Publication Summary

Washington State University, the Department of Ecology, and INTEC recently completed a Phase 1 project aimed at assessing Eastern Washington′s twenty counties for available biomass and calculating the potential energy production of the biomass via anaerobic digestion. Twenty four organic resource or waste types in 6 material categories were evaluated. The final numbers reflect the project′s goal for determining the overall availability and potential, while reserving collection concerns and net energy, sensitivity, and economic analyses for a later Phase II study. Results of the assessment show that Eastern Washington has an annual production of 4.3 million tons of underutilized dry biomass, which is capable of producing, via anaerobic digestion and subsequent biogas conversion, 35 trillion BTU′s of heat convertible to 3 trillion W hrs of electrical energy, which is equivalent to around 40% of Eastern Washington′s annual residential electrical consumption. 1 In addition, digestion of the biomass will help mitigate environmental concerns brought about by present practices through nutrient cycling, odor reduction, water and air quality improvement, and greenhouse gas reduction.

The files that you are about to download will provide you the ability to access the data collected in the Inventory and Assessment study through a visual basic program.

This is a self-extracting zip file. Save the file into a folder on your hard drive (like c:\my documents) then… (1) On your C drive, create a folder called "easternWA" (2) Using windows explorer browse to the c:\my documents folder and double click on the file (biomass.exe) (3) Extract (or unzip) the files to c:\easternWA (4) Run setup.exe to install the files to "c:\easternWA" (5) After installation, a file called "bioenergy" should appear on "Start"-"Program" (6) Click it to run the database