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Adventure Traveler Garry Sowerby in his own words:
Friday, October 1
Vegreville, Alberta
Environmental Initiative #60
Highland Feeders,
Vegreville, Alberta
Now we're into it. North of Vegreville, Alberta. Cowboy country.
Dust billowing behind our trucks, the wide open country road,
a feeling of adventure, that pungent farm smell coming in through
the open windows and thoughts of cow dung filling my head.
We had no idea where we were going or what we were about to see.
All I knew was that it had something to do with the equation cows
= methane = electricity. The equal signs are what we were going
to figure out.
All I could wonder was, How do you harness
a cow f**t? I had visions of cows backed into stalls with bags
over their behinds, 'milking'
out the methane.
The first group of Albertans we've met on our cross-Canada trip,
Bernie Kotelko, President of Highland Feeders, his brother Mike
Kotelko, President of Highmark Industries, and Xiamoei Li, Senior
Research Scientist of the Alberta Research Council, were about
to inform us and hopefully dispel some of the mystery.
The mystery deepened as we saw that Highland Feeders was home
to 30,000 head of cattle. Now I was really stumped. Where was electricity
going to come from in all of this?
As we approached what looked like a manufacturing plant at the
south end of the Feed Lot, a truck drove by with a huge load of
manure in the back. Aaah! The bells went off. The methane comes
from the manure, not directly from the cow's digestive system!
But where does the electricity come in?
Highmark Renewables in partnership with the
Alberta Research Council (ARC) and the Government of Canada are
about to turn a material that cattle produce in greater abundance
than beef into 'gold'.
Using a technology known as the Integrated Manure Utilization
System (IMUS), this new branch of the energy industry will overcome
the challenges associated with high-solid manure typical of most
outdoor feedlots in North America. It has the potential to produce
renewable energy, bio-based fertilizers and reusable water, while
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts.
Highmark Industries, located on Highland View Farms, a family
farm that produces grain and beef that has been in operation since
1947, will put the IMUS technology to work on October 18, 2004
to produce one megawatt (one million watts) of electricity from
the manure of 7,500 head of cattle, eventually working up to produce
up to three megawatts of electricity -- enough power to supply
a town of over 5,000 people.
IMUS technology integrates five main components: anaerobic digestion,
biogas (mostly methane and carbon dioxide) utilization, waste water
treatment, nutrient recovery/enrichment and bio-based fertilizer
production.
The whole process starts with the manure. It is diluted with water
to improve the flow, then fed into the digester, a giant, rather
ominous, black tank. Naturally-occurring bacteria break down the
manure into methane gas. The methane is used to power the 1,500-hp
engine, which cranks the generator. The generator produces the
electricity which is sold to the Alberta power grid.
The manure from six cows can be converted into
enough gas to generate the typical electricity needs of one Alberta
household for a year.
The whole process produces heat, but before we could wonder about
the environmental implications of that, Xiaomei and Bernie told
us that the intention is to ultimately harness the heat which can
be use to heat a multitude of facilities: a greenhouse, a fish
hatchery, or an ethanol plant.
All well and good but cow patties on a field did serve a purpose.
They were never seen as a waste product. What would the fields
do for fertilizer now?
They've thought of that too. The end products of the Integrated
Manure Utilization System are bio-fertilizer pellets with the pathogens,
or disease-causing bacteria, removed. So farmers are still getting
something to throw on the field, something lighter and less smelly,
of course.
Back on the road with the open country road ahead of us, I reflected
on the simplicity of the concept. There was plenty of advanced
technology and high science behind it, to be sure.
But, out here on the sweeping plains of Alberta, our new friends
had certainly brought the whole thing down to earth.
http://www.arc.ab.ca/whatsnew/newsreleases/imus.asp
You are now leaving the mission green website to an external website.
Environmental Initiative #61
Straw Threshing
Bee, Regional Museum Board, Vegreville, Alberta
A fluorescent billboard in the centre of town,
dazzling in the fall sunshine, read: "Vegreville welcomes Mission Green".
We felt like Big Wheels, rolling into town, with a full-page story
in the local paper heralding our arrival, too.
Mayor David Kucherawy, Bernie McCracken, Town Councillor and Ed
Wieclaw, Director of Minburn County Development Services and what
looked like the entire town of Vegreville had really rolled out
the red carpet for Mission Green We felt honoured and touched.
We had been invited to participate in the community's 7 th annual
old-time threshing bee.
'What is a threshing bee?' I wondered. 'And
what's the environmental connection?'
I realized it was a farm ritual from days gone by and all I could
picture were these decidedly un-environmental machines chugging
across a field, spewing black exhaust into the air.
Had our logistics and planning guru, Lisa Calvi, back in Halifax
completely lost it? Had she committed the Mission Green team to
something that would raise the ire and eyebrows of fervent environmentalists
everywhere?
Threshing means to separate the grain from the straw. Before the
advent of combine harvesters, farmers traditionally cut their grain
and stacked it in bundles called stooks to dry out. The stooks
would then be gathered on a wagon and taken to a central area where
the threshing machine was waiting.
The threshing gang would pile the stalks of grain into the gaping
hole of the huge machine. Inside the machine, the grain would be
stripped and husked while the stalks would be ejected out of the
machine into a mammoth pile that was baled as straw for winter
bedding or thrown away.
Let the threshing begin! A golden afternoon
sunlight shone down on the townspeople gathered to celebrate
an old tradition. There were kids, teenagers, adults and 'old-timers',
all ready to get some work done. The gnarly old machines scattered
around the yard stood in sharp contrast to the spanking new combine
working out in the field.
As the pile of straw from the threshing machine
grew taller and taller, it dawned on me. the past, the present
and the future were all united in that pile.
The same straw that historically would be thrown
away was now powering one of our vehicles across the country
in the form of Iogen's EcoEthanol Ô . We had seen buildings
in Craik, Saskatchewan and Peterborough, Ontario that had used
straw as a construction material and as insulation.
The threshing bee was a way for us to experience the past but
it also provided a tangible link to the present and the future.
We felt like we were at a carnival or a village fair, kids all
around, all of them asking me a million questions, wanting to know
how the straw was made into ethanol and amazed at the fact that
the Chevrolet Hybrid system didn't sacrifice the truck's ability to
haul, push or carry anything.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an elderly gentleman staring
at the decals on the side of the Yukon. He could very well have
been one of the original operators of the antique equipment around
us. Would he have been thinking, Wow! A vehicle that runs on straw?
I brought my attention back to the kids around me, the next generation
coming up the ranks. They had all now accepted the fact that we
were heading across the country on a vehicle that runs on straw.
They were ready to move on to the next thing.
I saw one of them point to the great pile of straw that had been
threshed that afternoon.
I heard him mutter to a buddy: "I wonder if
he can he get to Victoria on that."
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