A New Kind of Leaf Blower

A raked pile of leaves doubles as a kids' playground and mulch for soil, and one college town has announced plans to go the ultimate distance with yard waste by turning it into energy.

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is about to move to a place of prominence within the green energy landscape with the announcement of a first-of-its-kind, waste-to-energy facility whose construction is expected to begin this spring.

The school will soon have a new power plant on campus supplying about 5 percent of the power needs of 13,000 students and faculty. That fraction may not seem like a lot, but the big deal is that it will run entirely on organic waste from agriculture and landscape maintenance. According to a university press release, the technology will be a first for the US. Still confused? Let this university official educate you:

"A dry fermentation anaerobic digester is very different in design from the wet digesters that run on manure or sewage," says Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services Tom Sonnleitner. "The process is essentially to move composting indoors. The facility will have air filters to remove any adverse smells and the plant will be located in the part of the city that currently is home to the municipal sewage treatment plant and the city composting site. Our goal is to provide a living laboratory of renewable energy infrastructure for our students, faculty, staff and community."

Dry digesters offer the benefit of not generating wastewater that needs additional treatment and disposal but still creates reclaimable heat and burnable hydrocarbons (most typically methane) that can do the necessary work to generate electricity. The University's infrastructure upgrade comes through a technical partnership with BIOFerm, a German company who has successfully implemented similar facilities in Europe.

Here's hoping the R&D team gets this going for the private sector, so our own garbage can power our homes.

Photo by Fruitgoddess via Wikimedia Commons.