It`s clean and it`s coal

The Plain Dealer
March 04, 2007
By John Funk
Plain Dealer Reporter

Wooster- The next time you pay your heating bill, you might want to think about nurseryman Tom Machamer.

He has to heat seven acres of greenhouses - about 300,000 square feet.

The glassed gardens of Cedar Lane Farms in rural, flat Wayne County are anything but "hothouses" as they stand against the wind on a nippy February day.

They are voracious energy gobblers, and keeping them warm is a major headache. The nursery has relied on a patchwork system of aging and filthy coal- and oil-fired boilers, backed up by newer, forced-air gas furnaces. That has been expensive.

Heating costs can devour a nursery`s thin profit margin, Machamer said. Many of his former competitors would agree, their businesses bankrupted by high gas bills and cheap foreign competition. Machamer has an alternative, though, to help cut the cost of his older, high-cost systems.

"If I had to buy a lot of natural gas, I would be out of business," he said, sitting in a fully automated control room a few feet away from the turbo-roar of a unique, two-story coal-burning metal monster. The huge new furnace gives off no visible plume and exhales only minute amounts of sulfur dioxide, well below EPA limits. And it does this by burning high-sulfur coal.

"For every $1 I spend on coal, I save $5 in what I would have to pay to replace that coal with natural gas," he said.

It`s not surprising, then, that the Ohio Coal Development Office has invested a lot of money in the nursery`s boiler. It might revive the state`s coal industry, abandoned by electric utilities 30 years ago in favor of cleaner-burning though more expensive Western coals.

The boiler, which has performed flawlessly for the last three winters except for a one-day shutdown in 2004 when a computer part failed, is also a marvel of efficiency, using about a fifth as much coal as the old-fashioned "stoker" under-grate boilers.

"It`s 87 percent efficient," said Machamer, with a pride approaching that of a new hybrid-car owner. His dog, Holly, a jet-black Labrador retriever, wagged her tail as if in agreement.

To read full article, click here.

© The Plain Dealer