Poultry litter to fuel Minnesota power plant

Friday, March 16, 2007

In a story on RenewableEnergyAccess.com, Ted Olsen reports on a Minnesota project:

Biomass -- in this case in the form of hundreds of thousands of pounds of turkey litter with woodchips and sawdust blended in -- soon will be fueling a 55 megawatt [MW] power plant producing enough electricity to supply 50,000 homes in the Minnesota community of Benson.

"[The] facility will burn 700,000 tons of turkey litter per year and can operate on 100 percent litter but we'll also be using other biomass, including woodchips and sawdust." -- Terry Walmsley, Fibrominn, VP for environmental and public affairs

The first large-scale facility of its kind in the U.S., the plant is being completed in an industrial park on the edge of town by Fibrominn, whose parent company Fibrowatt already operates three litter-fueled facilities in the United Kingdom. The project, started in May 2005, is expected to begin operations in June.