The Stanly News & Press - February 21, 2010
Once again Tucker Engineering Associates (TEA) of Locust has created great interest in its alternative fuel TEA Process, a gasification system which converts landfill waste into methane gas, with carbon as a useful by-product. The win-win process of cleaning up landfills and creating alternative fuels is receiving considerable interest, especially from the U.S. military and the Defense Department.

On Tuesday afternoon, a group of potential investors from Georgia toured the TEA facilities and witnessed the TEA processor turn wood chips into usable methane gas.

“It’s been on my mind a long time on how to take the energy out of organic matter and do it cleanly,” said Richard Tucker, president of TEA and both a nuclear and electrical engineer.

“Our process sequesters some pretty nasty stuff — halogens, sulfur and mercury — in the carbon.”

In addition to the methane gas serving as an alternative fuel, Tucker said the carbon by-product can then be used to filter liquid waste in hog farms and captures yet another by-product — ammonia, which will then be sold.

Also in the audience Tuesday was Congressman Larry Kissell, who has been in contact with TEA since seeing an interview with Tucker, prior to an earlier demonstration. Kissell has shared the interview video with various armed forces agencies and the Department of Defense in Washington, generating considerable interest in the potential of the TEA Process for military installations.

“As Washington looks for alternative fuel sources, I continue to tell them I’ve got the thing you need to see,” Kissell said.

Kissell has also shown the interview video to the House Committee on Agriculture and Energy Conservation.

The TEA Processor was built over the past several years with volunteers, who are friends of the Tucker Brothers, Richard and Jerry, who is a mechanical engineer.