Largest Global Cellulosic Biomass Harvest Underway
The largest global cellulosic biomass harvest in history is underway and already the world is watching. Last week, Project Liberty kicked off their one-year biomass harvest pilot program as an effort to ensure all the correct logistics are in place in time for Project Liberty to go online in early 2012.
During the event, I caught up with Scott Weishaar, who runs POET’s biomass division. He and his team have been working for years on commercializing cellulsoic ethanol using light corn stover and corn cobs and this pilot program represents that last major hurdle for success.
As part of this program, POET Biomass will have a biomass storage building completed in time for harvest that will house up to 23,000 tons of biomass bales at any given time.
Along with progress comes concerns and Weishaar is very cognizant that people have concerns over what impact the removal of biomass will be on the soil. “We know there are concerns. So we want to make sure we understand all the aspects that are associated with that – soil erosion, nutrients, compaction, and storage characteristics,” said Weishaar.
All of these elements are being studied in conjunction with several partners including Idaho National Laboratory, Iowa State University and USDA’s Biomass Program and the goal is to have all major questions answered prior to the cellulosic ethanol plant going online.
“We are working around the logistics surrounding the collection, storage, and handling of the biomass so we’re ready to supply the feedstock in 2012,” said Weishaar.
As the world watches, there are still many who doubt commercial cellulosic ethanol will ever succeed. To that, Weishaar says the “proof is in the pudding” and they are ready to meet the country’s challenges of producing 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 and reducing its dependence on foreign oil.”
Listen to the interview with Scott Weishaar here: Scott Weishaar Talks Biomass
6 Comments »
Mida
I’m still not sold on cellulosic ethanol. This just seems to beg for more soil compaction, erosion, and genetic manipulation. There’s some good info at http://www.energyjustice.net specifically http://www.energyjustice.net/ethanol
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[...] research has been in partnership with POET’s Biomass division, who is now in the midst of the largest biomass harvesting of light corn stover and corn cobs in the world. Birrell notes that to determine how much biomass a [...]
Cindy Zimmerman
Comment by email from Bob Hurter of Hurter Consult, Inc.
Author Joanna Schroeder needs to turn down the rhetoric a little bit. This 60,000 ton harvest by POET suppliers can be called at best the “Largest Global Cellulosic Biomass Harvest for Biofuels” but it certainly is not the largest global cellulosic biomass harvest in history.
Isobord Industries (later Dow Bioproducts) in Eli, Manitoba, Canada annually harvested 200,000 metric tons of wheat straw for its particle board mill in the 1990′s and early 2000′s.
Brazil will harvest about 600 million tons of sugarcane in the 2010/11 harvest season of which the cellulosic part is about 16% or 96 million tons. Although Brazil has the largest cane harvest, there are many other countries that have very large sugarcane harvests.
In the pulp and paper industry, about 7% of the world pulp supply comes from nonwood fibers such as cereal straw, bamboo, sugarcane etc. Abhishek Industries in India produces 125,000 tons of pulp annually from about 300,000 tons of wheat straw. And, there are many other straw pulp mills that use 100,000 – 250,000 tons annually. Guizhou Chitianhua Paper Industrial Co. in China produces about 260,000 tons/year of pulp from about 525,000 tons/yea of bamboo.
As a consultant who has spent over 30 years designing nonwood fiber pulp & paper mills, I believe that the cellulosic biofuels industry could learn a lot about harvesting, transportation, storage and preparation of cellulosic biomass from the nonwood fiber pulp & paper industry. Tappi (www.tappi.org) includes a Nonwood Fiber Committee which provides a venue for interested parties but I am not aware of anyone from the cellulosic biofuel industry who has tapped into this valuable information resource.
Since the use of most nonwoods in the US pulp and paper industry largely stopped in the 1950′s except for a few specialty fibers like cotton and flax, I guess that much of the past knowledge has been forgotten and the newer knowledge developed in the past 6 decades never has seen the light in the USA. As a result, the US cellulosic biofuels industry will inevitably spend a lot of money reinventing the wheel.
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