TransForum Vol. 9, No. 2

Argonne Involved in Naperville’s Proposed Green Fuels Depot

Using grass clippings to power next-generation vehicles—now that’s green transportation!

The city of Naperville produces 48,000 cubic yards of yard waste each year. Converted into fuel, those clippings could potentially fuel all 300 trucks in Naperville's waste vehicle fleet.

This is one of the ideas being considered at Naperville’s newly proposed Green Fuels Depot. The project, which will require $4 million in funding to get started, would bring together Argonne National Laboratory; the city of Naperville, Illinois; Packer Engineering, Naperville; and the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, for an innovative plan to produce renewable energy.

“It’s a golden opportunity for Argonne to be associated with one of our neighboring communities in promoting new technologies that we have pioneered here at the Laboratory,” said Glenn Keller, vehicle testing activities manager in Argonne’s Center for Transportation Research.

The proposal calls for the development of a system capable of converting municipal landscape waste into one of three green energy sources: ethanol, bio-electricity or hydrogen. The ultimate goal will be for the depot to supply power to Naperville’s vehicle fleet.

"There is a unique, refreshing twist to this proposal,” Keller said. “It’s a utopian vision to have this closed loop circuit, where a city can turn its own yard waste into fuels that will benefit their community.”

Argonne will use its expertise and resources in biofuels processing and advanced vehicle technologies to characterize and evaluate the three green fuel choices before Naperville deploys them. The Laboratory will also aid in the development of advanced vehicles that can use these renewable energy sources, namely plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs) and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

The Depot will use a gasifier from Packer Engineering to convert grass, leaves, branches and other biomass into syngas, a gas mixture that contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas can then be used to create cellulosic ethanol, bio-electricity or hydrogen. Although the proposal calls for trying all three fuel types, Keller said it would be more practical to concentrate on producing just one fuel in a real-world application.

Argonne would also be contributing to the ethanol conversion process. The Laboratory has already investigated the use of anaerobic bacteria to make ethanol from syngas. The process is particularly appealing because of its high energy efficiency.

Naperville’s fleet currently includes flex-fuel vehicles that run on both gasoline and ethanol, so the ethanol could be put to use immediately. The project will also focus on using syngas to produce green electricity for charging PHEVs and a hydrogen separation and storage process that could be used to fill-up fuel cell powered vehicles.

This pilot project will use only 3 percent of the annual landscape waste collected by the city. If all 48,000 cubic yards of Naperville’s landscape waste were used in a full-scale Green Fuels Depot, it would be enough to fuel all 300 vehicles in the city’s fleet. However, the small fraction being used would still supply enough:

• bio-electricity to power five PHEVs running for eight hours a day,
• ethanol to run seven flex-fuel vehicles for 300 miles of driving a day, or
• hydrogen to power nine polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell vehicles with a 300-mile range.

U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL-13th) has requested $4 million in federal funding to get the project started. It will require another $3.8 million in the second year. Through this partnership, the participants hope their findings will serve as a model for other cities across the country. The potential benefits of these Green Fuel Depots include reducing our dependence on petroleum, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating a new market demand for green jobs.

October 2009