Domestic Fuel

Two key programs that will encourage the use of renewable biomass and production of advanced biofuels is available through the FY 2012 USDA budget, according to the Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. About $25 million will be made available through each program.

First, the Repowering Assistance Program provides approximately $25 million in funding to biorefineries that have been in existence on or before June 18, 2008. The purpose of the program is to provide a financial incentive to biorefineries to use renewable biomass in place of fossil fuels used to produce heat or power. By providing this assistance, USDA is helping these facilities install new systems that use renewable biomass.

Eligible costs must be related to construction or repowering improvements, such as engineering design, equipment installation and professional fees. The application deadline for this program to receive funds for Fiscal Year 2012 is June 1, 2012. For additional details, please see pages 5232 through 5234 of the February 2, 2012, Federal Register.

Second, USDA also announced the availability of up to $25 million to make payments to advanced biofuels producers who expect to produce eligible advanced biofuels at any time during Fiscal Year 2012. To be eligible for these funds, an advanced biofuels producers must have enrolled in the program by October 31, 2011, even if the producer has an existing contract with the Agency.

Payments will be made to producers of advanced biofuels derived from renewable biomass, other than corn kernel starch. These include cellulose, sugar and starch, crop residue, vegetative waste material, animal waste, food and yard waste, vegetable oil, animal fat, and biogas.

Contract payments will be made quarterly. For additional details, please see pages 5229 through 5232 of the February 2, 2012, Federal Register.

“President Obama has laid out a new era for American energy—an economy fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources that will be designed and produced by American workers,” said Vilsack. “These programs support that vision by helping biorefineries use renewable biomass as a replacement fuel source for fossil fuels and supporting advanced biofuel producers as they expand production.”

ZeaChem Inc., a developer of biorefineries for the conversion of renewable biomass into sustainable fuels and chemicals, has completed construction and begun operations of the core facility for its new integrated demonstration biorefinery in Boardman, Oregon.

The core facility will produce the intermediate chemicals acetic acid and ethyl acetate, which are high-value products for applications including paints, lacquers and solvents. ZeaChem will sell bio-based chemicals to commercial and industrial customers seeking renewable and cost-competitive alternatives to petroleum-sourced chemicals. The facility will employ 25 full-time operations staff.

ZeaChem is further developing its integrated biorefinery through implementation of a second project to add the capability of using cellulosic biomass on the front end and converting ethyl acetate into ethanol on the back end. This separate “bookends” project is currently underway and supported by a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Once operational in 2012, it will result in the production of up to 250,000 gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol.

“Beginning operations at the core facility is another indication that ZeaChem continues to successfully execute its strategic roadmap,” said Jim Imbler, president and chief executive officer of ZeaChem. “Our phased development approach minimizes risk by allowing us to produce marketable products as we scale up our biorefining operations. We will continue to build out our biorefinery platform to produce a broad portfolio of sustainable and economical chemicals and fuels derived from cellulosic biomass.”

In addition to this work, ZeaChem, headquartered in Lakewood, Colo., has been named, “This Week’s Colorado Company to Watch,” for the company’s work in growing their business of building bio-refineries that produce advanced biofuels and bio-based chemicals.

Two companies have teamed up to develop advanced feedstocks for biofuels, biopower and biobased products.

The collaboration between DuPont and the bio-based firm NexSteppe will be working on new feedstocks for renewable energy, including sweet sorghum and high biomass sorghum hybrids.

Under the agreement, DuPont has made an equity investment in NexSteppe, and through its Pioneer Hi-Bred business, will provide knowledge, resources and advanced technologies to help the company accelerate the breeding and commercialization of new hybrids of these crops in the United States and Brazil.

“We’re using science-based innovation and collaboration to develop scalable, sustainable feedstock options for the biobased industries,” said John Bedbrook, vice president for DuPont Agricultural Biotechnology. “Collaborations like this one with NexSteppe will provide new opportunities for growers to address the rising demand for secure, environmentally sustainable and affordable alternatives to fossil fuels.”

“Sorghum is a crop with significant genetic diversity and great potential that has received relatively little research attention and funding,” said Anna Rath, NexSteppe founder and CEO. “Combining DuPont’s world-class research and development capabilities with our industry knowledge, experienced team and singular focus, we will be able to rapidly improve the crop to produce feedstocks tailored to the needs of the biofuels, biopower and biobased products industries.”

Sorghum has many advantages as a feedstock. It is naturally tolerant to both drought and heat and can grow in marginal rainfall areas with a short growing season and the ability to work in crop rotation systems. Sweet sorghum can be used as a complement to sugarcane in existing Brazilian sugar to ethanol mills, and as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and other biobased products produced from sugars. High Biomass Sorghum is a high-yielding crop that can be used as a feedstock for biopower and cellulosic biofuels. DuPont, through its Industrial Biosciences business, operates and develops industrial processes that use sugar as a feedstock.

Global chemical giant BASF has invested $30 million in a Pennsylvania-based company that has developed a process to produce cellulosic sugars for renewable chemicals and biofuels.

BASF, through subsidiary BASF Biorenewable Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG led a $50 million financing round in the technology firm Renmatix Inc.

Renmatix has developed the patented Plantrose™ platform whereby industrial sugar can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass (wood, cane trash or straw). In the Plantrose technology, biomass is split into cellulose and sugar in supercritical water at high temperature and pressure in a two-step process.

Industrial sugars are important renewable resources for the chemical industry and can be used, for example, to produce biofuels or basic chemical products and intermediates by fermentative processes. The availability of industrial sugars in sufficient quantities and at favorable cost is therefore important for the competitiveness of the products.

Biodiesel consulting firm Lee Enterprises of Little Rock, Ark., has announced plans for expansion in 2012 into ethanol, biomass, wind, solar and geothermal, and the addition of consultants and strategic partners.

“We are currently the world’s largest biodiesel consulting group, and most of our consultants and strategic partners are already very involved in the other alternative fuels,” said principal owner Wayne Lee.

Lee notes that the group’s current appraiser, environmental expert, QA experts, and grant writers have backgrounds and experience in these areas, and that the group’s larger strategic partners – Stoel Rives (legal), Christianson & Associates (accounting), IMA of Kansas (insurance), FCStone Merchant Services (feedstock financing), and Executive Leadership Solutions (staffing) – already have very significant presences in these other alternative fuels sectors. “Our goal over the past several years has been to put together a top notch team of the best biodiesel experts in the world”, says Lee. “I am quite satisfied that we have accomplished that goal and now address almost every need in the biodiesel sector.”

“I am a firm believer in biodiesel as the best alternative to diesel fuels and I strongly believe in its future” says Lee. “But, the overall solution to the world’s oil dependency rests with all the alternative fuels working together”. As a result, Lee wants his consulting group to be able to provide the same depth of assistance for all kinds of alternative fuels as they currently provide for biodiesel.

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have developed a method using microbes from wood biomass to produce butanol suitable for biofuel and other industrial chemicals. Butanol is particularly suited as a transport fuel because it is not water soluble and has higher energy content than ethanol.

Until now, starch and cane sugar have been the most commonly used raw materials in butanol production. In contrast, the Aalto University study used only lignocellulose, otherwise known as wood biomass, which does not compete with food production.

Another new breakthrough in the study is the successful combination of modern pulp and biotechnology. Finland’s advanced forest industry provides particularly good opportunities to develop this type of bioprocesses.

Wood biomass is made up of three primary substances: cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Of these three, cellulose and hemicellulose can be used as a source of nutrition for microbes in bioprocesses. Along with cellulose, the Kraft process that is currently used in pulping produces black liquor which already can be used as a source of energy. It is not, however, suitable for microbes. In the study, the pulping process was altered so that, in addition to cellulose, the other sugars remain unharmed and therefore can be used as raw material for microbes.

When wood biomass is boiled in a mixture of water, alcohol and sulphur dioxide, all parts of the wood – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – are separated into clean fractions. The cellulose can be used to make paper, nanocellulose or other products, while the hemicellulose is efficient microbe raw material for chemical production. The advantage of this new process is that no parts of the wood sugar are wasted.

In accordance with EU requirements, all fuel must contain 10 percent biofuel by 2020. A clear benefit of butanol is that a significantly large percentage – more than 20 percent of butanol – can be added to fuel without having to make any changes to existing combustion engines. The nitrogen and carbon emissions from a fuel mix including more than 20 percent butanol are significantly lower than with fossil fuels. For example, the incomplete combustion of ethanol in an engine produces volatile compounds that increase odor nuisances in the environment. Estimates indicate that combining a butanol and pulp plant into a modern biorefinery would provide significant synergy benefits in terms of energy use and biofuel production.

REPREVE Renewables, LLC, a leader in biomass energy solutions, will hold its second annual Freedom Giant Miscanthus Field Day, at their farm operations in Soperton, GA on Jan. 10-11, 2012. This year, it is a two-day event.

With an exclusive license to commercialize Freedom giant miscanthus, the company will have live field demonstrations and presentations by industry experts for growers, landowners and end-users.

A tentative itenerary includes industry speakers, research presentations, equipment displays and more. The Freedom Field Day is open to the public but advance registration is required.

USDA has announced funding for a series of projects to convert biomass to energy through USDA’s Rural Energy for America program (REAP). The announcement this week concludes 2011 biomass project funding assistance for a total of 52 projects with just over $31 million in grant and loan note guarantees through program.

Among the companies receiving funding is NC-CHP Owner I, LLC of Asheville, N.C., which received a $5 million loan for the installation of a combined heat and power system in Montgomery County. The system will generate steam by using a boiler system powered by wood chips and will also generate 5.25 million kWh of electricity per year. Also in Montgomery County, applicant EWP, LLC will receive a $146,000 grant to install equipment at an existing hydroelectric plant so it can be reopened. The project has the potential to generate an estimated 2.8 million kWh per year.

Other projects to be funded include:

Alaska Alaskan Brewing – $448,366 grant for biofuel from waste grain
Iowa Iowa Firewood Products – $24,232 grant for firewood kiln
Mass. CommonWealth Resource – $49,875 grant for biofuel from waste
S.D. Legend Seeds – $17,035 grant for boiler installation
Tenn. Mountain Wood Products – $500,000 grant for Wood Pellet Processing
Utah Washakie Renewable Energy – $496,750 grant for biofuels pretreatment/ products plant

Outlining his priorities for farm policy this week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stressed the need for continued support of renewable fuels in the next farm bill.

“Rural America has done a great job of helping to develop the domestically-produced renewable energy and fuel. That job must continue because when we create those opportunities, we create jobs, we reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources, and we enhance our national security,” Vilsack said during a speech at a John Deere facility in Des Moines on Monday. “USDA has to have the tools to be able to continue to help this biobased and biofuel and renewable energy economy, and we need to make sure that it’s vibrant in all regions of the country. Continuing our investment in renewable energy, biofuel, and biobased products will improve the bottom line for farmers as we find creative ways to use that which they grow.”

The secretary noted that expansion in the biofuel industry has already had an impact. “We’ve gone from importing 60 percent of our oil to 52 percent,” he said. “As a result of our biofuel industries, consumers across America are paying about $0.90, on average, less for gas than they would otherwise pay. So it’s a great opportunity for consumer choice, it’s a job creator, and it improves income opportunities for farmers.”

Specifically, Vilsack wants to see at least the BCAP (Biomass Crop Assistance Program) and the REAP (Rural Energy For America Program) programs continued.

Farmers interested in producing and trading energy crops for feedstock could be helped by a new IT management platform.

Ontario-based New Energy Farms, a developer of the energy crop Miscanthus in North America, has teamed up with Muddy Boots Software to provide this new service to the energy crop market.

According to the companies, the platform will enable direct trading of energy crops or arable biomass from farmer to end user and allow users to work with large numbers of farmers directly through an aggregation system. Other benefits include accurate energy balance and audit reporting for the whole year or even each load, energy crop yield predictions and allowing a secure route to market for plant breeders to commercialize and license new cultivars.

Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R, IN-3rd) have introduced a farm bill that they say would save $40 billion and includes provisions that support the development of advanced biofuels.

“We offer our bill as a thoughtful option for consideration by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, as well as the Congressional Deficit Reduction ‘Super’ Committee charged with making real federal spending cuts by the end of the year,” Lugar said of the bill they have entitled “The Rural Economic Farm and Ranch Sustainability and Hunger Act” or REFRESH.

In the energy section, the legislation would “extend the current loan guarantee authority to help demonstrate new technologies, processes, and techniques for production of advanced biofuels and co-products.” It would also reform the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) to focus on “demonstrating opportunities for farmers to diversify their income through rearing bioenergy crops and improving techniques and equipment for collecting biomass from the land for delivery to advanced biofuel production.”

The bill would would also reform farm programs, update conservation programs and close nutrition program eligibility loopholes. It also proposes to repeal the mandatory federal sugar program, allowing for market pricing of sugar.

Development of biomass for energy in the southeast was also included in the USDA grants announced this week in the Pacific Northwest.

Among the grants is $15 million for research to be led by the University of Tennessee to develop sustainable feedstock production systems using switchgrass and woody biomass that will “produce low-cost, easily converted sugars for biochemical conversion to butanol, lignin byproducts and forest and mill residues, and dedicated energy crop feedstocks to produce diesel, heat and power.” Created to implement the research project is the Southeast Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply Systems (IBSS) and one of the core partners of that group is ArborGen, a South Carolina-based company that specializes in the development and commercialization of technologies that improve the productivity of trees for wood, fiber and energy.

According to ArborGen officials, the company’s expertise will be utilized to explore the performance and cost advantages of short-rotation woody crops such as Eucalyptus, Pine and Poplar, matching the economic and environmental performance of each feedstock with a preferred conversion platform.

ArborGen’s focus in the IBSS partnership will be on optimizing wood characteristics for optimal conversion to advanced “drop in” biofuels and on developing sustainable methods for harvesting, transporting and storing purpose grown trees. ArborGen will also work closely with IBSS on ensuring that technology developed at IBSS will benefit rural economies. A key component of the IBSS partnership will be to ensure that information is developed to help land owners, rural communities and the emerging biofuels industry make decisions that promote sustainable development.

At the Seattle-Tacoma Airport on Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced five major agricultural research projects “aimed at developing regional, renewable energy markets, generating rural jobs, and decreasing America’s dependence on foreign oil.”

Altogether, the five-year program will deliver more than $136 million in research and development grants to public and private sector partners in 22 states. University partners from the states of Washington, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Iowa will lead the projects, which focus in part on developing aviation biofuels from tall grasses, crop residues and forest resources. Vilsack made the announcement with partners from private industry, research institutions, and the biofuels industry.

Among the five projects are two $40 million grants to Washington State University and the University of Washington to study the feasibility of producing jet biofuel from woody feedstocks in the Pacific Northwest. “This is a significant investment in biofuel production research, and the work at both Washington State University and the University of Washington will help ensure that Washington state remains a national leader in renewable energy research and development,” said U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA).

Senator Maria Cantwell added, “The investment announced today will leverage the resources of our entire region, helping build up a biofuels supply chain and boost clean energy job growth across the nation.”

The WSU project will focus on converting closed timber mills into bioenergy development centers to develop a regional source of renewable aviation fuel for the Sea-Tac Airport. Weyerhaeuser Company is a participant in the WSU project as part of the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance. As a subcontractor to the WSU-led grant, Weyerhaeuser will focus on determining the feasibility of sustainable production of woody feedstocks for use in biofuel and value-added products and exploring ways to convert woody biomass lignin components into value-added bio products.

“This region has a wealth of research capability and knowledge,” said Sea-Tac Airport Managing Director Mark Reis. “We recognize in order for us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we cannot do it without aviation biofuels.”

Read more here.

I felt like an academic when I read this week’s book, “The Powers That Be Global Energy For The Twenty-First Century And Beyond,” although author Scott L. Montgomery wanted the book to be “fun.” I sported my black geek glasses and curled up in a chair at a local coffee shop and attempted to give off the personae that I’m smart. Although I’m not sure anyone was fooled, I’m definitely smarter about our country’s energy options now than I was before I read the book.

This is an extremely in-depth look at what our energy landscape looks like today. It also reviews where we stand, as a world, with regard to resources and options as well as politics and policies that are driving the future. In addition, it looks at where we are headed.  As I look at our country, I’ve felt for a long-time that we are “energy illiterate” and need to become better students of energy education. While Montgomery agrees to some degree, he feels the problem lies more in lack of curriculum and the inability for people to learn about energy in a nonpartisan setting.

Montgomery writes, “Energy matters are critical to understand because they are fundamental to our way of life and because they are the subject of endless misconception, misrepresentation, and, as already noted, myth.”

Throughout the book, Montgomery takes an approach that many other authors have not and that’s the view that he doesn’t categorize energy as “dirty or clean” or necessarily “evil versus good.”  He explains that fossil fuels help build and transport renewable sources and also reminds us that every type of energy has an impact on the environment. Yes everyone, there is no “renewable” energy source that is developed, produced or transported without a fossil fuel.
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UOP, a honeywell company, has broken ground on a biofuels demonstration plant in Hawaii that will convert forest waste, algae and other cellulosic biomass to fuel. The project is being helped along by a $25 million U.S. Department of Energy grant. The project will help meet federal biofuel mandates as well as help Hawaii reach its clean energy goals of producing 70 percent of its energy from “clean” sources by 2030.

The Integrated Biorefinery will be located at the Tesora Corp. refinery in Kapolei. The goal of the plant is to prove out the viability of the technology, test the fuels produced and evaluate the environmental footprint of the fuel. The first phase of production is expected to be begin in 2012 with the plant fully operational by 2014.

“Biomass is abundantly available today, and it is an important opportunity to consider as we seek alternatives that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and improve our environmental footprint,” said Jim Rekoske, vice president and general manager of Renewable Energy and Chemicals for Honeywell’s UOP.

“Our Integrated Biorefinery will illustrate these benefits as well the potential that biorefineries have to enhance the local economy and provide new green jobs. Our island home is far too dependent on imported fossil fuels, and I am very pleased that this alternative energy initiative has the support of the federal government,” he added.

According to Rekoske, once the technology is proven out, it could produce up to 50 million gallons of drop-in fuels. The Integrated Biorefinery is testing the RTP, rapid thermal processing technology to convert the biomass to biofuels.

Hawaii Senator Daniel K. Inouye said of the project, “Hawaii will play a critical role in helping the domestic biofuel industry thrive and this project will create much needed jobs in Kapolei. I am also pleased that Honeywell’s UOP is partnering with a number of local stakeholders including Hawaii BioEnergy, Group 70, Kai Hawaii, University of Hawaii and Leeward Community College. I will do all I can to ensure that Hawaii continues to serve as the laboratory for renewable energy initiatives in the Pacific.”