Mobile "Fuel Factory" Heading To Farms This Spring

Mobile Fuel Factory Heading To Farms This Spring ENERGY Alternative Fuels Minnesota farmers will be making fuel from farm waste this spring and summer and they ll be doing it on the farm A pickup camper-sized prototype approximately 8 ft wide 16 ft long and 11 ft high will be making the rounds of farms as part of a University of Minnesota pilot project The mobile fuel factory could eventually make farms energy self-sufficient and more We are making some modifications in the design running some more tests and making some revisions said Roger Ruan biosystems engineer University of Minnesota This winter I will take the design to a factory in China that has been commissioned to build the prototype If everything goes well this spring and summer we will talk to companies about commercializing it The trailer-sized fuel refinery is relatively simple in concept even if the technology involved is complicated Feedstocks which can be anything from crops or crop residues to ground up tires and plastics are fed into an oxygen-free chamber There they are heated with microwaves to 500üF breaking the feedstocks into solid and gas components in a process called pyrolysis While pyrolysis is nothing new it usually requires finely grinding the material so it can be evenly heated to release component gas The microwave heats materials from the inside out eliminating the cost of grinding Off the shelf components are expected to reduce costs The burned solids biochar are removed for use as fertilizer or potentially higher value use Meanwhile most of the gas is condensed into a liquid fuel It can be used on the farm or collected for further refining off-farm The rest is used to fuel the generator that powers the system Heat is a byproduct of the process and one that Ruan hopes to capture for use in the reactor or on the farm Further refining of the oils produced will depend on the raw material used and the end uses of the oils says Ruan Ground tires and plastics produce a very good hydrocarbon fuel He estimates that in the case of biomass 1 lb of feedstock could produce a half-pound of bio-oil a quarter pound of biochar and a quarter pound of combustible gas A lot of biomass can be used to produce heating oil or oils and syngas for electrical generation on the farm says Ruan Our hope is that it can be produced at a cost that is competitive with the electricity market Final costs will depend on a multitude of variables However Ruan expects a price tag in the $300 000 to $400 000 range He suggests that farmers could share a unit moving it from farm to farm thereby eliminating the cost of transporting biomass and other farm wastes to a central location Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Roger R Ruan Dept of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering 1390 Eckles Ave St Paul Minn 55108 ph 612 625-1710; ruanx001@umn edu

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