NEWS ARTICLE

NEW TECHNOLOGY 'WASTING' ENERGY
? 00, 2004

Contributed by:Joel Hunt/YourHub.com

Heating a home with horse manure. Running a refrigerator on rubber tires. Washers whirling on wood waste.

The technology to make these things possible could be available to consumers in the near future, according to Green Energy Corp. President Dennis Murphy.

His Englewood-based company has licensed a technology invented by Robert Klepper that can turn biological waste -- or biomass -- into usable energy.

"It is significant to note ... that these materials were not grown as energy source materials, like soybeans or corn for biodiesel production, but resulted as waste by-products of commercial processes," according to the company's application for a National Science Foundation grant.

"There's a huge source of energy just lying out there," Murphy said about biomass, which includes waste such as used tires, wood chips, agricultural waste and low-grade coal. Klepper's technology heats these materials without burning them, producing synthetic gas that can turn a turbine or generator, producing power.

Synthetic gas burns at a lower British thermal unit than natural gas, but like natural gas, "it's just a source of power," according to Murphy.

The technology "convert(s) biomass to a synthetic gas that can be burned to generate electricity, reformed to produce ethanol or used to feed a solid oxide fuel cell," according to the company's grant application.

"It's a closed-loop system," Murphy said, so unlike incinerating waste, "there's no environmental hazard at all."

Green Energy Corp.'s role in the technology is "to help take the process to the commercial level," Murphy said. That includes building and testing the equipment that creates the synthetic gas, marketing the technology and researching which waste products are compatible with the technology.

"We've been contacted from all over the world" about the technology, Murphy said. Every country has the biological waste, which Murphy describes as "a resource in the wrong place."

Green Energy is pushing to get the final testing done and working commercial applications could be less than six months away, according to Murphy.

So that cow pie that's only fertilizer right now could soon be brown gold.