KILOWATTS FROM CORNOBS

Enlarge Image Image Gallery ABOVE: Odin Associates' diesel-powered 35-KW generator runs on gas produced from burning corncobs. A small amount of liquid fuel is required for ignition and lubrication, but this particular unit is 80% cornfed! Simplicity and low initial investment cost were the project objectives.

An old technology, spruced up with practical American ingenuity, just might let us
generate ...

All of us are aware — when we top off our gas tanks or pay the power and heat billsthat the cost of surviving in modern society is taxing our incomes to a greater extent than ever before. And since these energy costs, themselves, reflect — to some extent, at least — the economic hardships placed upon the suppliers of those commodities, the expenses are ultimately distributed so that everyone (manufacturers, food producers, and consumers alike) is affected, in a vicious circle of circumstance.

Cut-and-dried solutions to such a complicated problem can't be expected, of course ... but one option—increased decentralization of power generation—offers some real advantages to folks who are willing to work with alternatives on a personal or community level.

Specifically, we're referring to the generation of electricity using corncobs ... the 36 million tons of waste cores produced annually in just 10 of our corn-raising states. This feedstock—when teamed with an old technology that's now being updated, and perfectly good municipal power generation equipment that costs too much to use at present—might help to solve a problem that plagues hundreds of rural communities across the nation.

FOOTWORK PAYS OFF

About three years ago, Dr. James O'Toole of Iowa State University began developing a concept that would allow "local scale" power plants (those with a total generation capacity of several thousand kilowatts or less) to utilize agricultural by-products to fuel their natural gas/diesel-powered generators. With the support of both municipal power associations and two local municipal utilities,, he conducted a survey of the diesel generating capacity in the state of Iowa (77 plants were evaluated for condition, adaptability, cost of retrofitting, and acceptable environmental and safety considerations) ... made a study of corncob availability (based on the location of seed corn operations in 14 states, as well as on the storage capacity of Iowa's grain elevators) ... and worked up an economic assessment of corncob power production versus diesel electric generation.

During this same period, Robert Haug-a utility analyst-formed a firm called Odin Associates, in order to develop a small-scale demonstration of the existing technology ... and late in 1981, after testing, his organization received an Appropriate Technology grant from the Department of Energy to further investigate the possibility of using gasification equipment for the generation of electricity on a community level.