Coal on the Cob

A corny idea pays off

They laughed when Indiana Senator Richard Lugar suggested during last winter's coal strike that Americans take a lesson from Depression farmers and burn corn on the cob. But not everyone rejected his idea as farfetched. For the past two months, the Logansport, Ind., Municipal Utilities Group has been producing electricity by burning a mixture of 80% coal and 20% shelled, dried seed corn.

Though an earlier, similar experiment by an Iowa utility ended abruptly when worries arose over the burning of a corn fungicide, LMU has not met any environmentalist opposition. The corn "burns cleanly and has no detectable emissions," says Edwin McDivitt, 49, manager of utilities for LMU and the driving force behind the idea. He adds: "It would be nice to say that we did it for environmental reasons, but I got into it to save a buck."

The economies from burning the surplus grain, which is too old to be planted and is good only for fertilizer or landfill, can be large. LMU paid $11 a ton for its initial order of 650 tons of corn, and got an average heat output of 14 million BTUS per ton. Coal, by comparison, costs on the average $24 a ton and gives off no more than 23 million BTUs. The math works out to a 23% saving when corn is used.

LMU has bought another 2,000 tons of corn for burning over the next six months. There is not enough surplus old seed corn for it ever to become a major fuel source, but the Department of Energy has commissioned an investigation into corn and other potential emergency fuels. Meanwhile, in Jerry Brown's California, energy advisers are looking into a variety of other alternatives, including walnut shells and rice husks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.