Post
Companies foresee power from corn stover-based biocoal
Three companies are working together to produce and generate power using biocoal made from biomass. The power company Ameren Missouri, biocoal company Enginuity, and ECAP, an agribusiness firm, are partnering to develop the product from corn stover. David Vogt of ECAP says farmers will rake and bale corn stover after harvest and take it to a plant.
“The plant would then process it, run it through Enginuity’s process, and it would go from corn stover to a coal-like looking material,” said Vogt Thursday at the Missouri State Fair.
Enginuity CEO Nancy Heimann tells Brownfield Ag News that biocoal, which her company currently produces in small demonstration quantities, will mean a better future for coal-fired power plants.
“I want to change power generation so that there’s a balance between BTUs below the ground in mined coal, and BTUs above the ground that we grow every year,” Heimann told Brownfield. “And when we bring that balance right, we’ll offer a more sustainable coal-fired power generation future.”
Biocoal beats solar and wind for dependability because it is renewable energy that doesn’t depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing, said Ameren Missouri’s Warren Wood.
“We have an opportunity to take this innovative technology that really doesn’t exist anywhere else and move it into commercial deployment,” said Wood, “which has the opportunity for jobs in the state of Missouri creating something that can be shipped anywhere in the world.”
The three companies say that the biomass coal, used with mined coal, reduces Green House Gas emissions. Nancy Heimann tells Brownfield she anticipates Engenuity will be producing 200,000 tons of biocoal annually by mid-2017 to early 2018. That, she says, will require 250,000 to 300,000 tons of biomass.
AUDIO: David Vogt (3 min. MP3)
AUDIO: Nancy Heimann (3 min. MP3)
AUDIO: Warren Wood (3 min. MP3)
I have never agreed with using cropland to grow fuel to go in our cars; I certainly don’t agree with removal of the stover after harvest, as stover provides many advantages – limits erosion, puts nutrients back in the soil, provides grazing for livestock, and can help build top soil. I see can some value in removing the cobs, but raking and baling ALL the stover? Why are we using valuable assets like this to burn for fuel when we are one of the richest countries in the World in terms of oil, natural gas and coal? This just seems so wrong for the future of farming in our country.