Environmental Power-Plant Generates Electricity from Waste

The California department of forestry has partnered with biomass one in southern Oregon in a program for bioenergy.

Biomass one is a power plant that focuses on its environmental impact. 

Salvage wood is considered a fire hazard. Biomass one makes use of these materials in order to reduce waste and generate energy. 

Kristin Coons, supervisory forester, states; “the wood chips that they stay on the side of the highway actually start to spontaneously combust. if you, if they get too warm.”

They burned the left over scraps and were able to generate over 3,ooo megawatts of electricity. 

They do this by grinding the wood into uniform particles, feeding it to two large boilers  – this heats water into steam, putting pressure on pistons. the pressure then expands moving water, and drives turbans that then generate electricity. 

This is done in an attempt to reduce fossil fuels and create more eco friendly methods of energy production

Some may ask if it is worth the fossil fuel used to transport by truck… to the power plant , Coon’s certainly thinks so, “so, you know, it was, you know, a public health and safety risk and within the corridor along highway 199, it’s really hard.“

She later continues;

“… they were also infected with or potentially infected with phytophthora lateralis, which is a pathogen that has a pretty high mortality rate for one of our two local species of cedar. porter for us here. and so we really like getting them to a biomass plant and burning was the best possible solution for everyone all around, because no one had to look for a disposal site.” 

Coons says that both the California division of forestry and Caltrans plan on using biomass one’s support for future fuel – hazard clean-ups

“yes, I definitely would work with Darren Morgan and biomass one again.“

They were really helpful in coordinating that relationship and helping it be effective on the ground because there were a lot of. Unique things that a lot of a lot of us hadn’t done before. “