Burning Bio News

And now for something completely different. Traveling to different cultures is mind-opening. I recommend it to everyone. India is fascinating. They have just launched a mission to the moon and their growing population is second only to China. They face food, energy, and environment issues at often a more personal level than most of us in the US.

This article is about trying to round up the sacred cows of Delhi, India. Cows are considered to be god-incarnate by Hindus. It is very serious. In 2002, the City of Delhi mandated that for safety reasons, the cows must be rounded up and moved outside the City. Rounding up 30,000 cows in Los Angeles would take a couple of weeks with the right cowboys. After 2 years Delhi still has about 10,000 cows to go. Part of the problem is that because they are sacred, the ‘removed’ cows keep returning. Another problem is that an illegal milk industry has emerged using the stray cows, raising the real question of what is more important, affordable protein (avoiding hunger) or food safety (controlling disease). This is real life for the folks of Delhi, India: religious values, human health (disease), hunger, human safety (vehicle accidents). These challenges are overlaid on less eminent debates of air standards so low that no conversion technology can meet them (CA), whether recycling fossil fuel plastic is greener than bioplastic, or whether plowing up new land for crops is worse than paving it over for new housing. Just something to think about…

After being rejected in PA and NJ, Art Needham finally found a warm reception in Kent County, MD. Apparently confined mushroom production has baggage similar to confined livestock production. Curiously mushrooms are not green plants, so the ‘green’ part of this story is the reuse of residual biomass (manure, crop residues) as substrate for mushroom feed. Mushroom production is actually an excellent example of turning underutilized, residual organics into a food product.

The Oasis Composting Company is operating out of New Brockton, AL. They are using a Mid-West Bio Systems technology.

The USDA Manure Resources Web Page was recently highlighted. My favorite page is the Manure Value and Economics Articles Page - http://www.extension.org/pages/Manure_Value_and_Economics_Articles

Environmental Quality Management Associates of Waco received a $250,000 award from the North Texas Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization’s (RCIC) Emerging Technology Fund. They developed a process to convert food product waste and manure from cows, chickens and turkeys into ethanol.

First Nation Wood Pellets LLC received a $500,000 from the State of PA to build a 78,000 tons per year fuel pellet mill in Johnstown, PA.

Summerhill Biomass Systems, a Cayuga County, NY, company believes it can demonstrate that wood chips, corn stalks and other waste or cultivated plant material can become a viable industrial and residential fuel when ground into a fine powder that can be burned like fuel oil or propane. The particles, as fine as powered sugar, are then blown through a spray of compressed air over an igniter, much as in liquid fuels micron-sized droplets are sprayed through an atomizer over an igniter to create a flame. Summerhill has applied for several patents on the idea and equipment.

Penford Products Co. has resumed its production and sale of ethanol in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after being off-line for more than three months following record flooding in the state, which forced the plant to shut down in June. The plant’s current production capacity is 37 MMgy, less than the full design capacity of 45 MMgy, because one tank at the plant still requires repair.

AGRESTI Biofuels LLC, formerly Indiana Ethanol Power, has decided to suspend negotiations with the Lake County Solid Waste Management District to build a garbage-to-ethanol plant in Lake County, IN. Agresti needed the County to commit to a minimum tonnage of MSW per day. The County could not do that. The move comes a month before the district is expected to approve a final contract with Powers Energy One, another MSW to ethanol technology provider.

Hawkeye Energy Holdings opened one 110 million gallon ethanol facility in Menlo, IA. and another 115 million gallon ethanol facility in Shell Rock, IA. Either Hawkeye is being very quiet about the start-up of these facilities or the operation of a quarter of a billion gallon capacity of ethanol (225 million gallons) isn’t considered news worthy. This article is the only one that showed up on the event.

Abengoa temporarily closed its ethanol plant in Portales, NM due to general economic conditions. It is still moving forward on the completion of its Sauget, IL facility. New technology and closer proximity to the corn supply give it more favorable economics.

Cobalt Biofuels, Mountainview, CA, plans to expand its biobutanol technology from a small laboratory-scale production to a pilot-scale plant that can produce about 35,000 gallons of fuel per year. Cobalt has engineered the Clostridium bacteria to produce higher yields and has added innovations to reduce process energy and water requirements. They have produced butanol from both paper and sugar processing wastes.

Hopewell, VA, Osage Bio Energy LLC is launching the Barley Bin Builder Yield Contest for the 2009 crop season to build acreage and awareness of barley production for the ethanol plant under construction. This is brilliant. For local recognition and $2,250 in prize money, farmers will really get excited about the great job they are doing anyway. It is the secret of County Fairs and farming technology adoption. Farmers love are responsive to recognition for quality work. This is contrasted to camelina production incentives out west which include revenue guarantees on a per-acre basis.

Clarissa Morawski presents an innovative technique for comparing non-monetary benefits of compost in a carbon-sensitive world. It is refreshing to see composting move to the top of the stack in carbon benefits. Compost is one of our bio-commodities that has always been undervalued monetarily. I need to read through the paper copy a bit more carefully before embracing the technique completely. Morawski goes into significant detail about the methodology, but like Jan Krieders LCA study below, it relies on many absolutely-objective assumptions. Because assumptions as best-guesses, they kind of undermine the certainty. But without them, we would be stuck using decades of historical data to model the future.

This is a well written article comparing the challenges using recent, biomass-derived plastic from corn vs. recycling ancient fossil plastic. Are we better off releasing less fossil CO2 with bioplastic, or recycling ancient fossil plastic, because the recycling infrastructure doesn’t work well today with bioplastic? The challenge is in developing a bioplastic end use infrastructure. Then we will be able to gain ground the CO2 balance during the bioplastic production and use it constructively as something else later.

Dr. Jan F. Kreider, who co-founded the University of Colorado Joint Center for Energy Management and has been involved in developing life cycle analyses (LCA), recently presented some of his work at a Toyota-sponsored seminar. The imbedded link takes you to the PDF of his powerpoint. The presentation is interesting, but the ‘nugget’ is the last slide comparing various effects of fossil and bio liquid fuels. Of note are the water use and CO2 output. CO2 from ancient carbon is not the same concern as CO2 from recent biomass. A point he makes is that shale and heavy crude from Canada do not use ag land, water and it sequesters CO2. It makes for interesting discussion. While Kreider claims to be objective to a fault, all his numbers are based on ‘objective’ assumptions, which kind of like ‘probably’ being absolutely right. It is worth looking at.

This greentechmedia.com review of cellulosic liquid fuel company development adds an interesting twist. That is the development of a ‘cellulosic sugar processing’ industry. This differs from the corn-ethanol model of delivering the biomass on one end and liquid fuel comes out the other end. A cellulosic sugar industry would be more like the biodiesel industry model where the biomass gets processed in one location (beans) and the energy feedstock (oil) gets delivered to the bioenergy plant. Food for thought, anyway.

Poet opened a 65 million gallon ethanol plant in Marion, OH. This latest POET plant will use technology the company developed that eliminates the need for heating in the cooking process. That will reduce energy usage by 8 to 15 percent, Poet said. Poet also said the plant will use a regenerative thermal oxidizer that eliminates up to 99.9 percent of air emissions.

Compost is playing an increasing role in functional landscaping and green building certification (LEED). ERTH (Environmental Resource and Technology for Humanity) Products stormwater remediation composting technologies are outlined.

PA Governor Ed Rendell announced twelve alternative clean energy projects in which his administration would invest $12 million. This investment is intended to create at least 1,200 full-time and part-time jobs and attract nearly $118 million in private investment into the state.