Burning Bio News

In agriculture, few questions hold as much weight as discussions on planting intentions in the forthcoming year. The intensity only increased with the run-up and crash of the markets in 2007-2008. In 2009, farmers could not get the crops into the fields in the spring and then could not get them out in the fall. Still the corn came. Darrel Good, University of Illinois, sets the forecast of the new year’s crops in context of last year’s carry over. Follow the hyperlink in the first sentence to read the future.

Joule Biotechnologies Inc. is moving ahead with plans for its first pilot plant to use its trademarked Helioculture technology to produce ethanol to produce ethanol from microorganisms in Leander, Texas. The technology developed by Joule uses a highly-engineered photosynthetic organism, sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce ethanol and other biobased products. The modular process doesn’t use drinking water or agricultural land. The company has set a commercial production target of 25,000 gallons per acre, per year of ethanol.

Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging Inc. (Washington) announced it will build a $100 million power plant to convert waste wood into renewable energy. Fibre officials said the 65-megawatt biomass plant will burn some 38,000 tons of mill waste, including wood chips, sawdust and hog fuel each month.

A $10.5-million-US research project aimed at mapping the DNA sequence of sunflowers could one day yield a towering new variety for both food and fuel. The wild, drought-resistant Silverleaf is known for its woody stalks, which can grow up to 4.5 metres tall and 10 centimetres in diameter. “Since it’s the closest relative of the cultivated sunflower, it should be perhaps reasonably straightforward to move some of the traits,” said Loren Rieseberg, a University of British Columbia botany professor and leader of the DNA sequencing project.

The 55 million gallon, former Cilion Inc. ethanol plant in Keyes, California, is expected to be in operation again by the end of March. AE Biofuels Inc. of Cupertino is leasing the corn ethanol plant for $250,000 a month and plans to install its proprietary cellulosic ethanol technology so other material, such as wheat straw, corn stalks ad other agricultural waste can be used to make the fuel. Under the terms of the project agreement, AE Biofuels is spending about $1.6 million to repair and restart the plant. In addition, the original contractor of the Keyes plant will contribute $1 million to the plant repair and restart project.

RWE Innogy of Germany and BMC of Sweden will invest $150 million to build a “green energy” wood pellet plant on 300 acres in Waycross (Georgia)’ Industrial Park. When completed, the plant will produce 750,000 tons of wood pellets annually. That much product will do more than create 75 jobs.

Governor Jim Doyle announced that Focus on Energy, Wisconsin’s energy efficiency and renewable energy initiative, has helped Wisconsin residents and businesses save more than $268 million in annual energy costs. Annual cost savings to industry is estimated at $172 million and $84 million in savings from residential programs.

More farming, not less, will be the key to improving the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality, according to a report released by the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the state of Pennsylvania Wednesday. The commission is urging member states to grow feedstocks, or raw material used to make biofuel, that it believes will produce 500 million gallons of biofuel a year by 2022, and create more than 18,500 jobs in the region. The commission’s Biofuel Advisory Panel believes biomass production, if managed correctly, could significantly reduce nutrient and sediment loads into the bay. “What we’re talking about is stacking benefits,” said Tom Richard, director of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment and a member of the advisory panel.

Plans were announced for an 1,800-mile long pipeline, running across Indiana and north of Indianapolis, to carry ethanol made in the Midwest to new markets for the fuel in the eastern United States. If financing can be secured, the $4 billion project proposed by POET Ethanol Products, based in South Dakota, and Magellan Midstream Partners in Texas would carry about 3.6 billion gallons a year of the fuel made from corn and cellulose products.

While researchers continue work on miscanthus’s viability to produce cellulosic ethanol, and growers now have a way to plant and harvest the feedstock more efficiently. After years of collaboration and research, a miscanthus rhizome regeneration harvester and planter system has been developed. The new machine is the result of a three-year collaboration between U of I, Tomax Ltd and Bermuda King USA. According to a news release from U of I, this machinery can lower the cost of miscanthus rhizome production by up to 40 percent and create opportunities for miscanthus to be used more widely as a high-yield bioenergy crop.

Cobalt Technologies formally launched its first biobutanol pilot plant facility in Mountain View, CA. Cobalt biobutanol uses feedstocks such as forest waste and mill residues, and its technology reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent compared to gasoline. A 12 percent blend of Cobalt biobutanol with gasoline, already permissible under US EPA guidelines, complies with the requirements of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Energy Quest, Inc. announced that it is to begin construction on a turn key woody biomass power plant/algae energy plant producing 24 megawatts of electricity. The plant will consist of four 6.7 megawatt (6.0 net) modular power systems and is located at Nances Creek Industrial Park, in Piedmont, Alabama. The attached Algae biodiesel plant will produce a clean and efficient fuel that can be used in any device that utilizes diesel fuel. The plant will produce approximately 24 MW of electrical power at $0.06 per KW and 20 million gallon annually of biodiesel at $2.00 per gallon. The plant will operate 24 hours a day and when completed provide 60 jobs.

After a few quiet quarters in which glycerin prices were relatively steady and low after the commodity bubble of 2008, it appears a severe crunch in US crude glycerin supply is about to unfold. But US biodiesel refiners are closing their doors amid credit woes and a government delay in extending subsidies. In the meantime, crude glycerin production rates are approaching zero, market sources say. The demand for glycerin is significant. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Vantage Oleochemicals refine the crude material and then sell it to makers of everything from toothpaste to polyols to animal feed. As demand increases beyond the available supply, glycerin prices are about to become very high.

Canola advocates in a hearing before the Oregon State, House Agriculture Committee said the state’s restrictions are unfair and unnecessary. They called for the state to allow some canola production in the Willamette Valley. The Oregon Department of Agriculture in 2005 restricted canola production in four areas of Oregon, including nearly the entire Willamette Valley and three Central Oregon counties. Canola cross pollinates with some brassica crops, and many believe it will increase insect and disease pressure on the high-value specialty seed crops. Some growers also fear volunteer canola plants will take root and spread throughout the valley.

Soybean, one of the most important global sources of protein and oil, is now the first legume species with a published complete draft genome sequence. The sequence and its analysis appear in the January 14 edition of the journal Nature. The research team comprised 18 institutions, including the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Purdue University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The DOE, National Science Foundation, USDA and United Soybean Board supported the research.

Greeley Colorado is pursuing plans to construct a waste-to-energy facility that would utilize local agricultural and food processing waste streams to produce biogas for electricity generation. According a recently completed feasibility study, conducted by Symbios Technologies LLC, the most manageable and profitable scenario for a first-phase Greeley Clean Energy Park project would be a 2-megawatt anaerobic digester with a combined-heat-and-power unit for electricity generation, capable of processing more than 500 tons per day of waste from three main waste sources—cow manure from a JBS feedlot, and waste from Leprino Foods Cheese Plant and the city water pollution control facility.

The La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative has signed an agreement with Bach Digester LLC to purchase the energy from a new anaerobic digester at Bach Farms near Dorchester, WI. The 1,200-cow dairy farm is expected to generate about 300 kilowatts of renewable energy, capable of powering 219 average homes throughout Dairyland’s four-state service area.

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.

Minnesota has relaxed its biofuels mandate by temporarily suspending a requirement for No. 1 diesel fuel to be blended with 5 percent of biodiesel for the remaining duration of the winter, state officials said Wednesday. The decision, which takes effect Friday, Jan. 15, was arrived at after filtering system problems were discovered in trucks in extremely cold parts of the state, said Phil Smith, a spokesman at the state Department of Commerce, which enforces the biofuels mandate.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Thursday that $10 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act State Energy Program is being awarded for 15 biomass and waste-to-energy projects. These grants will support $110 million in private investments statewide. One of the projects is a dairy manure digester on a 1,000 cow dairy in Chatham, VA.