Prairie Fire BioEnergy moves forward with construction of the first biomass fuel processing facility in Kansas.

April 17, 2008

Prairie Fire is excited to announce that they are moving forward with construction of the biomass processing plant located in Healy, Kansas. This announcement comes less than a year after starting the share drive for prospective members. Prairie Fire BioEnergy Cooperative is owned by 86 members from 9 Western Kansas counties.

Officials of the Cooperative are in the final planning stage, securing necessary permits and purchasing construction material for the project. The location of the facility will be 1-1/2 miles west of Healy on Highway 4. At this location Prairie Fire will collect and process biomass derived from agriculture waste streams from its owner members. The processed biomass will then be delivered to gasification boilers and/or made into fuel pellets for the wholesale export market to Europe and local residential heating market. Located on the site will be a fully operational gasification boiler driving a turbine, with the capability producing electricity to power the pellet production operation. The gasification unit’s are manufactured by Uniconfort, a 50 year old gasification boiler manufacturer located in Italy. The turbine is of new technology designed and manufactured by Mechanology of Attleboro, Massachusetts.

In January of 2008 Prairie Fire entered into a working relationship with Alternative Energy Solutions (AES) of Wichita, Kansas. AES provides expertise in engineering and boiler application and is the North American distributor of Uniconfort gasification boilers. Gasification boilers have been used extensively in Europe but have seen limited use in the United States. With this technology Prairie Fire can offer substantial savings over natural gas produced steam. Prairie Fire is targeting small to medium steam users and can convert potential customers to biomass derived steam with no conversion cost to the customer. These potential customers include but are not limited to feed mills, ethanol plants, meat packing plants, hospitals and schools.

Prairie Fire and Sunflower Electric signed an agreement in February to prove the feasibility of co-burning biomass with their current plant in Holcomb as well as their other electric generation locations and expansion projects. Prairie Fire has delivered biomass samples to Sunflower for their testing and continues to work with them on renewable energy issues.

January 2, 2008
Dear Ag Producer,

I can’t tell you how many times over the past six months that I have visited with ag producers like yourself and have been told that they have never heard about Prairie Fire. In some cases they have heard, but don’t have all the correct information to make an informed decision on how Prairie Fire can improve their operation and bottom line.

In most cases, once an operator looks at Prairie Fire, they start telling me how Prairie Fire will work for them! A few of those ideas are as follows:

A cattleman tells how he plans on planting 20 acres of extra feed and bringing it to Prairie Fire which will pay for the rest of his feed.

A farm operator says he plans on running a baler behind his custom cutters and sending the bales to Prairie Fire, which will pay for his custom cutter expenses.

Another farm operator plans to bale a 3rd of his corn stocks every year to enhance his operations cash flow while leaving plenty of nutrients for his land.

These are just a few of the ideas on how producers like yourself plan on using Prairie Fire to enhance their operation.

We will be closing the Producer Share Drive on January 31, 2008, so please give me a call and we can discover how Prairie Fire will work for you.

Sincerely,

Lance Sherwood, General Manager
Prairie Fire BioEnergy Cooperative