One-time horse trainer John Kimberlin says his "Nature's Furnace," which burns animal, agricultural and other biowastes to make heat, is ready for the market.

It's been a long time coming for Kimberlin, who said he began brainstorming the idea when he returned to his 23-acre horse spread near Waukee 16 years ago. After a hiatus in Colorado, he found that the departed tenants had left behind a ton of horse manure.

"Didn't know what to do with the stuff, except that I know that from the beginning of time, animal waste could be burned for fuel," said Kimberlin, 57, who now is retired from the horse business.

He piled horse manure and sawdust on top of a couple of charcoal briquettes. Then he put a hair dryer to it and it burned hotter. He kept increasing the size of his experimental fires and found he could make it burn from the bottom up, inside out, increasing the heat.

The result was two U.S. patents and a slew of trial-and-error experiments in his shed just south of Interstate Highway 80 before the finished product was ready.

Kimberlin said he has two sales already in Europe from his Northern Ireland office and is soliciting business in the United States.

Kimberlin has contracted with two Des Moines manufacturing companies, 3E and Waldinger, to build the eight-ton furnace on specifications for each order.

He's set up a sales force to beat the bushes, primarily in the agricultural and commercial buildings markets, to sell the digester that can turn just about any kind of waste - wood chips, leaves, garbage or animal manure - into heat. The heat can either warm a building or make up to 100 kilowatts of electricity, about enough to power 75 homes, Kimberlin said.

"The first uses probably will be on farms and in agricultural settings, where there is surplus animal or crop waste," Kimberlin said as he watched his reactor heat up in a shed on the Waukee horse farm. "But it can work anywhere. For instance, it could follow equine or livestock shows."

Kimberlin is particularly excited about the portability of the unit.

"The forest industry always has tree waste that they need to get rid of," Kimberlin said. "This machine can go to the forest and save them costs." Kimberlin declined to provide a specific price for each unit because of various attachments and add-ons that might be used, but said the basic purchase price will be "in the low six figures."

The 3E electrical engineering company of Des Moines will make the reactors for Kimberlin. Best known for its electrical equipment distributing network, 3E also has a manufacturing division that does machining, welding and engineering.

"This idea looked good to us from the start," said J.D. Pilmer, 3E executive vice president, who runs the company's Delaware Avenue site where the reactors are fabricated. "We see a major potential for this business."

The Waldinger Corp., a mechanical, electrical and sheet metal contractor in Des Moines, will make the control panels and provide service support.

Kimberlin, meanwhile, has put a sales force to work on the phones and on the road to sell the Nature's Furnace worldwide.

Kimberlin is entering what is becoming an increasingly crowded market in the biowaste business.

Biomass waste energy isn't quite as far along in the renewable segment as ethanol, biodiesel or wind power, but it's getting there.

The San Jose, Calif., City Council has begun to develop guidelines and potential lease terms for the development of an organics-to-energy biogas facility that would take in up to 150,000 tons of organic waste per year to process and produce energy.

The resulting energy could supply power to the adjacent San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant or be sold back into the regional electrical utility power grid.

In Iowa, the University of Iowa's power plant is working with Quaker Oats' Cedar Rapids plant to use oat hulls with coal to fire a circulating fluidized bed boiler.

In the northwest Iowa town of Hull, Bison Energy has constructed a plant that will turn manure and other wastes into natural gas.

Adel entrepreneur John Hollen is readying an "Advanced Anaerobic Digestion System," which converts organic wastes and residues into a form of a methane-rich biogas. Hollen says he hopes to bring the digester from its test site in Oregon to Des Moines this year.

"This business is still so small that we hardly see each other," Kimberlin said of the various other biowaste reactors that are coming onto the market.

"But we know that the waste is out there, and as time goes by more and more of it will be used for fuel."