densification
PHOTO: RENEW ENERGY SYSTEMS
N
early two years ago, Brad Cole was put to task. As the owner of Cole’s Outdoor Wood Stoves, he was approached by potential customers wanting to know how they could fuel a furnace if they weren’t able to go out and chop wood. Not knowing the answer, Cole started researching alternatives. “We were unable to find anything here in the U.S.,” he explains. “The only thing we could find was in Europe where they had been doing this process of densifying wood material into a solid biomass fuel for more than 40 years.” After a pilgrimage over the “pond” and several visits to various companies involved in manufacturing densification equipment, Cole, who now serves as sales manager for Iowabased Renew Energy Systems, and fellow company founders, Chief Executive Officer Steve Smith and Dan Freeman, a millwright and professional welder, purchased equipment from C.F. Nielsen, a Danish manufacturer of briquetting presses. “They have been in the business the longest and were able to produce the equipment that we needed,” Cole says. Renew Energy Systems is now the U.S. distributor of C.F. Nielsen’s technology for the agricultural and waste management areas. In addition, the company has partnered with Kansas-based Alternative
This C.F. Nielsen briquette press is in Renew Energy Systems’ Osage, Iowa, facility.
Energy Systems, which distributes biomass boilers. “We’ve aligned our forces now,” Cole says. We produce a solid biomass fuel while AES distributes the biomass gasifier.” In addition to distributing briquettes,
Renew Energy Systems also produces and markets the fuel. The company leases building space in an industrial warehouse in Osage, Iowa, where it recently began mass producing briquettes from wood wastes
Got wood? • Legal work on more than 100 energy projects in over 20 states, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Mexico, Peru and United Kingdom • Assisting developers, owners, operators, investors and lenders • Projects include wood-burning, landfill gas and other power/fuel projects that use biomass or waste materials • We know biomass Contact Attorney Charles G. Willing, Jr. cgw@rathlaw.com National Impact. Uniquely New Hampshire. Rath, Young and Pignatelli, P.C. www.rathlaw.com Concord (603) 226-2600 24 BIOMASS MAGAZINE 4|2008