[Bioconversion] Re: Grass pellets

[CAVM at aol.com]

The figures for cost per  million BTU seem extraordinarily high. 
 
Neal Van  Milligen
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Landmark Vermont Farm Tries  Grass Pellet Heat

February 06, 2006 — By David Gram, Associated Press 

SHELBURN, Vermont — It cost Shelburne Farms about  $1,000 a year to mow grass 
that doesn't end up as hay for the animals and simply  goes to waste. Now 
staff at the historic farm have come up with a use for it:  turn it to pellets 
and burn them to heat the massive main barn. 

A boiler  room is a strange place for a party, but the only things missing 
Friday were  cocktails and canapes as staff from the farm, a historic landmark 
and  environmental education center, joined representatives of the Grass Energy 
 Collaborative and others to watch grass pellets get loaded into the barn's  
furnace. 

Grass as fuel is not new. Burning it got Great Plains pioneers  through many 
a tough winter in the 19th century. What is relatively new is the  idea that 
grass pellets could be manufactured for maximum heating efficiency and  sold 
commercially. 

"This is a small step toward a much bigger future,"  Jock Gill, president of 
the non-profit collaborative, said of Friday's test  burn. 

The hope at Shelburne Farms is to gather grass from the farm, as  well as 
neighboring farms, use a special machine to turn the grass into pellets  and burn 
it much the way wood pellets are burned in boilers now. 

The  advantages, said Marshall Webb, special projects coordinator at 
Shelburne Farms,  include projections that grass pellets will cost about half what 
wood pellets  do. The grass is dried by the sun, rather than with 
energy-intensive processes  used for wood pellets, he added. Perhaps most important, the 
grass pellets can  come right from the farm, Webb said. 

Robert Bender, president of South  Burlington-based Chiptec Wood Energy 
Systems, said pellets can be used well as  fuel for combined heat and power systems 
that provide space heating as well as  that needed to run a small electrical 
turbine. 

Webb said that would  dovetail well with Shelburne Farms' vision. 

"The ultimate goal by 2020  is to be powered completely by renewable energy," 
he said. 

The Gas  Energy Collaborative, which includes people who have been involved 
with other  biomass fuels and a Cornell University professor who has been 
experimenting with  grass pellets, issued a white paper detailing what it believes 
are some of the  promised benefits of grass pellets. 

One is cost. A ton of grass pellets  produces 14 million British thermal 
units of heat, versus 16 million for a ton  of wood pellets, the paper said. But 
it added that wood pellets cost about $200  a ton, where grass pellets will be 
able to be sold for $100 a ton. 

Put  another way, the cost per million Btu for fuel oil is $23.47; for 
electricity,  $39.73; for wood pellets $17.86 and for grass pellets provided by a 
producers'  co-op to farmers who grow the grass, at $10.20. 

Source: Associated  Press