a biomass gasification plant to reduce the size of their landfill.
They idea is to “gasify” the solid waste to create electricity.
Lagana says Germany offers one thing that would really help here.…government subsidies to reduce the reliance on oil.
“I think that some of the attitudes have to shift about things like alternative energy and responsible disposal of waste. There are very heavy subsidies available in Europe that are not available here.”
SOUND OF THE MACHINE OPERATING.
So, what about the biomass gasification unit outside the White Mountains Community College?
It is an early, basic model. A small thing.
The new ones are heavily computerized.
But Katharine Eneguess, the president of the college, says it is just perfect for what she wants.
In this case students can learn the hands-on basics of biomass gasification. That includes physics, hydraulics and electronics.
“If in fact this becomes something that can be built in the United States our students will have certainly much more of a technology understanding and they will be cutting edge.”
And according to Eneguess, it all follows the college’s ongoing plan,
First, figure out what the future holds and then get students ready for it.
For NHPR News this is Chris Jensen.
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