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Trash to energy Waste Management Inc. is building a $12.4 million power plant at the King George County landfill that will turn trash into energy. Waste Management, which operates the King George landfill, this year started work on what will be the largest of the company's six gas-to-energy plants in Virginia. It's expected to be completed by the spring. Methane gas is a natural byproduct of trash, and the new plant will turn that waste into money. The methane gas will be piped into three turbine engines in the plant, which will create electricity to be sold to East Coast energy providers. The company is approved to add a fourth turbine if needed. The plant will generate about 9.8 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 10,000 homes. King George will get 10 percent of the gross annual sale of electricity, which Waste Management officials say will be at least $200,000 a year. Though the King George waste-to-energy plant will be the largest in the area, it won't be the only one. The Stafford-Fredericksburg Regional Landfill and Fauquier County Landfill also have methane power plants. Spotsylvania County is in the process of developing a gas collection and flare system at the Livingston Landfill. The county received a $474,400 grant from the federal stimulus package to help with the project. It's a multi-phase project, with the ultimate goal being energy conversion. --Bill Freehling Wind energy Roger Cavendish's energy consumption has dropped 38 percent at his 4,000-square-foot Caroline County home since he installed a 33-foot-high wind turbine last summer. Cavendish's Skystream 3.7 turbine churns out electricity anytime the wind blows. On particularly windy days, the turbine provides all his energy needs and sometimes contributes electricity back to the grid, which offsets his monthly bills from Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. REC provides energy to three people with wind turbines at their homes, said company spokeswoman Ann Lewis: Cavendish and two homes in Fauquier County. Cavendish is the owner of Spotsy Wind Energy on Quality Drive near Four-Mile Fork. The company is a division of Phoenix Masonry Inc., a commercial masonry contractor Cavendish runs with his son, Chad. Cavendish started Spotsy Wind Energy in October 2008. He sells and installs the Skystream 3.7 model that he has at home. He said business has been slower than expected due to the recession, but he thinks it will pick up. He's sold turbines to customers in King George, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Fauquier and more. A turbine on a 34-foot tower costs about $11,200; it's about $1,000 more for a 45-foot tower. Installation costs about $5,000, but Cavendish said many people can do that themselves. He expects prices will drop if more people start using them. The federal government offers a tax credit of 30 percent of the turbine costs, and Virginia has a 20 percent grant program. That means people can pay for about half the cost with government grants and credits. Cavendish said a wind turbine can probably pay for itself within four years--not to mention the environmental benefits. --Bill Freehling WOOD PELLETS WoodFuels Virginia expects to have a wood-pellet mill up and running in Bumpass next month. The plant will convert pulpwood from logging companies operating within an 80- to 90-mile radius into pellets that can be burned to heat homes as well as public and commercial buildings. "Our plan is to produce 100,000 tons in 2010," said Bruce Hussar, plant manager. Wood pellets have long been a popular fuel source in Europe, and are catching on in the United States. Made of renewable substances--generally recycled wood waste--they are efficient, clean burning and considered carbon neutral because trees take in a much carbon as they release when burned. WoodFuels' pellets will be made of lower-grade timber that doesn't make the cut for lumber, such as tree tops and saplings that are cut to thin a timber stand, Hussar said. Today, there are more than 80 pellet mills across North America, and they produce in excess of 1.1 million tons of fuel per year, according to the Pellet Fuels Institute in Arlington. The pellets are used in approximately 800,000 homes in the United States in freestanding stoves, fireplace inserts and even furnaces. Pellet fuel also is used to heat larger facilities such as schools. WoodFuels Virginia doesn't have a customer base yet, but is talking to a distributor about selling bags of pellets to such places as Lowe's and Home Depot for people who have wood stoves. It also is adding a rail spur so it can deliver wood pellets to places that now depend heavily on coal, such as universities, government buildings and Dominion Virginia Power. "It's pretty surprising how many places still use coal," Hussar said. --Cathy Jett Barley for ethanol A company in Hopewell hopes to revolutionize the ethanol industry while giving local grain farmers a boost. Osage Bio Energy is building an ethanol plant south of Richmond that would use barley instead of corn to make the fuel additive. Ethanol is blended with gasoline to make a cleaner-burning, renewable fuel. Byproducts will be used to produce animal feed and fuel pellets. Company officials say its $300 million Appomattox Bio Energy plant would process about 30 million bushels of barley to make about 65 million gallons of ethanol a year. The plant is under construction and is expected to be producing by early 2010. That's of great interest to farmers in the Northern Neck and Tidewater areas who have grown barley for years and are preparing to boost their production. Osage says it hopes to buy barley grown within 100 miles of the plant. It contracted Perdue AgriBusiness to line up growers. Barley is often planted as a cover crop that gives farmers an additional cash crop, and it boosts yields when double-cropped with corn and soybeans. According to Ethanol Producer Magazine, most of the nation's ethanol is made from corn. But that may change as producers look to move beyond the corn belt for alternatives. Along with barley, the industry is researching the suitability of other raw materials--wheat, wood chips, sugar cane, algae and cat tails, for example--to produce ethanol. --Rusty Dennen Cooking oil One restaurant's trash is another person's liquid treasure when it comes to waste vegetable oil. Restaurants that use vegetable oil for cooking typically stored the used portions in giant drums, where it sits until commercial firms take it away for a fee. Then, gas prices started to approach $4 a gallon in Virginia in 2008. Nationally, restaurant owners started to get calls from drivers who volunteered to take some of the waste vegetable oil away for free. The drivers had modified their cars to run on waste vegetable oil. The demand was so high in Maryland's Montgomery County that the Division of Solid Waste Services set up a Web site where restaurant owners and drivers could arrange free, at-your-own-risk oil exchanges. The Web site is mont gomerycountymd.com/veg gieoil. A handful of Fredericksburg-area restaurants called by The Free Lance-Star, mostly fast-food establishments, reported no or little interest from callers inquiring about oil, indicating the trend may be slower to grow locally. Most still have commercial firms taking away their waste oil. --Kelly Hannon Algae Lowly pond scum has the potential to become the greenest of biofuels. The Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium--a group of universities, government agencies and industrial groups--has pioneered an algae-to-biodiesel conversion system in which algae strip nitrogen and other potential pollutants from effluent as they grow. Harvested algae are converted by means of a proprietary chemical process into a biodiesel fuel that's more environmentally friendly than petroleum diesel. The primitive, chlorophyll-containing organisms are among the fastest-growing plants in the world, and some common strains are potentially capable of producing more fuel per acre than any other biomass. Algae also can be grown and processed in Virginia, and the fuel produced would provide jobs and create wealth at home. It also would reduce dependence on foreign oil and the cost of shipping it great distances. A group of universities and corporations already is seeking federal stimulus funds to build a $50 million algae farm and biodiesel production plant on land owned by the city of Virginia Beach, for example. Biodiesel created from algae burns cleaner than petroleum and coal products, and the complete cycle is carbon neutral. Algae can be grown in waste and runoff water, thereby removing the nutrients that damage rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. Using algae also avoids utilizing food crops, trees, and other valuable natural resources to produce fuel. --Cathy Jett

Date published: 12/26/2009

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