LEXINGTON, KY - Horse farm managers across the Bluegrass have their eyes on Keeneland's proposed bio-fuel project. As of this writing, according to John Howard, head of projects at Keeneland, parties are on the verge of signing an agreement that will bring Keeneland a new solution for dealing with an old challenge. "I've been here since 1981," said Howard, "and I remember as a young man saying, 'That's a problem.'" The problem being what to do daily with tons upon tons of muck, a mixture of about 97 percent straw and three percent horse manure from over 40 Keeneland barns every year. "We tried bio-fermentation, an accelerated composting process," he said. "That didn't work out." Lately the muck has been trucked to Tennessee for use on a mushroom farm. Soon it will be converted on site at Keeneland into bio-fuel and char.
Engineer John Tharpe has designed a Mobile Bio-Oil Plant (MBOP.org) that has brought the industrial scale bio-oil process down to a moveable size. The MBOP can be trailer mounted in a 40-foot long, eight-foot wide and nine and a half-foot high crate and delivered. The company that manufactures the MBOP is named Three Seconds To Oil (TSTO). The name refers to a technology called flash pyrolysis, which uses intense heat to convert biomass into oil and char in a matter of seconds. The plant can process 30 tons of biomass a day. Howard says the amount of muck waste produced at Keeneland varies, depending on what is happening on the Keeneland schedule. Currently Keeneland has about 300 horses stabled in barns, and that number can rise to 2,000 during races. At peak operations Keeneland will produce about 60 tons of muck a day. The contract Keeneland is entering calls for two MBOPs, each unit backed by a different investment group. Howard says that Keeneland will provide the muck, along with other biomass waste, such as leaves, dead wood and so on, and will be relieved of the problem. The companies operating the MBOPs will have bio-oil and char to serve local or regional needs.
The amount of muck/biomass that Keeneland produces represents only a small portion of the muck that comes from Blue Grass horse farms as a whole. "The farm managers, they're jumping all over this," said Howard, "they're thinking, 'we'll just bring it (muck) to Keeneland." But Keeneland isn't permitted for that kind of operation, and will be processing only the biomass that it produces.
Michael Brown, who is with Stable Waste, one of the investment companies involved in the Keeneland project, says that there will be MBOPs in central locations. He mentioned Bourbon and Woodford Counties as examples of areas where horse farms could be served by a central location for processing muck. Brown said that Churchill Downs is next. "Their muck removal costs are north of a million dollars a year," he said. "Our goal is to take that cost and get it down to zero."
In fact, the MBOP solution will soon be reaching the thoroughbred industry across the nation. "We came to Keeneland because we entered into a national agreement with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association to take this technology to 50 cities - 50 cities with horse waste in the U.S.," said Henry Maclin, CEO of TSTO. "NTRA is a one million member body. They have endorsed this." NTRA is headquartered in Lexington, not far from Keeneland, which fact Maclin credits for Keeneland being the first commercial location for a MBOP. "Besides," he added, "Keeneland is the prettiest track in all of thoroughbred racing."
Maclin sees the MBOP as a "waste expense reduction program" for farms. He says it is also suitable for processing the solids in wastewater/sewage treatment plants. "This equipment is designed to be a locally sustainable solution, " Maclin said. "The waste is made locally, it's converted to a liquid fuel locally, and the fuel eventually can go into a diesel generator and make electricity locally." The Keeneland endeavor could fill a need providing renewable fuel to the tug and push boat industry on the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers. A new mandate requires that maritime industry use low sulfur fuel, and Maclin says that the bio-oil produced by the MBOP is the right grade fuel with sulfur content so low that it's barely measurable. "It's also a local fuel," he said. "You don't have to truck it as far."
The other product from the process is char, also known as biochar. Maclin says that half of the char produced would be used to fuel the unit. The char used as fuel is low in sulfur and nitrous oxides, but it does emit CO2, which biomass advocates describe as carbon neutral, because it would have been released anyway in the natural decay of the biomass. The remaining char not used to fuel the unit Maclin said could go to a couple of different uses. Pellets of the char could provide fuel for power plants. The char could also go to beneficial use to enrich soil while sequestering CO2 and other more potent greenhouse gases. In a talk titled "Biochar for Sustainable Carbon Sequestration and Global Soil Enhancement," Dr. Johannes Lehmann, a researcher in biogeochemistry and soil fertility management at Cornell University, gave testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. In that testimony Lehmann described how the process of pyrolysis converts unstable biomass, which would degrade and release potent greenhouse gases, into the more stable form of biochar, which sequesters greenhouse gases and also enriches degraded soils, significantly increasing crop yields. The beneficial fertility that biochar gives to soil Lehmann's research indicates could enhance the soil for 500 years or longer. Biochar, similar in nature to soil components created by forest fires, supports a bacteria that allow enzymes to thrive, creating a rich and healthy soil. Research into and refinement of understandings of varying biochar characteristics is fairly new and ongoing. Keeneland, said Maclin, may use half of the surplus char to enrich the soil around trees and other plantings. He also said that he has spoken with Mayor Newberry and others in city management about providing char for city trees, possibly with an arrangement by which the city would direct some biomass into the Keeneland operation.
John Howard, as he looks ahead to Keeneland's pioneering step to dealing with the muck, can't help but look further ahead and wonder. "With the technology like MBOP," he said, "my grandchildren, your children, maybe, will see digging these landfills up and running that material through this type of process. I really believe that."
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Keeneland: a Winner in Recycling