What A Load Of…..
….Heat. An Iowa man is hoping to market the invention he has been working on for around twelve years or so. He calls it 'Nature's Furnace' and it is fueled by nature. Or a by-product of nature.
Waukee, Ia. — John Kimberlin hopes to light a fire under mountains of manure and other biomass sources and turn them into heat and electricity.
For more than 12 years, Kimberlin has been tinkering with an idea about how to build a better fire.
Now, he thinks he's perfected a small-scale furnace that can be adapted to farms, racehorse tracks or anywhere else biomass crops and livestock waste pile up.
Inventors have long tried to tap into the energy of manure, and scientists and others say it could help Iowa become a power producer. The state has enough manure to meet the energy needs of 325,000 homes, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has estimated. Tax incentives are encouraging the development of methane digesters to create electricity and control odor, for example.
The inspiration for Nature's Furnace - as Kimberlin calls his invention - grew out of the tons of horse manure and bedding that Kimberlin had on his acreage west of Des Moines.
A former horse trainer, Kimberlin had to find some way to rid the place of the refuse. He couldn't spread it on the land without contaminating the water. Having it hauled off would have been too costly.
The furnace is undergoing emissions tests. Kimberlin holds several patents on the device and has attracted the interest of some investors. There's a lot of interest in the furnace in Europe (insert gratuitous joke of choice here).
One customer wants to order 30 of the furnaces as soon as the emissions test results are known and there are a number of people who want to order single units, he said.
"There are inquiries on a daily basis from all over Europe, so we are expecting a lot of business in the next 12 months," Lyttle said.
The size of the Nature's Furnace is ideal for small poultry producers, Lyttle said.
Each producer needs to find a way to dispose of about 25 tons of litter every 12 weeks, he said, "so the size of this unit is just ideal."
At first, Nature's Furnace will be used primarily for heat, but Lyttle said he thinks it will also be used for generation of electricity by the European producers. "Small-scale power generation is very big in Europe," Lyttle said.
Matt Keeling, president of Nature's Furnace, said the furnaces also will be marketed in the United States for sale to ethanol plants. "That's been a dream of mine for five or six years," said Keeling.
Kimberlin and Keeling said they want to sell the furnaces in sizes that can be used on farms for heat or for generating electricity.
The idea is to keep the size of the furnace small so it's portable. That way, you can move the furnace, which can be mounted on a flatbed trailer, and not have to move bulky volumes of biomass fuel.
In the power industry, one nickname for coal fired power plants is the term 'dirt burner'. I can give you three guesses what nickname this one will attract. But I can't write it because of my own comment rules.
Business, Energy, Environment | Gaius Wednesday, 8 November , 2006
By crosspatch, Thursday, 9 November , 2006 @ 12:07 am
I can give you three guesses what nickname this one will attract:
poo-poo powerhouse
dynamo dung
mire machine
By Quilly Mammoth, Thursday, 9 November , 2006 @ 1:08 am
Oddly enough…when returning from Canada we went down a US hiway that took us past the boyhood home of Lawre3nce Welk in Strasburg, North Dakota. We decided to check it out. One of the displays was how they made fuel on the prarie before there were trees. Welk’s parents were German Catholic refugees from Czarist Russia and they brought fuel making expertise from the treeless steppes.
Gather up all the cow patties you can find and put them in one area. Cover with straw. Walk an ox back and forth until properly mixed. Cut into cakes and let dry. That’s the fuel they used.