Seed waste stirs hull of an idea
Missouri co-op supplies biomass for fuel pellets
By T.J. GREANEY of the (Columbia, MO) Tribune’s staff -- Four years ago, seed company owner Steve Flick of Kingsville noticed he was spending a lot of time and money burning, burying or dumping the empty hulls left over from his grass seed. He said it was a costly mess, and it gave him an idea.
"I think maybe I fell down the steps and got hit on the head," Flick said.
The idea was to use the excess material for energy. Flick decided to follow a method that is well-known in many European countries but at the time was nearly unheard of in the United States: turning prairie grass into fuel.
"I thought, we can do this here and do this better than anyplace in the world," he said.
Flick petitioned area farmers to form a co-op that could produce bails of "cellulosic" material such as switch grass, cornstalks or out-of-condition hay. The bails could then be ground up and formed into inch-long pellets.
These pellets can be burned alongside coal to produce a cleaner, renewable form of energy. The grass material typically has high BTU’s - a measure of energy released when matter is burned - but no nutritional value for livestock.
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