When left with a choice between adding scrubbers to an aging coal fired plant, mothballing the unit when capacity prices are rising, or converting to a biomass co-fired power plant, First Energy's math said that co-firing was the best option.
After a 200 Million Dollar Upgrade (the price seems very high to us), the plant will co-fire cottonwood and other biomass. Cottonwood has a high moisture content, so it is an unusual choice, but the short rotation crop is interesting because it is one of the first US projects built around short rotation bio-energy crops vs. using up the current surplus of pulp wood.
This will be interesting to watch -- and it really calls out for torrefaction -- because the process is much better at removing the moisture and making biomass suitable for co-firing.
