Related Posts for biomass
January 27, 2012
By Amy Condra FOR THE JUNEAU EMPIRE: Water is abundant in Southeast — it falls freely from the sky throughout the summer and fall, filling rivers and creeks that tumble down our mountains, into the lakes, channels and canals, the bays and straits that wind their way throughout the land. Here, this water has sustained humans for thousands of years, providing fish, fur and a means to navigate the region.
And for more than a century it has generated power for homes, offices and industries.
Southeast has a significant number of hydroelectric power projects, and these plants have been a reliable and relatively inexpensive source of locally produced, renewable energy for many of our communities.
But according to a draft of the recently released Southeast Alaska Integrated Resource Plan, while Southeast might have plenty of water to generate hydroelectricity, it is running short of ways to store it.
“We are storage-challenged,” said Dave Carlson, CEO of Southeast Alaska Power Agency and a member of the Advisory Work Group that assisted with the SEIRP. “(The draft plan) identified the problems we know of here, that we had more than a sense were coming. The winter time heating loads have just been skyrocketing.”
Why? Because as heating oil costs have risen dramatically over the past few years, Carlson said, “people have felt it in their pocketbooks, and have decided it’s cheaper to heat with electricity than with oil. It’s a dilemma.” Read more
January 13, 2012
By Jonathan Grass, Alaska Journal of Commerce: Alaskan Brewing Co. has entered the final stage of a 16-year process in setting a precedent in renewable energy. The Juneau-based brewery has a new boiler to make its own malt waste a sole energy source and has been selected for nearly $500,000 in federal money to finish the job.
Alaskan Brewing is in the commission and testing phases of a $1.8 million steam boiler fueled entirely by the company’s own spent grain. The grain is a protein-rich material that lends itself thoroughly with the combustion technology the company has been perfecting.
The idea is that the new boiler will eliminate the brewery’s fossil fuel use in the grain drying process and displace more than half of the fuel needed to create process steam in the brew house.
The brewery is currently a fairly intensive oil-related operation, currently running the grain dryer and other process heating from oil. Engineers estimate the completed boiler will help save an overall energy usage from oil and corresponding carbon emissions by more than 70 percent. This translates to a savings of nearly 1.5 million gallons of oil over the next 10 years.
The boiler was actually built last year and did an initial startup toward the end of the year. Testing showed the need for additional modifications. The company currently is waiting for additional design modifications to come and engineers hope it will be back up within a few months.
Brewing operations manager Brandon Smith said the entire system hopefully would be completed and running by the end of the first quarter this year and no later than the second quarter.
“This fuel, nobody’s ever burned it commercially before,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has selected Alaskan Brewing for $448,366 in Rural Energy for America Program funds to support the development. Despite being a capital city, Juneau’s demographics still qualify the brewery for a rural development grant. Alaskan Brewery communications manager Ashley Johnston said the grant would hopefully offset up to 10 percent of the overall system costs. Smith said paperwork is under way for the official approval, which will be done after the completion of the project. This grant represents the highest amount an Alaska business has been awarded from the USDA Rural Development’s business division. This has been active in Alaska for three years, during which it has approved 49 projects.
USDA business and energy specialist Chad Stovall said the business division typically gets $200,000 to $250,000 a year for projects. The national office must approve anything over that amount, which was how Alaskan got its unusually high appropriation.Read more
January 5, 2012
A Ketchikan mill is slated to begin producing wood pellets this winter. As Deanna Garrison reports, Tongass Forest Enterprises is hoping to capitalize on a recent surge in interest in processed wood heating products in Southeast Alaska. Listen to the full story here
December 15, 2011
By JEFF RICHARDSON,The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: It’s been more than a year since used paper and cardboard began piling up at K&K Recycling, gradually filling a warehouse at the Richardson Highway business in the form of half-ton bales.
Later this month, that unusual bounty will finally be put to use. K&K owner Bernie Karl plans to burn it, taking advantage of a new technology that will convert its heat to electricity.
Karl and a business partner, Connecticut-based United Technologies, have spent the past year developing the biomass generators. Company officials will arrive in Fairbanks Tuesday to complete the process, which Karl said should result in a new electricity source for Golden Valley Electric Association by Dec. 20.
“Everything is coming together,” he said. “It’s like a funnel, and we’re getting to the bottom of the funnel.”
The process takes recycled cardboard, paper and wood, then shreds it and forms the product into candy bar-sized pellets. Karl said those pellets will be fed through a hopper into five generator units at K&K, where they’ll be burned to create heat that will ultimately fuel an electric-generating turbine.
At least 5,000 tons of biomass pellets are required to fuel the generators each year. Karl said emissions from the generators, which will burn the pellets at 2,300 degrees, will meet state and federal pollution standards.
Karl said the project will initially produce 300 kilowatt hours of electricity before boosting its output to 500 kilowatt hours after the early bugs are worked out. That represents just a tiny portion of the electricity used by Golden Valley Electric Association customers, who consume roughly 200 megawatts of power per hour during winter.
Despite its modest size, the project is also appealing to GVEA, which has a self-imposed goal of generating 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2014. Projects like Karl’s allow the utility to incrementally build up the amount of renewable sources in its system, said Mike Wright, GVEA’s vice president of transmission and distribution. Read more
September 19, 2011
By Reba Lean of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Workers are finishing construction on a wood chip biomass boiler at the Delta High School. The boiler will provide heat for the 77,000-square-foot high school building and possibly other buildings around the school in the future.
The 5 million Btu boiler is the second in the state to be installed for a school. Tok had the first, and its boiler powers its school’s electricity in addition to heating.
Kent Scifres, project manager in Delta, believes only good will come from Delta’s new system.
“For this area, this project makes sense because we have lots of trees,” he said.
The boiler, made by Messersmith Manufacturing out of Michigan, will feed on wood chips from slab wood provided by Dry Creek’s Lumber and Milling Association. Trailers will dump tons of chips into a storage area inside the building, where augers will then feed the chips onto a conveyor belt into the boiler itself. Large particles are collected at the bottom of a 65-foot stack, where exhaust travels out the top invisibly.
“You won’t see any smoke go out it’s so clean burning,” Scifres said.
The boiler heats water heaters inside the building, which pipe into an existing system inside the school. The former fuel system won’t kick on unless the new boiler goes offline for some reason.
“It just ties into the existing system and circulates all around.”
Money for the boiler building’s construction came from a $2 million grant from Alaska Energy Authority and $800,000 from the state.
The move to biomass heat is a cost-cutting one for the school district.
The high school spends about 102,000 gallons of heating oil per year, which is priced at around $4 per gallon. It will cost $60 per ton of wood chips, and the school plans to use about 2,000 tons per year. Read more
June 14, 2011
By Joe Viechnicki of KFSK: A new report released this month outlines 33 recommendations for creating new jobs in the forest products, seafood, visitor and renewable energy industries in Southeast Alaska. The recommendations were developed by four groups of industry, government and stakeholder representatives, called “cluster groups.” The report is part of an ongoing U.S. Department of Agriculture strategy called the “transition framework” aimed at diversifying the economy in the region. Hear the full report
June 5, 2011
BY ZAZ HOLLANDER of the Alaska Star: Despite some concern among Anchorage Assembly members, plans are moving ahead to spin Anchorage’s garbage gas into electricity. Doyon Utilities LLC wants to provide power to the military base with electricity generated from the methane gas that seeps in large quantities from the Anchorage Regional Landfill just off the Glenn Highway at the Hiland Road exit.
The Anchorage Assembly on May 26 approved spending a $2 million state energy grant on the new gas-to-energy project in a 7-3 decision. The money comes from an Alaska Energy Authority renewable energy grant and can pay only for construction. Doyon will operate the facility and buy the gas produced for the next 20 years under the terms of the agreement with the municipality. The contract also includes two 10-year option periods.
In return, Doyon will compensate the city for the gas it uses. At today’s gas prices, the money coming back to the city could range from $1.3 million to $1.5 million a year, according to the city’s solid waste services director, Mark Madden.
“By taking that huge amount of methane out of our emissions, it’s good for the environment and on top of that we do get a fairly nice benefit of getting electricity out of it – and revenue,” Madden said. “It’s a green project in more ways than one.” Read more
June 3, 2011
By Ben Anderson in Alaska Dispatch: Consider this: Airlines that service the United States alone burn through about 17.5 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, according to an industry trade group. Back in the early part of 2008, during a spike in gas prices, 25 airlines around the world went bankrupt or out of business, in large part due to high petroleum costs.
With gas prices again high around the nation — and jet fuel partly responsible for record-high airfare prices — the commercial aviation industry is investing in research and science to wean itself off of petroleum. The Northwest and two of its industrial titans, Boeing and the Alaska Air Group, have set sights on the “biomass production capabilities” of the region, and the potential this renewable resource offers in transitioning away from petroleum and powering the airplanes of tomorrow.
A new study jointly funded in part by Boeing, Alaska Air and the Washington State Department of Commerce suggests that Northwest biomass could someday help stabilize the volatile jet fuel market. Biomass won’t offer a “magic antidote” or complete independence from petroleum-based fuels, the study warns. But the mind-boggling amount of biomass – biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms — available in the Northwest, with its millions of acres of forests, excess timber industry waste (think sawdust), biofuel-friendly agricultural crops, and even algae, makes it an attractive prospect with the potential for huge economic benefits that are sustainable, renewable and American-made. Read more
June 1, 2011
By Molly Rettig of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner: Some Interior villages are already sold on biomass. Community leaders shared how they harvest energy from the forests and rivers around them with roughly 200 attendees at the Alaska Wood Energy Conference on Wednesday.
“We are a rural community that wants to promote to other rural communities that this can be done,” Tanana city manager Bear Ketzler said.
The three-day event focused on various fuel types, technologies, environmental impacts and supply issues associated with wood energy.
The Tok School installed a wood chip-fired boiler in November that is fueled by local forest thinning projects and waste wood. Project leaders described the purpose and performance of the 5.5-million BTU steam boiler.
“It’s been pure savings,” said Scott MacManus, executive director for the Alaska Gateway School District.
The system should offset 65,000 gallons of heating fuel per year, saving $268,450. It was inspired by skyrocketing energy costs. The school district was spending $300,000 per year on heat and power and was forced to sacrifice music, art and other elective programs.
“This is why we’re involved in the wood business right now, because we have to do something to maintain the quality of education,” MacManus said. Read more
March 23, 2011
From the Bristol Bay Times: Grant money garnered from the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund will fund wood boilers for community buildings in Igiugig, Iliamna, Kokhanok and Port Alsworth, plus a wind turbine for Port Heiden, Lake and Peninsula Borough officials say.
In the latest round of energy fund grants, the borough received $369,000 for installation of wood boilers in the community buildings, and $250,000 for design and construction of Port Heiden’s wind turbine, said Borough Mayor Glen Alsworth Sr.
“The wood boilers and wind turbine are merely the latest efforts by the borough to implement alternative energy projects across the communities,” Alsworth said. “Our previous efforts, such as the Kokhanok wind turbine, have demonstrated to the state and other granting agencies that we are taking productive steps to address rising fuel costs in our borough,
“The borough has promised at least a 20 percent match for the two projects using borough funds, which shows that we are very serious about these projects and believe they are right moves at this time.”
For the wood boilers in Igiugig, Iliamna, Kokhanok and Port Alsworth, plans are to use locally and regionally sourced beetle kill spruce and other trees from the Lake Iliamna area, with the goal of sharply reducing the amount or even eliminating use of fuel oil to heat the buildings.
“The locally sourced wood is a key component of this project,” said Lamar Cotten, borough manager. Instead of using local funds to purchase imported fuel oil, residents and land owners now have the opportunity to keep that money in the community by harvesting local trees, he said. Read more
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