Burning Bio News

The Fiberight plant in Blairstown, IA, is using waste fibers from International Paper’s nearby Cedar River mill to make cellulosic ethanol. The company plans to introduce organic pulps, the stuff made from residential trash, to the fuel-making process within weeks. The plant should be able to produce up to six-million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year when it reaches capacity in 2011.

An Italian company is interested in operating a plant in Berkeley County (WV) that would convert municipal solid waste into fuel, officials said last week at the Berkeley County Commission’s regular meeting. The “biomass energy-conversion project” by Entsorga Italia S.p.A., based in Tortona, in northern Italy, and Chemtex USA, an affiliated company based in North Carolina, might be able to take advantage of $10 million in federal stimulus bonds. Entsorga’s proposed operation would convert municipal waste into fuel that would be sold to manufacturers that use an industrial furnace for production.

On Thursday, 40 years after that first Earth Day in 1970, smog levels nationwide have dropped by about a quarter, and lead levels in the air are down more than 90 percent. Formerly fetid lakes and burning rivers are now open to swimmers. The challenges to the planet today are largely invisible — and therefore tougher to tackle.

Powers Energy hopes to power its planned $250 million bioethanol plant in Schneider, IN, using a solar panel system, company President Earl Powers. The Evansville-based company has been in talks with Northern Indiana Public Service Co. regarding the energy producing system, which Powers said would be placed on the roof of the plant’s 23-acre processing building. Powers said the plant would use only 50 percent of the energy it creates, and would sell the rest back to NIPSCO. The plant will be one of the first in the world to use a patented anaerobic fermentation process to produce ethanol from garbage on a large scale.

Powers Energy One of Indiana LLC has the land and support of the town of Schneider, IN to build its solid waste-to-ethanol plant. Now it needs the permits. The plant will gasify trash and feed the gas to bacteria, which would feed off the gas and produce ethanol as a byproduct. The facility needs to be permitted by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau before the plant’s construction can begin. Powers said the Lake County plant will produce 160 million gallons a year when running at full capacity.

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.

S4 Energy Solutions LLC, a joint venture of Waste Management and InEnTec, has announced plans to develop a plasma gasification facility at the Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, OR. Waste Management owns the landfill. The facility will convert waste materials into a synthetic gas that can then be converted into transportation fuels such as ethanol and diesel. The gas also can be used as a substitute for natural gas in heating or electricity generation.

University of Central Florida professor Henry Daniell has developed a technology to produce ethanol from organic waste products. Daniell’s technique — developed with U.S. Department of Agriculture funding — uses plant-derived enzyme cocktails to break down orange peels and other waste materials into sugar, which is then fermented into ethanol.

British Airways plans to build a plant that will produce biojet fuel from plasma gasification of biomass. The plant will convert 500,000 tons of solid waste per year into 16 million gallons of jet fuel as well as generate 20 megawatts (MW) of excess renewable electricity annually for export to the national grid.

Chautauqua County (NY) Executive Gregory J. Edwards was on hand as the engines inside the County’s Methane-Electric Plant underwent their first, full capacity test February 12. The landfill gas powered generator has a capacity of 6.4 megawatts of electricity will result in a profit of over $2 million per year to the county.

Project Apollo, a 25-megawatt biomass power plant to be built in Milwaukee, WI, should be operational in late 2013. Developer Alliance Federated Energy (AFE) plans to use Westinghouse Plasma Corp.’s plasma gasification technology to convert municipal and industrial wastes into syngas for energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission gave its approval Thursday for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to purchase renewable energy from Mt. Poso Cogeneration Co. LLC. Under the 15-year pact, the Mt. Poso Cogeneration plant will be converted to a facility powered with urban and agricultural wood waste. The plant currently generates electricity from coal, petroleum coke and tire-derived fuel. The proposed 44 megawatt biomass facility will be located in Bakersfield, CA.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency recognized one of the largest landfill gas-to-liquefied natural gas facilities in the world, along with seven other landfill methane capture projects for renewable energy generation and emissions reduction innovations. Altamont Landfill Resource and Recovery Facility in Livermore, California, one of the largest in the world, led the Project of the Year awardees. Other winning partners are the University of New Hampshire’s EcoLineTM project in Rochester, New Hampshire; Jefferson City’s Missouri Renewable Energy Project in Missouri; Ox Mountain Landfill Gas Energy Project in Half Moon Bay, California; the Sioux Falls Landfill and Poet Landfill Gas Pipeline in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and the Winder Renewable Methane Project in Winder, Georgia. At present, the United States has about 509 operational landfill gas energy projects with a capacity of 1,563 megawatts.

Enerkem Inc.announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will award $50 million in funding for the construction and operation of its waste-to-biofuels facility to be located in Pontotoc, Mississippi. Enerkem Corporation will build and operate the 300 ton-per-day biorefinery in Mississippi, which will produce 10 million gallons of ethanol annually, as well as green chemicals, from sorted municipal solid waste and wood residues and will reduce the pressure to landfill. –mj: Industry and other federal agencies appear unfazed by EPAs proposed plan to not include municipal solid waste (MSW) in the renewable fuels standards.

The Fiberight LLC, in Blairstown, IA is being converted to make ethanol from municipal solid waste (MSW). Fiberight has been operating a pilot-scale cellulosic facility in Virginia for the past three years and has developed a proprietary conversion process to produce cellulosic ethanol and biochemicals from MSW. Fiberright’s business model targets communities of 150,000 population, and will each produce approximately 10 million gallons and cost $30-50 million.

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District (VRSD) in California announced the start-up of a cutting-edge solid waste management facility. The new Biosolids Drying and Electric Generation Facility is powered by landfill gas, and recycles 100% of its resources to provide a regional biosolids management solution and generate renewable energy for the local power grid. The facility is comprised of 80-ton-per-day biosolids dryers and the nine microturbines that generate 2.25 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

An innovative deal between East Baton Rouge Parish government and Baton Rouge Renewable Energy LLC will turn landfill gas into power for two local industrial plants, while generating $33 million in revenue for the city-parish over 20 years. The gas will be sold to Novolyte Technologies, which makes electrolytes used in lithium ion batteries, and ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Polyolefins Plant. Brad Ives, chief executive officer of Illumination Renewables LLC, the parent company of Baton Rouge Renewable, said the north landfill will produce somewhere in the ballpark of 70 million to 80 million British thermal units per hour (roughly the equivalent of 70,000 to 80,000 cubic feet) of gas.

The head of the state agency that disposes all of Rhode Island’s garbage at the Central Landfill says he is no longer interested in building a waste-to-energy plant to consume the state’s refuse. “We’re not supportive of waste-to-energy. It would triple the fees [charged to communities],” Michael O’Connell told a regional business group Tuesday. “The chances of that are slim to none.” – mj: This is a separate initiative from the funding for landfill gas that was listed here last week in RI. Today’s RI news is related to the State’s ban on incineration… semantics. We need a study on the million-dollar costs of 30-year old, technology based regulations and their inability to be adapted to current conditions.

Ethanol Producer Magazine has published a review of regional feedstocks that are being developed for cellulosic biofuels. It focuses primarily on agricultural and forest biomass with a cursory mention of MSW and algae biomass. Still it is a nice overview of the regional differences in available biomass.

Linde North America and Houston-based Waste Management said a joint venture between the companies is now producing clean, renewable vehicle fuel at a plant at the Altamont Landfill, near Livermore, CA. The facility, completed on schedule, is considered the world’s largest landfill gas-to-liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. When it reaches full capacity in the next two to three months, he said the plant is expected to be able to produce up to 13,000 gallons of LNG a day—enough to fuel 300 of Waste Management’s 485 waste hauling and recycling collection vehicles in 20 California communities.