Turning up the heat on biomass (Maine)

[jpak]

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/business/stories/060917biofuels.html

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Heavily wooded, and home to a forest products industry, Maine has been a leader in using low-value tree waste to generate electricity. It has done less, however, to exploit the energy potential of farm crops, use its vast woodlands to warm institutional buildings or unlock formulas that can substitute wood fiber for petrochemicals. In the current era of high oil and natural gas prices, these ambitions may be coming into focus.

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The (corn my edit) furnace being installed in the bus garage costs around $15,000, including a storage silo, according to Quenten Clark, SAD 58's superintendent. Figuring the prices of corn and oil, and the heat output of the fuels, the investment will pay for itself in less than five years.

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John Cancelarich, who owns the Regent Associates consulting firm in Presque Isle, is working with Peter Sexton, a University of Maine extension agent, and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians to build a $6 million biodiesel refinery in the Houlton area.

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That sense is reflected in a $6.9 million federal grant received earlier this year by the University of Maine to help the state's forest products industry learn to make fuel ethanol, plastics and specialty chemicals by transforming paper and lumber mills into biorefineries. Mills could create new, high-margin products - such as extracting chemicals from wood chips - while maintaining their traditional production.

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