Denver Zoo Halts Biomass Project

The Denver Zoo has backed off a plan to turn animal waste into fuel pellets, though it has left the door open to revisiting the idea.

The Denver Post says that zoo officials made the decisions due to financial pressures and technical uncertainty. The plan had been opposed by some area residents who were uncertain about the safety of the project and didn’t like the idea of the placement of what they called an incinerator in the middle of the zoo. To date, the zoo had spent $3.7 million on the project. Officials did not say how much more would have been required to complete the system.

The idea was to use a gasifier to turn dung, wood, plastics and other waste into pellets that could power generators and produce electricity and heat, the story said. If successful, the process would eliminate hauling of 1.5 million pounds of waste annually to landfills, reduce electricity use by 20 percent and cut $8,000 in trucking fees.

There are working gasification facilities, of course. Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production takes a close look at one. The site recently featured a visit to Vaskiludon Voima, which was converted from a coal-fired power and district heating plant to a biomass facility between 2011 and 2013.