Contents of feasibility study presented, By LISA KACZKE, Staff Writer

Koochiching County officials reviewed the components of a feasibility study involved in researching a proposal to develop a plasma gasification facility in International Falls.
The facility would use garbage to create energy and other valuable byproducts while at the same time reducing the amount of garbage Koochiching County sends to a landfill.
An in-depth description of each part of the study was given during a committee meeting of the Koochiching Development Authority Friday. The table of contents for the gasification project’s feasibility study has been completed.
The feasibility study for the Renewable Energy Clean Air Project includes eight issues that will be researched. The topics include supply, technical evaluation, environmental assessment, socioeconomic impact, market issues, site selection and design and cost estimates.
A request for proposals will be sent out to engineering firms. Board members chose an RFP because firms would be asked to submit a price along with a proposal for how the firm would complete the feasibility study.
A total of $400,000 can be spent on the feasibility study, part of which will be paid to Coronal, the consulting firm on the project. The money was appropriated during the 2007 legislative session to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The MPCA is responsible for getting the money to the Koochiching Economic Development Authority, and then to Koochiching County.
An environmental assessment of the project will be conducted as a part of the feasibility study.
Environmental Services Director Richard Lehtinen said he fears people will ask questions and not be satisfied with answers because there are “so few of these facilities in the United States.”
The key issue for the EIS is how the facility affects the air quality, Lehtinen said. Because of Voyageurs National Park’s location in the county, the project will be held to higher standards — the National Park Services’ air quality standards — than it would be elsewhere, Lehtinen said.
The county has included VNP staff on the project since the beginning, board member Mike Hanson said.
Lehtinen said he had been told that air quality impacts are benign in other gasification projects, but because this project involves plasma gasification, it may be handled differently.
Facts about the environmental impacts of a plasma gasification project in Japan are classified and are owned by Westinghouse Plasma and Hitachi Metals.
Board member Chuck Lepper suggested bringing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in on the project because federal regulations will be stricter than those of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The feasibility study will also help determine what type of energy the county wants to produce in the facility. The facility can produce synthetic gas, biofuels, steam or electricity, or a combination of multiple types, which would be sold for revenue, Steve Korstad of Coronal said.
The feasibility study will also look at road aggregate, tile bricks and rock wool as byproducts of the process, which the county can sell.
A model of the feed stock supply will be developed as a part of the study, after which a sample of the municipal waste that would feed the facility would be collected. Those two sets of data will be compared. All waste sources, including those outside the county that might go to the facility, will be tested, according to John Howard of Coronal.
The compared results will be validated and can be used as a model for other gasification projects in Minnesota, Howard said.
How to get the municipal waste to the facility will also be a party of the study. The waste can either be transported as a raw material by train, or it can be packaged into waterproof, odor proof and rodent proof bales that will be brought to the facility.
If the county decides to transport the waste in bales, the location of the balers will have to be decided. A baling system may have drawbacks, in that balers would be required to be sited at industrial waste providers, who would bale the waste before transporting it to the facility, Lehtinen said. If the waste is baled before coming into the county, it would be cleaner Korstad said. Transporting it as raw material would require liners be placed in the train cars.
The cost of balers is not known yet, Howard said.
Board member Wade Pavleck said bringing in raw municipal waste is a concern. The average person would much rather see the waste come into the county already packaged instead of as raw material on trains, Pavleck said.
The facility would accept waste at the facility for eight hours a day, but the facility would operate 24 hours a day, Lehtinen said.