HM3 Energy, a Troutdale-based bio-energy startup, has received an $86,000 grant to help with its efforts to create a clean-technology alternative to coal.

HM3 Energy is working with Oregon State University researchers to develop a commercial dryer that would help convert forest waste into briquettes that can be used as a low-emissions alternative to coal at coal-fired power plants.

The Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST) awarded the commercialization grant to the project.

Oregon BEST will award $1 million in grants this year to fast-track commercialization of the state’s most promising clean-tech products and technologies being co-developed by university researchers and private businesses, according to a news release.

HM3 Energy, along with other recipients of Oregon BEST Commercialization Grants, will present a research poster on the project at Oregon BEST FEST in Portland on Sept. 12.

“If HM3 Energy is successful in its goals, it will have created a truly transformational technology addressing a major global energy challenge,” said David Kenney, president and executive director of Oregon BEST in a statement.

The briquettes promise distinct advantages over raw wood pellets in that they could directly replace coal at coal-fired power plants already connected to the electricity grid without making any plant modifications.

HM3 Energy plans to build a small commercial plant in Prineville, where sufficient biomass feedstock is sustainably and economically available within a 40-mile radius, according to a news release. The plant would produce sufficient quantities of torrefied briquettes to enable utilities such as PGE, PacifiCorp and others to perform qualifying testburns in their coal-fired power plants.

Once coal-fired plants establish torrefied biomass as a viable replacement fuel, HM3 Energy plans to build 10 to 20 plants throughout Oregon using wood waste as feedstock, said HM3 President Hiroshi Morihara. This would produce enough fuel to replace all the coal burned at PGE’s Boardman plant.