Using woodchips will lower costs and reduce emissions
By Mark Slavit
Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 12:02 a.m.
Read more: Local
Engineers at Mizzou’s power plant are using a new recipe for energy.
They are mixing wood chips with coal to produce electricity.
MU power plant workers will burn 7,000 tons of wood chips this year. Engineers say burning wood chips will lower power plant fuel costs and reduce emissions and greenhouse gases by about 4 percent. The wood is waste material that’s normally used to make mulch. Wood chips also cut down on transportation costs.
Power Plant Superintendent Gregg Coffin said, “Having a local source has allowed us to procure the wood chips at a cost less than coal on an equivalent heat basis. Additionally, because it is a closer source, we are reducing more than 90,000 trucking miles in the State of Missouri, and around 16,000 gallons of diesel fuel is saved.” The MU power plant has a two-year permit to burn the wood chips. Plant engineers hope to make this pilot project a permanent one. While the MU campus has grown by almost 60 percent since 1990, energy use has dropped by nineteen-percent, thanks to energy conservation efforts on campus and here at the power plant. A contract with a mulch distributor in New Florence, Mo., will provide the power plant with wood chips for the next year. Coffin said, “In the next year or two, we’ll be looking for additional sources of biofuel energy, wood waste and other things. We’ll be out in the market looking for that. So, if you’re a supplier, give us call.” Coffin told me he hopes to expand the use of biofuel at the power plant from 5 percent to 20 percent within the next few years. | 
Power Plant Superintendent
Gregg Coffin
|
