Pig Pretzels: Power for the Future?

They could pass for party snacks if placed in a bowl on the dining room table. And in mischievous moments, some of the staff at Northwest Missouri State University have done just that.

But don’t be fooled by the bite-sized pretzel shape. These are fuel pellets, loaded with dried-out pig poop, as well as the deliquified waste of chickens and dairy cows and all of their energy potential.

In a few months, Northwest will begin burning the odorless animal-waste pellets at the campus power plant - the latest energy source for a university that has distinguished itself as a leader in using alternative fuels.

The university is the largest user of bioenergy in Missouri, according to the Department of Natural Resources’ Energy Center. And, Northwest may be the only facility in the country using this combination of alternative fuels.

‘I don’t know of anybody in the U.S. doing this. There are a couple plants in England burning poultry litter,’ said Phillip Badger of the U.S. Energy Department. He is technical director of the Southeastern Regional Biomass Energy Program.

For years, the university in Maryville, in the extreme northwest corner of Missouri, has burned wood chips and paper pellets - along with small amounts of natural gas and oil - to produce steam for heating and cooling its campus.

The move to burning animal-waste pellets, which Northwest has been experimenting with for three years, was a logical choice for a university smack in the middle of an agricultural region. Even Premium Standard Farms, the state’s largest hog producer, says it is considering how it might adapt the technology to address its own waste problems.

The regional institution, with a student population of 5,943, specializes in education, business and agriculture. Animal waste will come from Northwest’s dairy, poultry and swine operations in its agricultural programs.

‘The university was looking for another alternative fuel, and animal waste seemed to be a logical next step,’ said Nancy Baxter, a grants analyst at Northwest. ‘It has a high (energy potential), and there’s no odor when you separate the solid from the liquid.’

The venture by Northwest comes at a time when the soaring cost of heating oil, and other traditional so-called fossil fuels, is triggering flashbacks to the 1970s oil crisis, when prices were as high as the supply was short.

Based on current energy prices, Northwest will save roughly half a million dollars a year by burning a combination of the three alternative fuels along with small amounts of oil and gas, said John Redden Jr., long-time plant manager. He said Northwest will be able to pay off its investment in five to seven years.

‘Northwest has worked very diligently to be a leader. They’re doing all this in the name of cost savings,’ said Sam Orr, planner at the Energy Center of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. ‘By applying management expertise, and using grants to investigate technologies, they’ve made themselves a leader.’

Northwest would argue, however, that it wasn’t only cost savings, but need, that prompted a look at alternatives to natural gas and oil.

During one particularly brutal winter in the late 1970s, a utility company shut off the university’s natural gas supply. With temperatures plummeting below zero, Northwest waited for an oil-tanker truck to make its way from Memphis, Tenn., to deliver a two-week supply of heating oil.

Northwest decided there had to be another way.

Redden traveled to Chicago and New York to look at plants that burned municipal trash as fuel, but scuttled the idea for fear of attracting rodents to the campus.

The school then seized upon another abundant source of fuel - wood chips and wood scraps that lumber mills and construction-and-demolition companies were eager to get rid of. The university began burning wood chips in a retrofitted campus boiler in the early 1980s. Today, wood and construction waste from seven suppliers account for 57 percent of the fuel mix.

Then, the 1990 passage of a state law requiring 40 percent waste reduction in Missouri’s landfills unleashed another alternative energy source - waste cardboard and paper that the market couldn’t support for recycling.

Redden and plant supervisor James Teaney jury-rigged a hay grinder to grind up 3,000 tons of paper a year into an insulation-like material that is pressed into pellets and burned in a campus boiler. The paper pellets account for 20 percent of the fuel mix.

The paper, including feed sacks from Cargill and Ralston Purina and municipal paper waste from the city of Maryville, comes from as far away as Iowa, Nebraska and St. Louis.

Burning wood chips and paper pellets, supplemented by natural gas and oil, did the job. But in the spring of 1994, when rural communities around Maryville cited odor concerns in protesting plans by Murphy Farms to operate hog farms in the area, the idea for another alternative fuel was born.

Arley Larson, who heads the university’s agriculture department, was part of a committee that began looking at ways to put swine waste to use and reduce its odor.

‘People were voicing concerns about pork production, and the university said, ‘Let’s get together and talk about this,” Larson said. ‘It got us thinking about it.’

Northwest constructed a building to process the animal waste and mix it with drying materials such as bits of straw, paper, oat hulls and seed gleanings.

But for the most part, the school’s alternative-fuel operation is short on frills and tall on innovation. Much of it operates on old farm equipment that was purchased at auctions and modified.

Redden did not consider hiring an architect or engineer to build the processing building. ‘We’re writing the book,’ Teaney said. ‘Why should we hire someone to tell us what we’ve learned in 30 years?’