Farmers, ethanol industry experiment with biomass

Grand Forks Herald
The Associated Press - Sunday, October 19, 2008

WILLMAR, Minn.
Corn cobs have long been used as a fuel, helping Minnesotans warm their houses or heat up an oven to bake bread.

But during this year's harvest in western Minnesota, those corn cobs are being collected to fuel a local ethanol plant.

Last week, brothers Lonnie and Ryan Fosso watched two combines simultaneously harvest their corn and collect the corn cobs.

"I wish (my grandparents) could see this," said Lonnie Fosso.

Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company has been feeding biomass to a gasifier that can turn the biomass - normally wood chips - into a synthetic gas that can replace natural gas.
During four months of trial use, the gasifier has show it can displace about 25 percent of the natural gas the plant uses, officials said.

Gene Fynboh, a member of the company's board of directors and coordinator of the biomass harvest project, said plant officials hope to someday have biomass replace up to 90 percent of the natural gas used at the plant.

Read the full story