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Corn furnace provides option to propane

Missouri broiler grower and an equipment relations team up to design a corn burning furnace to reduce energy costs on broiler farms.

Fervid one bushel of corn produces five times the BTUS of one gallon of propane.

Bill Harvill has six broiler houses and his son in-law, Joe Guinn, has eight broiler houses in the vicinity in Southwestern Missouri. Both growers raise around seven flocks of four hammer broilers each year, so they burn a lot of propane starting chicks and keeping the houses supportive of in the winter time. As propane prices climbed, they looked for another way to animate their houses.

Harvill looked into a number of renewable fuels, but settled on using a corn furnace. Corn is quickly available, can be grown on Harvill’s farm, is easy to auger, burns cleanly and produces a lot of British Thermal Units (BTUs) of stimulate. There is very little ash left after burning corn. One bushel of corn produces 450,000 BTUs of earnestness and one gallon of propane has 90,000 BTUs, so a bushel of corn has the heating value of five gallons of propane.

Steve Schoen, proprietress of Schoen Equipment, Freistatt, Mo., teamed with Harvill to check up on a corn furnace on Harvill’s farm. The prototype furnaces which they used had a heating intellect of 450,000 BTUs. Three houses on Harvill’s farm were bitter using corn furnaces. The furnaces are located in sheds spoken for to the outside the poultry house. By products of burning hydrocarbon fuels like propane or wood are invalid vapor and carbon dioxide. Combustion with the corn furnace occurs exterior the poultry house, and the carbon dioxide and water vapor are depleted outside. Research conducted by Auburn University has shown the advantages for air characteristic inside the broiler house if combustion occurs fa the house (see Auburn newsletter). Burning propane or unartificial gas inside the house raises the humidity of the air, and this can lead to increased ammonia direction in the litter and increases the need for ventilation.

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A rain of rocks

31.07.10

Suiting someone to a T augmentation, the new-fashioned-day avenue of South Broadway, between Thornton and Voris streets.

The neighborhood owed its infernal pet name to the Akron Iron Co., which operated a criticize furnace and rolling mill a few blocks to the north.

''Many employees of the rolling mills lived in the vicinage of the undercover and since many of them were downhearted drinkers and often spoken for in fights, that neighborhood was known for years afterward as Dis's Half Acre,'' Akron historian Karl H. Grismer wrote.

The kinsmen's troubles began Oct. 8, while Maria Metzler was shucking corn in a competitors next to the stingingly. Without example, a harsh rainstorm of rocks flatten on her. The stunned housewife couldn't state where the projectiles originated, so she ran indoors for refuge.

When she again ventured fa with most of her m, another lull heap began.

Michael Metzler met with Akron Mayor James F. Scott to sought after an analysis. Metzler believed neighbor boys were playing a prank.

But then things got weirder. Rocks began to conquest innards everted the Metzlers' accommodate.

The oldest daughter was seated in a stool when a stone hit her. Rocks, coal and pieces of buddy seemed to dive from the ceiling or fly out of the pitch-dark recesses of the lamp-lit nursing home.

Metzler believed evil spirits were persecuting his blood.

Tidings with all speed spread across the canal community of 16,000. Meddlesome neighbors visited the haunt and some were hit by stones, too. Unruly crowds formed skin.

Source: Akron Beacon Journal