MSU Partnership Targets Carbon Dioxide Reduction on Campus

Michigan State University (MSU) is working with Ohio-based N-Viro International Corp. to turn human and animal waste into alternative energy. The university wants to mix solid human waste and animal waste with coal to fuel the T.B. Simon Power Plant.

According to excerpts from the article:

The ultimate goal is to find a cost-effective way to reduce MSU's carbon dioxide emissions, said Bob Ellerhorst, director of utilities at the university.

"It's an environmental gain," Ellerhorst said of the patented N-Viro fuel. "We think it probably will end up priced equivalent to coal when we get all done."

N-Viro and MSU officials have agreed to work together over the next six months on an engineering and cost analysis for the potential project.

The end result could be construction in 2009 of a facility on campus that would make the fuel.

The company would use biosolids from wastewater treatment plants and animal waste from campus to make the fuel. The city of East Lansing treats MSU's sewage.

A test at MSU's power plant in January 2007 found the mixture burned more efficiently and cleaner than coal alone, officials said.

Most of the 550,000 tons of carbon dioxide - a greenhouse gas scientists believe contributes to climate change - the university sends into the atmosphere each year comes from the coal-fired Simon Power Plant, Ellerhorst said. The plant provides electricity and heat to campus buildings north of Mt. Hope Road.

Through its membership in the Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary cap-and-trade system, MSU pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by about 55,000 tons by 2010.

If it doesn't meet those goals, MSU will need to buy carbon dioxide credits through the exchange.

Last month, officials announced a deal to buy 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide credits from the University of Iowa because MSU didn't meet its reduction target.

MSU paid $21,250, or $4.25 per ton.

Read the entire article here.