Burning Bio News

Sacramento-based Pacific Ethanol Inc. said this week it plans to resume production at its plant in Burley, Idaho, pending a review in bankruptcy court scheduled for Dec. 14. The Burley plant can produce 60 million gallons of ethanol a year. Market conditions drove the company to shutter the plant in February, but the economics of ethanol production have since improved.

Global Energy Holdings Group, an Atlanta renewable energy company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday in Delaware. In the filing, Global estimated assets at $28 million and liabilities at $3.7 million.

Chief Ethanol Fuels near Hastings, NE celebrated 25th anniversary of operation of this commercial ethanol plant. The 62 million gallon per year ethanol plant is now seven times larger than when it was opened in 1984.

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.

For the first time ever, the maize genome has been completely mapped out, due to the work of Patrick Schnable and his research team at Iowa State University. Schnable said researchers have been laying the groundwork for the genome map since the early 1990s. The genetic map could assist in the creation of corn variants that are more drought-tolerant and less vulnerable to variations in climate. The genome could also give scientists the tools they need to reengineer the stalks of corn to make them usable for ethanol production.

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.

KL Energy Corp., Upton, WI, has been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a biomass production facility under the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). The BCAP program provides a matching per-ton payment for the collection, harvest, storage and transportation of renewable biomass delivered and sold to a local biomass conversion facility. It was included in the 2008 Farm Bill.

Steve Kagen, D-WI, introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives to make permanent a tax credit for paper companies that burn “black liquor.” Kagen’s effort may instigate a fight with fellow lawmakers who have been trying to eliminate the credit for paper companies, which they say has cost taxpayers $10 billion. –mj: It seems to me the paper companies should get recognition for the efficient use of their biomass residuals as fuels.

Biofuel technology developers have hit a barrier in raising funds independently. The recession and access to capital - even through federal guaranteed loans - have been difficult to access. Alliances with major oil companies like BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil are allowing emerging technologies to be capitalized.

POET, which currently produces 1.5 billion gallons a year of ethanol from corn, said its one-year old pilot plant (Scotland, SD) has reduced the cost of making ethanol from corn cobs from $4.13 a gallon to $2.35 a gallon by cutting capital costs and using an improved “cocktail” of enzymes. Moreover the company said that it can use a byproduct called lignin as fuel and that it would provide all the energy needed for the cellulosic plant as well as 80 percent of the energy that would be needed by a conventional corn-based distillery making twice the amount of ethanol.

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.

The California Energy Commission has awarded a $1 million grant to UC Riverside’s College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology to build a process demonstration unit to convert biosolids to clean synthetic diesel fuel.

RenewaFuel LLC is moving forward on establishing its 150,000 ton per year, biomass cube facility in Marquette, WI. RenewaFuel intends to move forward with a lease agreement for the use of two large aircraft hangars, which formerly housed B-52 aircraft when the facility was part of K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base. Their goal is to begin production by mid 2010. Their biofuel cubes have about the same energy as coal, but emit 90 percent less sulfur dioxide, 35 percent less particulate matter and 30 percent less acid gases than coal.

The Pine Point Community Center drew a standing-room-only crowd on Wednesday night for a Public Health Council meeting that focused on the 38 MW, Palmer Renewable Energy project proposed to be built in East Springfield, MA which would burn wood chips derived from construction and demolition debris to generate energy. – mj: Wow. This article reads like a witch-hunt. It sounds like the angry residents are most concerned about the construction and demolition debris, but it reads like a classic Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) project. I am guessing that the community has never been concerned with construction and demolition debris disposal until now.

USDA, ERS has issued a report on the impact of Ethanol on US land use and water quality. From the summaries, it looks like they found that increasing production of ethanol will create water quality problems. –mj: Unfortunately, that is based on taking the trends in production prior to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and extending the trend lines out into the future. That may happen, but probably not.

Cereplast, Inc., a manufacturer of bio-based plastics, announced that it expects the U.S. bio-plastics market to top $10 billion in sales by 2020. As of 2007, the U.S. bio-plastics market accounted for approximately $1 billion in sales. Some estimates point to bio-plastics capturing up to 30% of the total plastics market within ten years. — mj: Or in other words, competition for biomass feedstocks going into bioplastic production will increase ten fold in the next 10 years.

Schulman’s AgriPlas-brand wheat straw fiber bio-filler, a polypropylene-based additive that uses wheat straw, is being used by Ford Motor Co. in their Flex vehicle. AgriPlas is used in an injection-molded storage bin and inner lid for the interior of the Flex. AgriPlas provided the application with 10 percent weight savings, increased dimensional stability, lower energy use and a lower carbon footprint, officials with Fairlawn, Ohio-based Schulman said.

Lakewood, Colo.-based ZeaChem has begun construction on its first cellulosic biorefinery located in Boardman, OR. Coming online in 2010, the facility is expected to have the capacity to generate 250,000 gallons per year of advanced biofuels and bio-based chemicals. While construction is a bit behind, it is moving forward with a production capacity scaled down from the original 1.5 million gallon facility originally planned.

DTN’s hypothetical Neeley Biofuels Inc. ethanol plant has experienced a significant profitability improvement in the past two months, reflecting what appears to be a recent phenomenon in the real-world ethanol industry. The 50-million-gallon plant is showing a net profit of 21 cents per gallon as of Nov. 18, or a 27-cent-per-gallon improvement since our last update on Sept. 24. –mj: Todd Neeley, DTN, runs a digital ethanol plant. It is not the same as a real ethanol plant, but it is a fair indicator or industry activity.

The capacity to produce fuel ethanol from corn nearly tripled in the US between January 2006 and January 2009, but economic pressures and other issues since then have led some producers to idle plants or file for bankruptcy, the Energy Information Administration reported. US ethanol production capacity rose to 12.48 billion gallons a year in January 2009 from 7.89 billion gallons a year earlier in January 2008. Operating plants rose to 170 in January 2009 from 139 plants a year earlier.