CHILLICOTHE, Iowa — Some of the heat pouring out of southeastern Iowa furnaces this unusually cold winter is homegrown--a thought pleasing to environmentally conscious homeowners and area farmers who may have found a new cash crop.
The Ottumwa Generating Plant, a 650-megawatt coal-fired facility, has been retrofitted to burn switchgrass along with its primary fuel as part of a test project.
"We are on the cutting edge of a new fuel that might actually help the economy of some of our customers," said plant manager Cynthia Lord.
Gary Kelderman, one of 100 farmers growing switchgrass for the plant, located 80 miles southeast of Des Moines, says more is at stake than money.
"It's all about preservation of clean air and self-sufficiency and providing green energy and local energy," he said.
The power plant, owned by Alliant Energy, consumes 450 tons of coal an hour to crank out electricity for about 200,000 homes.
It started burning switchgrass as well in late November. By the end of this month, the plant will have burned 4,000 tons of the thick-stemmed native perennial, which is easily grown in southern Iowa.
Further tests will measure the impact of burning grass on the boiler's efficiency as another 35,000 tons of it is mixed with coal. Testing will be completed by 2005.
The goal is to replace up to 5% of the coal with grass. At that rate, about 25 tons of switchgrass would burn per hour, says Bill Morton, lead project engineer for Alliant Energy. It would take about 50,000 acres of land to grow that much switchgrass for a year.
"The impact on the farmers here could be significant," Morton said.
The grass resembles straw and is packaged in 4-by-8-foot rectangular bales. They are fed by conveyor into a machine that chops and grinds them into a dust that is blown into the furnace.
Burning switchgrass in place of some coal could "provide very positive results for the environment" by reducing harmful emissions, says Jerry Schnoor, a University of Iowa professor who studied the issue.
Schnoor, co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, said in a 1999 report that carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by nearly 177,000 tons per year and sulfur dioxide--the precursor to acid rain--by up to 113 tons per year if 5% of the coal were replaced with switchgrass.
