Kim Kirkendall is bullish on the prospects of garbage -- old tires, household trash, even hog and cow manure.
If the president of Las Vegas-based startup Energy-Inc. is right -- and it's hard to doubt him when he gets on a roll -- his optimism could translate into jobs here in Elkhart County. Perhaps 500 of them.
And if the company really takes off, it could be a big step in the oft-stated goal of diversifying the local economy, tempering reliance on the recreational vehicle industry. Energy-Inc., now in the final stages of buying a vacant plant north of Middlebury, hopes to start operating by December, manufacturing equipment that can supposedly convert all manner of waste into energy.
"You're going to see it on every street corner very soon," Kirkendall said of the equipment, which Energy-Inc. would build, market, manage, lease and sell. "It's growing."
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So it's a done deal then, right? Energy-Inc.-type devices, which would turn waste and trash into energy via gasification, will eliminate the need for landfills and help dent demand for fossil fuels? Their manufacture will create job after job and help salvage the battered local economy?
It sounds great, but wait just a minute, some observerers say. Though gasification has been the subject of plenty of studies, it's not entirely clear, at least to some, that the technology is cost effective, for one thing.
Nickolas Themelis said the relatively low cost of landfilling in the United States bodes against gasification and pyrolysis. He's director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University in New York City, which studies landfilling issues.
It's cheaper just to bury trash at the dump than build the pricey devices, even when you consider the value of the energy produced from waste. "Therefore we say 'bravo' if you can do it," he said.
Likewise, Jim Childress, executive director of the Gasification Technology Council in Arlington, Va., cites "the upfront capital cost." Still, he's a fan of gasification.
The processes break down waste into energy and usable byproducts by subjecting it to extreme heat in the presence of just a little or no oxygen. There's no burning, so the the advanced thermal conversion technology, as Energy-Inc. calls it, is relatively clean.
"Combustion creates solid waste or water pollution," Childress said. "Gasification does not."
Tom Seager, a solid waste management expert at Rochester Institue of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., said the financial viability of gasification depends in part on a steady stream of waste and high energy prices. If fossil fuel is cheap, it makes less sense to pursue the pricier energy produced via gasification.
"So these types of investments are financially risky, which is also something we found out about corn ethanol," Seager said in an e-mail. For a time, ethanol plant construction in the United States boomed, he noted, but then "price structures changed," loans for plants dried up and many ethanol facilities went belly up.
Marc McMenamin, a Rye, N.Y., developer of waste-to-energy plants that utilize incineration, or combustion, is more negative.
"It just hasn't proven out," he said. "The technology has been tried so many times, so many years."
Sure gasification and pyrolysis look good in theory, in pilot projects. But when it's scaled up, that's when the problems start.
He touts incineration of garbage -- burning -- as a means of generating energy, notwithstanding the pollution the process produces. There are new developments, new technology that can scrub the pollution of its nastiest elements before it's released into the air.
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Kirkendall acknowledges there are naysayers out there. He's got answers for them.
"Absolutely guaranteed," he said of Energy-Inc.'s systems, which would be used to power its manufacturing facility here, keeping it off the power grid. "It's guaranteed."
The technology is already in use in Europe and the Middle East, has been for seven or eight years. There's one plant in the United Kindgom that gasifies municipal solid waste, garbage that would otherwise go to a landfill. Another there gasifies medical waste.
Then there are the proprietary developments that Energy-Inc. plans to apply.
Skeptics "are invited to come and touch our new equipment," Kirkendall said. "We wouldn't be investing this sort of money if it didn't work."
In fact, Energy-Inc. -- co-owned by Kirkendall and Seinfeld actor John O'Hurley -- is willing to pay for the equipment out of its own pockets, leasing it to would-be clients and saving them upfront costs.
"Sound too good to be true?" the gray-haired O'Hurley intones on a blurb on the Energy-Inc. Web site. "Well we're so certain of our system's safety, efficiency and profitability that we not only guarantee their performance, but we also offer up to 100 percent financing."
Kirkendall, corporate vice president of sustainable facility development for casino and resort developer MGM MIRAGE before starting Energy-Inc., repeats the refrain. It's not entirely clear, though, where the money would come from to build the gasification and pyrolysis equipment, let alone the proposed $19.6 million to $96 million upgrade of the plant at the old Patriot Manufacturing building near Middlebury.
Whatever the case, Kirkendall, who got his bachelor's degree from Indiana State, remains unfazed. He's been pounding the pavement drumming up clients. The possibilities include universities, hog and dairy farms, municipalities, landfills, sewage treatment plants, casinos, hotels, medical facilities, zoos, the U.S. Defense Department.
Yes sir, once the company gets started, there's no telling where things will go. Gasification is in the cards.
"It's here and it's here to stay and it's here to stay in a big way," Kirkendall said.
FEEDING THE MACHINES
The machines Energy-Inc. would build here in Elkhart County would be capable of converting a number of waste products into energy via processes called gasification and pyrolysis.
Here, roughly, is how the equipment would work, as described by Energy-Inc. President Kim Kirkendall:
1. The feedstock — tires, household garbage, medical waste, agricultural waste, sewer sludge — would be introduced to an Advanced Thermal Conversion Technology, or ACTC, unit.
Depending on the material, it would first need to be shredded into small pieces to create more surface area to facilitate pyrolysis and/or gasification.
2. Depending on the substance, it would be subjected to pyrolysis and then gasification inside the ACTC unit. If it’s organic material like manure, it would go just through gasification.
Those processes — requiring little to no oxygen — break down substances by superheating them, creating synthetic gas, or syngas. There’s no burning, thus none of the smokestacks or emissions associated with incineration.
Next, also in the ACTC unit, the syngas would pass through an oxidizer, which would subject the material to temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to clean out impurities. This would generate trace emissions and leave behind pure syngas.
Syngas can be burned like natural gas or even liquefied and used to fuel compatible vehicles.
3. The pyrolysis and gasification processes would create usable byproducts. If the feedstock is wood, left behind is a product that can be used for charcoal filtration. Manure leaves behind a substance called carbon char, which can be used as a fertilizer.
4. Syngas, if the user desired, could be piped to a General Electric Jenbacher generator. The gas would power the generator, creating electricity to power a hospital, factory or any number of facilities.
The generator apparatus would be rigged to harness the energy of the heat created as a byproduct in generating electricity. That heat would otherwise dissipate into the atmosphere.
Though Energy-Inc. would tailor its machines to its clients’ needs, the equipment here would be capable of handling 12 tons of waste per day, about the amount a typical dump truck can haul. It would be able to generate 0.5 megawatts of energy, enough to power the equivalent of 500 homes.
Other configurations of Energy-Inc. machinery would potentially be capable of handling as much waste as what enters a landfill, perhaps 3,000 tons per day.