UI gets $951,000 grant for green power

IOWA CITY -- A team of University of Iowa engineers is using a one-year, $951,500 U.S. Department of Energy grant to increase the amount of green energy produced at the UI's Oakdale Renewable Energy Plant and to develop a "UI Green Power Initiative" that can be used as a model program for other universities across the country.

Leading the project are Albert Ratner, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and Ferman Milster, associate director, Utilities and Energy Management. The study's principal investigator is Barry Butler, UI professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and dean of the College of Engineering.

Milster said that when the biomass boiler is operational it will have the capacity to generate more than 50 percent of the campus thermal energy requirements from fuels such as wood chips and oat hulls. The steam produced with this renewable fuel will offset steam produced from fossil fuel natural gas boilers.

The UI facility, which will include a smaller down-draft gasifier and a larger multi-stage biomass boiler, will be designed to operate primarily on wood-based fuels, but have provisions for testing other biomass fuel sources produced within a 100-mile radius, providing enough flexibility to meet the fluctuating local supply of biomass from industry and Midwest agriculture.