Seminar: “Combined Heat and Power at Michigan State University Using Wood and Other Renewable Biofuels”
Speaker: Nate Verhanovitz, Performance Engineer, Power and Water Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, Michigan State University
One way MSU plans to achieve its renewable resource goals is to decrease its dependence on coal through the combustion of wood, grasses, and agricultural residue at the T.B. Simon plant in East Lansing. The plant is one of the few operating facilities in North America to test burn torrefied biomass. This presentation will focus on the results and lessons learned from the first two co-firings of near-torrefied wood with coal in a pulverized coal boiler. The seminar took place in 402 Mechanical Engineering Engineering Mechanics Building on June 9, 2014.
Michigan Tech will be a supplier to MSU and the T.B. Simon power plant of torrefied biomass pellets produced at the pilot plant of Michigan Tech’s APS Labs. The pellets will be used in the next phase of biocoal test burns at the T.B. Simon power plant. The Michigan Tech connection in the biofuel research includes Dr. Ezra Bar Ziv (professor, ME‐EM), John Diebel (assistant director, Technical Commercialization) and Jordan Klinger (PhD candidate, ME‐EM). They were members of a team that was awarded the top team designation by the NSF Innovation Corps (I‐Corps), a new public–private partnership to help develop scientific and engineering discoveries into useful technologies. The program connects academic researchers with the technological, entrepreneurial, and business communities. Ezra Bar Ziv (ME-EM) has received a $50,000 research grant from NSF for “I-Corps: Feasibility of a Novel Concept to Produce Biocoal for Power and Enhanced Bio-Oil.”
