Firms Form Bioenergy Partnership
by Phyllis Jacobs Griekspoor, The Wichita Eagle
02/06/08

When a group of five western Kansas businessmen got together almost a year ago, their dream was to find a way to turn the abundant agricultural residue of their region into salable fuel.
They formed Prairie Fire Bioenergy Cooperative, based in Healy, in April 2007 and closed their shareholder drive Jan. 31.

On Monday, they announced their second partnership with an existing business aimed at further development of biomass fuel products.

Sunflower Electric Power Corp., based in Hays, will work with Prairie Fire to complete an evaluation of the impact of using biosolid fuel from Prairie Fire in combination with other fuels in a power plant boiler.

Sunflower will initially build a small-scale plant for testing the fuel and conducting a chemical analysis of how well it would burn in combination with other fuels in a larger boiler.

The goal is to burn about 5 percent biomass with 95 percent coal in the co-op's coal-fire plant at Holcomb, according to Sunflower officials.

"Our technology is taking biomass and sizing it to a manageable size, then drying it, grinding it and creating a powder that can flow like a fluid," said Brad Applegarth, a spokesman for Prairie Fire.
"The goal is to have a plant for production of the fuel on the Sunflower location so we can pipe it directly to them."

Sunflower is an electrical generation cooperative owned by six rural electric cooperatives in central and western Kansas. It has a diverse portfolio of generation capacity, including coal, natural gas and wind.

Applegarth said Prairie Fire also has a working relationship with Alternative Energy Solutions, a Wichita company that is the only U.S. distributor of Uniconfort Biomass Gasification Boilers.

A subsidiary of Wichita Burner, Alternative Energy uses a high heat, oxygen-deprived environment to convert biomass into combustible gases that can be burned to generate steam for electrical generation for factories or industrial plants and heat for ethanol manufacturing.

"We've found a perfect synergy with Prairie Fire," said Alternative Energy vice president Brian Cartwright. "We are looking for customers that can use our boilers, and they are providing green fuel to those same customers."