Creating Energy from Renewable Resources
Alabama Power Supports Mobile Gasification Unit
Thanks to a generous gift from Alabama Power, a mobile gasification power generation unit, designed and built by Community Power Corporation of Littleton, Colorado, to Auburn University specifications, will be moving throughout the state demonstrating how to turn renewable resources into energy.
The mobile unit has a gasifier that turns biomass into synthetic gas. The synthetic gas can then be used to fuel an engine that can produce electricity to power and heat remote operations such as poultry houses, green houses or other comparable business operations. The unit can be fueled using wood chips, but AU researchers want to see if other feedstocks, such as poultry litter, and a variety of woody residue materials can also be used.
In addition to demonstrating concepts for generating electrical power and heat, using renewable resources abundantly available in Alabama, AU’s Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts will work with Alabama Power and Community Power Corporation to identify possible economic improvements of this distributed gasification capability as a supplement to more traditional energy sources, such as coal and water.
The use of small gasifiers, like the AU unit, distributed to poultry farms, saw mill operations or other operations where renewable resources are plentiful and do not have to be transported long distances can help power companies meet their renewable energy goals. Both in the field and on campus, the unit becomes a real world classroom helping to train engineering students to form a pool of gasification-trained engineers ready to enter the workforce in this critical energy area.
Alabama Power’s sponsorship of the AU Mobile Biomass Gasification Unit and Community Power Corporation’s willingness to design and build the unit to AU’s specifications have created a partnership with Auburn University to conduct pioneering research related to energy production from Alabama’s renewable resources. Larry Fillmer, Executive Director of the Natural Resources Management & Development Institute, sums it this way, “It is our hope that with our mobile gasification unit, we can demonstrate various processes and biofuel sources by which a variety of businesses, municipalities and entrepreneurs can draw on the wealth of our natural resources to create economic growth in Alabama.”
