BIOGAS¦ and American competitors at a disadvantage,” he says. “They are trying to force their equipment in a setting.” Chrapko says his company does just the opposite, looking to manufacture engines, vessels or other modules in the country of operation. “Adding more hoops to the equation doesn’t help anyone,” he says of companies trying to force an application specific technology on a project developer. Working with multinational corporations, local economic development offices and former bridge builders or power plant construction firms, has helped boost the reputation of Himark, Chrapko adds. Himark will still use its own case-specific project designs, but it won’t use a certain product if it will create added stress to the community employing the AD system. Currently, the company is working on more than two dozen projects overseas. As good as that may sound however, Evan says because they are huge projects, they will take years. But he’s not worried, for one simple reason. Himark invests in its own projects, deploys hundreds of man-hours to design a feasible project and performs feasibility studies. With all of the success of the Chrapko brothers, the company still hasn’t gone public, an element that allows the company to do what it wants without reporting to anyone, an element that also helps land large projects globally. “We have the supreme luxury of taking an ultra-long-term view,” he says, and foreign governments like that. That same view has also allowed the company to develop other companies, unnamed and not public yet, that can develop other AD system technology, including a bolt-on technology that he says will address what every AD operation will someday have, an algae nutrient processing piece. No matter what, the Himark team believes in biogas because it takes a negative and turns it into a positive, Evan says. Between renewable energy development, software patents and selling companies for hundreds of millions, Chrapko
won’t admit to loving one over the other, but if the company’s desire to know more about waste-to-energy's potential (and its $25 million R&D budget) isn’t enough to show why Evan isn’t, in fact, afraid to go big for biogas, then maybe it’s the excitement in his voice when he talks about an unnamed project that the company will soon announce. If the Oakley, Kan., installation looks big because it can replace 90 percent of the ethanol facility’s fossil fuel usage, then just wait. The project
Evan really wants to talk about but can’t just yet, a project led in part by GE, will be the biggest biogas installation in the world, Chrapko says, “probably by a factor of two or three.” Author: Luke Geiver Features Editor, Biomass Magazine (701) 738-4944 lgeiver@bbiinternational.com
OCTOBER 2012 | BIOMASS MAGAZINE 27