Burning Bio News

The Augusta (GA) Commission is exploring the investment of $20 million to make pipeline-quality compressed natural gas from methane generated at the landfill. The compressed natural gas will be used to power the fleet of garbage trucks that feed the landfill.

The Hythane Ford E-450 shuttle bus will be included in the City of Hempstead’s alternative fuel fleet. Hempstead, NY, has recently unveiled its alternative fuel station, located at Point Lookout on Long Island, which has the capability of fueling compressed natural gas, hydrogen, and Hythane vehicles. Hythane is a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen, which dramatically reduces carbon dioxide, non-methane hydrocarbons and methane emissions in comparison with the natural gas version of the Ford-450 engine.

Advanced Refining Concepts, LLC, has started construction on a new clean-diesel production plant in Northern Nevada, according to a news release from the company. The 100,000-gallon-per-day plant will produce the company’s trademark GDiesel. The plant will use the company’s ClearRefining technology, which is a proprietary pollution-free process for liquefying natural gas and other biogases to produce clean diesel fuel.

Wabuska, Nevada dairy, Desert Hills Dairy, has begun construction on a manure digester. The digester project is still negotiating on gas pricing (to sell pipeline-quality gas).

Environmental Power Corporation announced that it received a letter from the Nasdaq Stock Market’s Listing Qualifications Department providing notification that, for the last 30 consecutive business days, the bid price of the Company’s common stock had closed below the minimum $1.00 per share requirement for continued inclusion on The Nasdaq Capital Market pursuant to Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2). The notification letter states that Environmental Power has 180 calendar days, or until March 15, 2010, to regain compliance with the minimum closing bid price requirement. – mj: Nothing is easy on the frontier. EPC has pioneered large scale, waste methane to natural gas. Technically it is very efficient. The economics, as with nearly every biomass energy project, are not as clear cut. Note that EPC is not out of compliance on the environment, but with the rules of the Nasdaq Stock Market.

A new method for converting algae into renewable natural gas for use in pipelines and power generation has been transferred from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to the marketplace under a license between Genifuel Corporation and Battelle. The method, called catalytic hydrothermal gasification, creates natural gas out of algae - more quickly, more efficiently and at higher yields than other biofuel processes.

Microgy, Inc. and Xcel Energy have announced that they have entered into a long-term biogas-derived natural gas supply agreement, subject to approval by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Xcel Energy will use the biogas created from manure and other organic materials to generate carbon-neutral electricity at the company’s Fort St. Vrain Generating Station near Platteville, CO. Microgy’s initial project in Colorado is expected to produce 915,000 MMBtu of natural gas per year.

Propane-powered Ford trucks developed by Roush Performance Products Inc. will soon be available at dealers throughout the United States and Canada, Roush said Feb. 18. The powertrain engineering company has made its alternative-power technology available in the 2010 F-250, F-150 and E-250 trucks with deliveries anticipated to start in the third quarter.

Environmental Power Corp. repaired and upgraded its Huckabay Ridge facility in Stephenville, Texas, and has resumed production of its trademarked pipeline-quality renewable natural gas (RNG). The company has resumed delivering RNG to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. under a long-term power purchase agreement that will run through December 2018. Huckabay Ridge facility, generates approximately 635,000 million British thermal units of RNG—enough to produce nine megawatts of electricity per year using manure produced by 10,000 dairy cows from local farms around Stephenville.

Packaging Corp of America (PCA) started up a biorefinery to produce methane gas at its Filer City, MI, semichemical corrugating medium mill that is to nearly eliminate the complex’s natural gas use as well as reduce production costs. Using a proprietary process, the biorefinery takes byproduct liquor of the pulp cooking process and uses bacteria to convert the liquor directly to methane gas. The methane is then burned as fuel in an existing power boiler to produce steam, replacing essentially all natural gas (except for pilot lights) and 30% of coal consumption at the 413,000 tons/yr mill.

The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO), in a public-private partnership with FirmGreen Inc, has commissioned a landfill gas processing facility and fueling station that pumps compressed natural gas (CNG) processed from landfill gas near Columbus, Ohio. The facility can produce fuel at a Gasoline Gallon Equivalent cost of less than $2.00 per gallon.

The San Antonio Water System will sell captured methane gas generated from the utility’s treatment of 140,000 tons of biosolids, or sewage, from customers each year. The city-owned utility’s board of trustees approved a contract Tuesday to provide at least 900,000 cubic feet of natural gas daily for the next 20 years to Ameresco Inc., a Framingham, Mass.-based energy services company.

Microgy Grand Island LLC, has completed financing involving the sale of $7 million of tax-exempt bonds issued by the city of Grand Island, NE. The proceeds from the bonds will be used to finance construction of the Grand Island anaerobic digestion project near a JBS Swift & Co. beef processing plant in Grand Island, NE.

Gas from the Johnson County (MO) Landfill will help power Mid-Missouri EnergyÕs ethanol plant near Malta Bend. Landfill gas will displace more than 90 percent of the natural gas used to produce ethanol at its plant. It will also provide adiditional blending credits because they will be offsetting fossil fuels.

Environmental Power Corp. is building or upgrading four very large digesters in California to produce pipeline-quality gas. Between the four projects, Environmental Power will have the capacity to collectively produce approximately 2 million MMBtus per year of pipeline quality gas or RNG, which is equivalent to approximately 20 to 28 megawatts of electricity generation. These numbers indicate that with these four CA manure digester projects, Environmental Power will have doubled the existing US digester capacity (over 100 digesters).

Environmental Power, a renewable bioenergy company, has begun construction of its 635 million btu, Rio Leche Estates renewable natural gas facility in Dublin, Texas. The facility, owned and operated by Environmental Power’s subsidiary Microgy, will generate pipeline-grade renewable natural gas (RNG) from dairy cow manure and other waste products.

Houston-based Waste Management Inc. and the Linde Group, a global natural gas producer and distributor, will build a plant to purify and liquefy landfill gas at the waste disposal company’s Altamont site near Livermore. The plant is expected to open next year.

Environmental Power Corporation held a ground-breaking ceremony for its biogas plant at the JBS Swift beef processing facility in Grand Island, NE. At capacity, the facility is expected to generate 235,000 MMBtu per year — the energy equivalent of 1.7 million gallons of oil — and will offset approximately 25% of JBS Swift’s annual purchase of natural gas.

Bakersfield-based BioEnergy Solutions and New Hampshire’s Microgy will capture the gas at dairy farms, clean it and deliver it to Pacific Gas & Electric. This is part of PG&E’s initiative to increase renewable sources of natural gas.

A $23 million system gas conversion system is up and running at PA three landfills and will give the three major energy consumers a large discount on natural gas. The recovered gas is fed to Dominion Peoples utility. There are plans for establishing a ‘fuel fund’ that would use revenues from the methane program to help new and upstart businesses offset their utility expenses.