Asheville company to build ‘green coal’ facility

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Here’s the story. I have no idea what “torrified biomass” is.

Person County has been selected as the site for the nation’s first commercial production facility for “green coal,” which could help utilities run their coal-fired power plants — like the ones Progress Energy has in this county — cleaner and with nearly as much power generation efficiency as from coal alone.

Integro Earth Fuels, an Asheville-based firm, announced Tuesday that it intends to build the facility on a tract of 44-plus acres just north of Roxboro, adjacent to Georgia Pacific Corp.’s plant here. It expects the plant to be in production by the third quarter of 2009.

The Integro plant, the first commercial facility of its kind in the United States, the company said, will produce “torrified biomass,” or “green coal,” which a company press release described as “an economical, carbon neutral feedstock for use in the production of heat, power, and bio-based fuels.”