Thursday, November 13, 2008 3:59 PM CST
EIU officials field questions on wood chip gasification plant
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — Eastern Illinois University officials are proposing an eco-friendly new twist on an age-old means of generating heat, although the idea of constructing a wood chip “gasification” plant is meeting with some resistance from residents in the neighborhood where the Renewable Energy Center would be built.
During an informational meeting Wednesday — the first of three such gatherings — EIU officials outlined the scope of the project and also fielded questions from residents who expressed concern about the plant’s effect on their area’s air and noise quality, traffic congestion, home values and appearance.
“It’s right in the middle of a residential, single-family neighborhood,” said area resident Kirby Johnson.
EIU officials on Wednesday also discussed plans to build a three-turbine wind farm north of Charleston. Combined with the biomass gasifier and boiler, “green power” would account for about 60 percent of the campus’ energy load, said Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs.
The total estimated project cost is $80 million, with half for the 100- by 180-foot “biomass” gasification plant planned for the east side of Charleston along Illinois Route 130 near Edgar Drive.
Applying 1,350 degrees of heat in a low-oxygen environment would transform fresh wood chips into a combustible “synthetic” gas, which then would be piped to a boiler, combined with oxygen and burned to create steam for heating and cooling campus buildings, said Gary Reed, director of EIU’s Facilities Planning and Management.
The highest part of the structure, the elevator for the wood chips, would top 125 feet.
The project would be part of a performance contract program with Honeywell International, which would guarantee certain energy cost savings by operating the Renewable Energy Center.
When it goes online in the fall of 2010, the center would take over for the university’s aging, coal-fired heat plant in the center of campus. The 1950s-era boiler frequently breaks down and requires EIU to spend thousands of dollars on a supplemental natural gas system, said Cooley.
“It’s become ‘mission critical’ to replace that plant,” he said, noting that scrubbing sulfur from the coal — which EIU started doing in the 1980s — is a “highly corrosive process. The problem is it just eats itself up.”
Repairs to the old boiler alone would cost about $16 million, Cooley reported.
He said officials hope the two-year construction time would be enough “to get something in place before we have a catastrophic failure” of the existing heat plant.
Reed said reductions in harmful emissions would be “significant,” while ash byproduct would be collected in closed dumpsters at a rate of about one cubic yard in a 24-hour period. The university is looking into other uses for the ash, such as fertilizer.
Jim Willson, performance contracting engineer for Honeywell, said, “The only way you can get better than this is natural gas.”
Cooley said the normal traffic on Route 130 would “drown out” the facility’s noise pollution.
Semitrailers carrying the non-treated, two-inch wood chips would make four to five deliveries most weekdays.
The EIU Board of Trustees is slated to consider the Renewable Energy Center in November.
Charles White of Charleston said his home would be one of the closest to the new plant. “The thing I question is the logic of the location,” he said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“I don’t understand why you crowd the upper-level housing” in that area, White also said.
He suggested officials consider rotating the orientation of the plant itself, and locate it farther south than the proposed site, which would require access by Edgar Drive. He also encouraged greater use of trees to block out views of the facility.
If these changes are made, White also said, “I don’t see it being a negative to the neighborhood.”
Also on Wednesday, Cooley said the three, 1.5-megawatt wind turbines erected on farmland north of Charleston could provide 30 percent of the electricity consumed by the university. Implementation of the new energy center would be independent of the wind farm, he said. The fields themselves would remain tillable, Cooley added.
Officials are hosting two more informational meetings about the Renewable Energy Center: at 10 a.m. Friday in the Charleston/Mattoon Room of the MLK Jr. Union, and at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Charleston Public Library, Rotary Room A.
Reed said he is willing to field additional questions, and can be reached at 581-2199 or gdreed@eiu.edu.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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Rotty wrote on Nov 12, 2008 11:45 PM:
I don't know about this deal - a little further south wouldn't hurt none - maybe out back in the field area, behind the Greek Court area? "