It might have been quite the load when J. Peterman said , “You may know it better as Myanmar, but it’ll always be Burma to me.” But now the man who played Elaine’s bombastic boss on Seinfeld is turning literal crap into energy.
John O’Hurley, who also is known for his hosting role on the TV game show Family Feud and on Dancing with the Stars, will now be part of an company that turns hog manure into power. This article from Biomass Magazine says O’Hurley and his new company Energy-Inc. have inked a deal to put in a system at High Ridge Farm in Greenville, N.C., that will turn the waste from the farm’s 3,000 hogs and into electricity:
O’Hurley said his interest and convictions in renewable energy aren’t a surprise to those who know him, and described the company’s initiatives as the result of a two-year ramp up. “The technology hasn’t had a presence in this country, but it’s been used with quite a bit of success for the last 10 years or so in Europe and Asia because fuel prices, historically, have made it a comfortable environment,” he said.
Now that the technology has been improved since its migration to the U.S., it has evolved into an efficient mechanism to produce large amounts of energy from waste, O’Hurley said, adding that much higher fuel prices in the U.S. and a more technologically and government-friendly climate for clean technologies influenced the decision to introduce the “Advanced Thermal Conversion Technology” in this country.
Nevada-based Energy-Inc. has an exclusive license to distribute the ATCT system, which O’Hurley said involves two main platforms. “One, we take any waste that has a Btu value such as manure, municipal solid waste, agriculture waste, wood waste—anything not nuclear or metal—and produce electricity with near zero emissions through a pyrolytic gasification technology,” O’Hurley said. “We super heat the waste without the presence of oxygen to generate a synthesis gas; the gas turns a generator if necessary or can used as a replacement for natural gas. It’s an entirely closed system and produces steam, heat, hot water and residual biochar.”
The system is expected to process 12 tons of biomass a day and should be complete and operational within six months.