Washington State University students are about to get some hands on experience when it comes to waste management. The university is working with staff from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on research that takes waste-to-energy study to a new level.

According to a story that appeared in wastemanagementworld.com, the program was made possible by a $225,000 donation from Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms. It’s focused on ways to turn organic and agricultural waste into bioenergy. The research is currently being conducted by WSU’s Bioproducts Sciences and Engineering Laboratory.

BSEL opened in spring 2008 with staff from the university and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory conducting research and helping give students a hands-on education. A key part of the original vision for the lab has been to move research from the lab to commercial use.
To do that, the lab has needed a biomass pretreatment system to use as a pilot plant, Ahring said. She worked with other BSEL staff to design the $575,000 system, and it was assembled by Vista Engineering Technologies in Richland.

“This equipment allows us to vary the conditions and evaluate different biomass feedstocks, so we can find the optimal conditions for degrading the material into valuable products,” said Birgitte K. Ahring, director of the WSU Center for Bioproducts and Bioenergy and the Battelle Distinguished Professor. “This advanced pretreatment process is more cost-efficient than traditional methods, making it more viable to use biomass to develop biofuels and bioproducts.”

The donation will be spread out over three years and focuses on the anaerobic digestion process of waste, using cattle manure and onion culls to produce energy. The goal is to replace the use of diesel and propane which is currently relied upon for energy.

What are your thoughts about this project? Please share them in our comments section.

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If you had 5 minutes on stage, what would you say? What if you had 20 slides that automatically rotated after 15 seconds each – and weren’t allowed  note cards?

That’s the format for Ignite Portland an event expected to draw 600 people to Bagdad Theatre on Sept. 23. Ignite is a global initiative that draws entrepreneurs, business professionals and passionate people from all industries to share their backgrounds in a fun, fast-paced setting that encourages networking and sparks new ideas.

For Meredith Sorensen, outreach manager at Harvest Power, the answer was simple. She’s going to present “Powered by Banana Peels” – a topic that blends compost and renewable energy, two subjects sure to get Portland’s savvy audience stirred up.

Sorensen has presented at Ignite Portland previously – in 2008 – and is pleased to return, and to speak  on behalf of Harvest Power.

Though she lives and works in Portland, the company itself is based in Massachusetts and collaborates on projects across North America. Sorensen said Harvest Power looks forward to more speaking opportunities across the U.S.

Here’s a brief description of what to expect at Ignite Portland:

Most people are hip to the concept of composting: You take apple cores, banana peels, and leaves, put them all together and poof! Nature recycles the organic material into a nutrient rich soil amendment known as compost.

Welcome to the next frontier of organic recycling: anaerobic digestion. It happens in cows. It happens in landfills. It could soon turn your banana peel into renewable energy (and compost).

This presentation will go over the basics of biogas production through the anaerobic digestion of organic waste.

• When: Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and talks begin at 7 p.m. Sept. 23, 2010
• Where: Bagdad Theatre, 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., Portland
• Admission: Free

This post is brought to you by Harvest Power. Follow us on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook.

Today marks an important milestone for Cayuga County legislators. They are set to vote on an important renewable energy project that would could bring a biogas pipeline into Auburn New York. A first for the area, the department of planning and economic development is scheduled to meet with dairy farmers and other experts to discuss the feasibility of this project.

The Citizen outlined the project in an article titled Cow Power: County to unveil biogas pipeline proposal to convert farm waste into electricity. In it, reporter Nathan Baker detailed the nature of this plan as well as the science behind biogas technology:

“This is one of only a few projects like this in the country,” said Frank Howe, a county planner working on the pipeline project. “It has garnered a great deal of attention and we’re being watched by the USDA in Washington as a model for the dairy industry in the U.S.”

Biogas is a mixture of mostly methane and carbon dioxide produced by the breakdown of organic material by bacteria. Many farmers produce the gas as a way to save on energy costs and reduce the smell of livestock waste.

If the proposal is supported by legislators, the pipeline would span some 40 miles to connect seven dairy farms. Cow manure would supply biogas through the process of anaerobic digestion. According to the article, the pipeline would lead to a generator that would convert the biogas into heat, electricity or natural gas.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the manure produced by one cow in a day can produce enough gas to generate 3 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In one year, the combined 30,000 cows of the seven farms could potentially produce nearly 33 million kWh of electricity.

The average American home uses 10,000 kWh of electricity in a year.

For more information, or to read the full story, please click here. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this plan in Auburn. Do you think the legislature will support it? Why or why not? Leave a comment below.

This post is brought to you by Harvest Power. Follow us on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook.

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