Hitec History Matthew Steingraber 2010-04-16 22:42:32
State Fair Community College signed a letter of intent Friday
establishing Hitec LLC as the first incubator tenant of the college’s
Missouri Center for Waste to Energy project. SFCC President Marsha Drennon and Hitec founder and owner Harvey G. Buhr signed the letter at an open house at Hitec’s research and development laboratory.
Buhr, who founded the Bonnots Mill-based company in 2004, said his background is in industrial construction, but he has been researching alternative energy for nearly 20 years.“I have always felt that someday we were going to have to start using all the scraps we generate,” Buhr said. After starting work in the field with various companies specializing in recycling biomass, wood scrap and poultry litter for energy production, Buhr started Hitec and developed a system that converts scrap tires and other waste materials while reclaiming reusable byproducts.
A lot of the biomass problem from wood was kind of taking care of itself,” Buhr said. “Tires, rubber and plastics are something that actually have a lot of energy in them and a lot of problems with how they’re being disposed.”Buhr said Hitec’s technology can break down tires into their component parts — oil, gas, carbon and steel — which can be used as heating sources and diesel fuel additives, for powering electrical generators orbe recycled. “It is an amazing company with a new technology that is really going to benefit our energy project,” Drennon said. Drennon said the college was introduced to Hitec through John Smeltzer, director of operations and maintenance for Pro Energy Services, which is one of the SFCC’s partners in the waste to energy project. She said SFCC felt Hitec’s system would complement the college’s project by providing the components for use in generating electricity and also benefit Hitec, which was looking for a site to showcase and continue to test its technology. The company needed to demonstrate that its equipment could run 24-hours a day before developing a commercial tire recycling plant, Buhr said, and the waste to energy project will provide a commercial setting to prove the technology can operate on a continuous basis.
Buhr said Hitec was proud to be the first incubator tenant in SFCC’s waste to energy project, and he was confident his company’s recycling systems will help clean up stockpiles of scrap tires in an environmentally friendly manner.
“This was an ideal partnership to set up our process,” Buhr said. “It is a testing ground, not to test if the system works, but that we can do a continuous operation.” Plans for the Missouri Center for Waste to Energy — which include a power generation facility, a training and educational center and an incubator for emerging energy technology providers — are being developed by SFCC in partnership with several private companies and local governmental agencies. SFCC last month learned it will receive a $718,500 from a state Training for Tomorrow grant to develop alternative energy curriculum, and it is waiting to hear back on a community development block grant application to fund the design and construction of the gas-trapping and power generation facility
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