Burning Bio News

A Pennsylvania-based company that has made claims of being the largest producer of biochar in the world is being charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud. The SEC alleges that since about September 2007, Mantria Corp. principals Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr raised approximately $30 million from more than 300 investors in approximately 12 fraudulent and unregistered securities offerings to investors, totaling at least $122 million.

Dynamotive Energy Systems Corp. announced that independent analyses of upgraded BioOil samples from their pyrolysis conversion technology have established the potential for development of synthetic hydrocarbon mobile fuels. Distillation analysis of the samples provided confirmed gasoline, jet, diesel, and vacuum gasoil fractions. Based on initial tests and analyses, the Company currently estimates that it can deliver advanced (second generation) fuels from biomass at a cost of less than $ 2 per gallon of ethanol-equivalent fuel in facilities processing about 70,000 tonnes of biomass per annum (current scale of its 200 metric tonne per day plant).

Dynamotive Energy Systems Corporation announced a long-term feedstock supply contract for a planned 200 TPD BioOil® plant to be developed in El Dorado, AR (southern Arkansas). The contract envisages the supply of 220,000 green tons per year of green residues (sawdust) for an initial term of 10 years with pricing linked to energy prices in the region. The facility is expected to begin construction in 2010 and be completed in 2011.

UOP LLC, a Honeywell(NYSE: HON) company, announced today that it was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop economically viable technology to stabilize pyrolysis oil from second generation biomass feedstocks for use as a renewable fuel source. UOP will work with Ensyn Corp., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory(NREL), the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Pall Corp. and the Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service on the project. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2010.

George Huber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received a $400,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue the commercialization of his experimental fast pyrolysis technology.

Dynamotive Energy Systems Corporation and its subsidiary, Dynamotive USA, Inc., announced plans to invest $24 million to build the first fully commercial industrial biofuel plant (over 10 million gallons per year) in the U.S that uses wood by-products. The facility will be located on a site in Willow Springs, Missouri.

Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Tech University and other agencies are putting together a pilot project to convert poultry litter into bio-oil, gas and slow-release fertilizer, called char, using a pyrolysis unit. Poultry litter is a mix of raw poultry manure and bedding.