Cattails put Prov at top of environmental class

Advertisement

Advertise with us

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/04/2016 (2890 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Providence University College has been an early adopter in using biomass as a heat source, and now the Otterburne-based school is among the first to use cattails as their fuel of choice.

It is a positive scenario all around: Providence has a cheaper clean-burning product to heat their campus, the group that concocted these cattail pellets can prove to industry their heating alternative is viable, and perhaps in due time a use has been found for cattails clogging ditches.

Richard Grosshans is a senior research scientist with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). He can now see their years of research, converting cattails into pellets, in a practical operation.

Senior research scientist Richard Grosshans talks about biomass heating systems while at at Providence University College in Otterburne earlier this month. Cattail pellets have been the energy-efficient biomass recipe the International Institute for Sustainable Development has spent years developing.
Senior research scientist Richard Grosshans talks about biomass heating systems while at at Providence University College in Otterburne earlier this month. Cattail pellets have been the energy-efficient biomass recipe the International Institute for Sustainable Development has spent years developing.

For some of the researchers, it has been a decade to get to this point, a stage Grosshans says they are thrilled to have reached.

“That’s the success for this year, moving beyond pilot to application,” he said of the pellets, which are a combination of cattails and wood chips.

Providence began burning biomass in 2011, first wood then oat hulls before utilizing cattail pellets, which Providence maintenance coordinator Andrew Martin said burns nearly as well as wood but costs significantly less.

These pellets are burned, processed and then used to heat the post-secondary school’s main administration building, the library and one of the women’s dormitories, said Martin.

The process to fuel a biomass heating system begins on the marginal agricultural land, water retention sites and ditches. These cattails and other plants are harvested, becoming a low-carbon energy source that can be used instead of fossil fuels.

“We always believed that one way to keep wetlands on the landscape would be to prove their economic values alongside the environment values that they provide to society,” explained Grosshans.

Now, with Providence on board, they’ve demonstrated their testing has worked.

Hutterite colonies have been involved in harvesting and ultimately processing the pellets, taking advantage of an energy-efficient fuel to replace the coal they can no longer use for space heating.

Various organizations, including Manitoba Hydro, University of Manitoba and City of Winnipeg, have taken notice of the new biomass Providence is using and have visited the school for a demonstration.

Grosshans has high hopes for the future, where he hopes municipalities instead of IISD are taking the lead.

“The municipality would have the choice of mowing their ditches. They can contract a guy to harvest that ditch, they can bale it, they can take those bales, and ship them to a processing facility,” said Grosshans, “and that material would then be integrated into the wood pellets that they’re making or the oat hull pellets.”

IISD first began researching cattails while working on a project to restore Lake Winnipeg, where they discovered cattails could remove phosphorous from the landscape.

Providence was rewarded for its adherence to biomass when there was a pipeline explosion a few kilometres away in early 2014. The school’s biomass heating system kept power running in the buildings connected to it.

Report Error Submit a Tip

Advertisement

Advertise With Us

Local

LOAD MORE