Biomass power for rural development. Quarterly report, April 3--July 1, 1998

In this quarter a large amount of time was spent doing project planning and budget preparation for the fiscal years 1998 and 1999. Many issues of long-term strategic planning and budgeting depend on the availability of Federal support, including financial, technical and political. It has become increasingly obvious that several significant barriers must be overcome in order to reach the final goal of commercial replication of the technology. Technical barriers include the designing of a cost effective harvest, storage, transport, process and conversion system. While farmers in this region have many decades of experience in harvest, storage and transport of grass, switchgrass presents new challenges due to the harvest requirements and the switchgrass yield potential. The author has identified two locations in the United States that have similar material handling situations, one site in Minnesota the other in Oregon. He has visited the Minnesota site in order to learn from their experience and they may visit the Oregon site in the future. The processing technology remains in a stage of development. As he grows closer to the time for a test co-fire he is beginning to include additional test objectives which individually seem minor, but when taken together provide drivers which impact overall machinery requirement decisions. The next quarter will provide additional levels of detail. This report describes progress in switchgrass conversion development, production activities, environmental analysis planning, and information and education activities