Burning Bio News

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $11 million in funding over three years for research and development in the area of thermochemical conversion of biomass into advanced biofuels that are compatible with existing fueling infrastructure. The objective of this funding is to improve the conversion of non-food biomass to liquid transportation hydrocarbon fuels via pyrolysis, a process that decomposes biomass using heat in the absence of oxygen to produce a bio-oil that can be upgraded to renewable diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel. Applications for this funding opportunity are due July 9, 2010.

The University of Minnesota, Morris is nearly ready to utilize its biomass gasification system to heat and cool a large portion of its campus buildings. Experiments with fuel densities, which had occupied plant researchers efforts for months have paid off. Lowell Rasmussen, UMM’s Vice Chancellor for Finance and Facilities, said that test burns last week using wood chips and corn stover have proved successful. – mj: This operation has been years in the making. Well done UMM!

JBS Five Rivers Cattle Feeding is planning to install three of the Harsh-built commercial gasifiers at their Kuner, CO facility. The new gasifiers will be fueled from feedlot manure, handling up to 2 tons of manure per hour. The gasifiers will replace the feedlot’s three boilers that are used to flake corn, part of the diet given to cattle. As part of the $18 million renovation of that feedlot, a manure composting facility is also planned.

Mesquite Fuels and Agriculture plans to gasify mesquite and juniper cedar wood to generate 20 MW of electricity near Brownwood, TX. This company is working to secure agreements with local land owners that allows them to clear land of mesquite trees and cedar at no cost to the owner and use the wood as fuel for their power plant. The company needs 150,000 acres of land to be available over a for harvesting through land owner agreements to enable them to secure financing from their investor. The land would not be harvested all at once, but over a 10 year period.

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.

An early-stage company spun out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, plans to commercialize a catalytic process for converting cellulosic biomass into five of the chemicals found in gasoline. Anellotech’s reactors perform a process called “catalytic pyrolysis,” which converts three of the structural molecules found in plants–two forms of cellulose and the woody molecule lignin–into fuels. Ground-up biomass is fed into a high-temperature reactor and blended with a catalyst.

Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company (CVEC) of Benson will be paying $120,000 in fines to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) as part of an agreement over alleged violations involving its first-of-a-kind gasifier system. According to CVEC, it reported to the MPCA that what likely amounted to one adulterated, eight-foot long, two-by-four had been chipped and shredded into a 20-ton load of wood used as fuel in the gasifier.

The city of Radford, VA, recently received a $23,400 federal grant to fund a site evaluation at the former D.E. Hammond & Co. a former recycling company that closed in the 1990s and the site of tens of thousands of abandoned railroad ties. The evaluation will use Microgasification to convert railroad ties to synthetic gas by exposing it to high heat in a down-draft gasifier, said Mary Ann Sigurdson, spokeswoman for American Cogeneration LLC.

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.

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.

At Josh Frye’s poultry farm in West Virginia, the chicken litter is fed into a large, gasifier. In addtion to heat, out comes a charcoal-like substance known as “biochar” — which is not only an excellent fertilizer, but also helps keep carbon in the soil instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas. – mj: The biochar research is still being conducted, but this article is a nice contrast to the more common reports of manure destroying the environment articles.

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.

Hartford Central School District (Hartford, NY) and CSArch Architecture|Construction Management have installed a wood-chip gasifier. The gas is burned in a standard boiler to produce hot water which is distributed throughout the school’s hot water heating system. The system can operate at part or full capacity depending on heating demand. The district estimates that the plant will burn 1,600 tons of locally sourced wood chips in its first year of operation.

Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. (CVEC) in Benson (MN) is using about 70 tons of corn cobs, wood and glycerin per day in its gasifier. The company burns it to create steam, which is used as a heat source to make ethanol.CVEC hopes to eventually reach 300 tons of biomass per day, which would replace 90 percent of the natural gas they use with renewable sources. Currently, they’re replacing 20 percent. So far, selling corn cobs is profitable for farmers. The co-op can pay $90 to $100 per ton while CVEC estimates it costs a farmer $66 per ton, or $33 per acre, to harvest and deliver them. CVEC’s cob price is supported by a USDA Farm Service Agency initiative to help biomass markets get established.

John Zimmerman and his mother, Northfield, MN, raise 150,000 turkeys. They have just installed a gasifier on the farm to burn the turkey litter (manure + bedding) as a fuel for heat through out the winter. Xcel Energy is providing most of the money to get this experiment going. They are going to run the gasifier for a year to see if it makes sense to adapt it as a practice.

Marco Castaldi and Heidi Butterman, Columbia University (NY) Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, have found that by increasing carbon dioxide in a gasifier, biomass is converted to energy more efficiently. This also reduces carbon dioxide emissions. The study processed 50 different kinds of biomass, including beach grass, pine needles, poplar wood, municipal solid waste and coal, from 25°C to 1000°C at rates of 1-100°C per minute in pure carbon dioxide and in a mixture of steam, nitrogen gas and carbon dioxide. They found that a carbon dioxide-steam mixture significantly increased the conversion of biomass to volatile products at lower temperatures.

A Howard City (MI) grain feed mill is now converting turkey litter into steam, electricity and fertilizer with a $3 million alternative commercially based biomass energy plant developed by a small Kentwood company, Heat Transfer International. Sietsema Farms Feeds LLC is roasting 70,000 pounds of turkey waste a day to generate 206,400 pounds of steam and 500 KWh of electricity to power a grain mill that prepares feed for the birds. The turkey waste is gathered from several West Michigan turkey facilities.

Biochar was discussed at the Texas Animal Manure Management Issues Conference Sept. 29-30 in Round Rock, north of Austin. – mj: The jury is still out biochar, but this article is a pretty good overview of general biomass gasification as it relates to manure. Mike McGolden, Coaltec, mentions using biochar to filter water. Some landmark research by USDA-ARS in 2005 showed that charcoal made from chicken litter was a superior filter element to charcoal made from wood.

Sweden’s Chemrec AB broke ground in September on a dimethyl ether (DME) demonstration plant in Pitea, Sweden, with completion expected by mid-2010. The project will demonstrate the production of the advanced diesel fuel, DME, from forest biomass using pulp mill black liquor. The project also includes demonstration of the fuel used in heavy commercial vehicles. –mj: dimethyl ester (DME) continues to make the news. This is an early demonstration project.

Energy Quest, Inc. announced that it is near signing a purchase agreement for several of its 6.7 MW modular power plant systems which will use an efficient biomass preparation process and advanced modular gasification to generate electricity. The 6.7 MW module is self sufficient to run independently or synchronously with many modules allowing a build up to a 12, 24, 40 or 60 MW energy system.