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BlueFire Renewables Adds Pellet Production To Miss. Facility
By BlueFire Renewables Inc. | October 03, 2013 BlueFire Renewables Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm, has integrated a synergistic wood pellet production plant to its facility in Fulton, Miss. The reconfigured design will be a 9 million gallon per year ethanol plant integrated with a 400,000 ton per year wood pellet plant. The pellets will be sold under long term contracts into the European mandated renewable energy market. “This restructure provides a more robust economic model for the Fulton facility with a significant increase in projected revenues. It has become apparent in our attempts to obtain financing for the project that the right synergies and revenue model would be needed to build this first of a kind facility,” said Arnold Klann, president and CEO of BlueFire. “The optimum use of biomass in the integrated facility strikes a much better balance of revenue with costs and a better utilization of resources. The more profitable use of capital and the enhanced security of projected revenue streams more closely match what the banks have been requiring in the very conservative and restricted credit markets.” Traditionally wood pellets are used for electricity generation and can be sold under long-term, fixed-price contracts to credit worthy utilities thereby adding financial stability to the project. Blended with lignin from BlueFire’s process, the wood pellets create a market advantage under the international mandates for renewable energy, especially for power in the European Union. BlueFire has previously announced start of construction and has completed the preliminary site work for the ethanol facility. The engineering and other development activities needed are already under way to add the pellet plant. Synergistic partners will be announced once the definitive agreements are signed. Continue reading
Genetically Modified Yeast Turns Crop Wastes Into Liquid Fuel
By Simon Redfern Reporter, BBC News Growing maize for use as a biofuel is controversial as it can impact food prices US researchers have used genetically modified yeast to enhance the production of biofuels from waste materials. The new method solves some of the problems in using waste like straw to make bioethanol fuel. The scientists involved say the development could help overcome reservations about using land for fuel production. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. Many states around the world have plans to replace gasoline with bioethanol, but this has typically been by changing land-use from food crops to biofuel. Just this week, a representative of South Africa’s farming community announced that sorghum harvests would need to increase five fold to meet their government’s commitment to incorporate at least 2% bioethanol in petrol. Sorghum is South Africa’s second biggest summer crop and is a staple food as well as being used in brewing and livestock feed. However, scientists are now seeking more sustainable routes to generating biofuel – routes that would have a lighter impact on food prices and production. Breakdown breakthrough One is to consider using non-conventional plants such as seaweed. But among the most radical ideas is the suggestion that biowastes should be used to produce bioethanol, which is added to petrol replacing some fossil fuel. “Wastes present a major opportunity in this respect. We have to start to think about wastes, such as sewage or landfill waste as resources – not problems to be disposed of,” Dr Gavin Collins, an environmental microbiologist at the National University of Ireland, Galway, told BBC News. Using microbes to make fuel from biomass involves breaking down large complex biopolymer molecules. These are indigestible to most bugs, and attempts to incorporate them into fuel production have slowed down the biotechnology, creating bottlenecks. Biofuel boom The European Union also has a declared aim that 10% of its transport energy should be from renewable sources, such as biofuels, by 2020. To help meet this target, Europe’s largest biofuel plant opened this week at Crescentino, Italy. It is designed to generate 75 million litres of ethanol a year from straw and a crop called Arundo donax, which can be grown on marginal land, and does not compete for resources with food. One chemical that is produced when processing biowastes is a large sugar molecule called xylose. When you try and use yeast to ferment xylose, rather than making alcohol for fuel directly, it generates acetic acid – essentially vinegar. This is poisonous to the yeast, and stops the fermentation. Breaking down xylose and making acetic acid non-toxic are the two major problems that must be solved if biowastes such as straw are to be fermented to make fuel. Now, US biotechnologists appear to have solved both problems, by developing a genetically engineered strain of yeast that simultaneously breaks down xylose and converts acetic acid to fuel. “Xylose is a sugar; we can engineer yeast to ferment xylose,” said University of Illinois Prof Yong-Su Jin, one of the authors of the study. “However, acetic acid is a toxic compound that kills yeast. That is one of the biggest problems in cellulosic ethanol production.” The yeast digests the sugars in oxygen-poor conditions, making the process more efficient than digesters that rely on active mixing of air into the system. Microbe driven A new pathway, not yet discovered in nature, has been genetically engineered in the lab. This breakthrough means yeasts can be used much more efficiently to convert biowaste into biofuel. “We sort of rebuilt how yeast uses carbon,” said principal investigator Dr Jamie Cate, of the University of California at Berkeley One hurdle to implementing the discovery is that the new yeast that has been developed is genetically modified, and it is not yet clear how easily GM yeasts might be accepted for use on an industrial scale. Dr Gavin Collins, however, remains upbeat about the prospects for biotechnology. “We probably know the function of only about 0.01% of all living microbes on Earth,” he said. “It may be that many of them can efficiently degrade even complex plant material and other wastes under anaerobic conditions. They may be present in nature but we haven’t found them yet. “However, just look at what we have been able to do with the small fraction of microbes we understand – everything from antibiotic production; food and alcohol production; and biofuel production. “Just think what we could do, or what we might discover, if we understood the function of just another 1%.” Continue reading
India Increases Effort to Harness Biomass Energy
Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers collect rice straw from the fields in Baghoura, a village in northern India. By AMY YEE Published: October 8, 2013 GHANAUR, India — THE hulking power plant set against the green countryside of Punjab state in northwest India does not look like a source of renewable energy. Yet filling its stockyard, instead of mounds of coal, are bales of rice straw. Machines break up the heavy straw cubes as men with pitchforks hoist fibrous mounds onto a conveyor belt leading to the power plant. Handkerchiefs cover their faces to protect them from dust swirling in the air. Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers inspect the machinery at a biomass energy plant in northern India. This is Punjab Biomass Power, a plant near the village of Ghanaur that collects the straw collected from farmers tilling the lush fields of the surrounding countryside. After harvest, they would normally burn this agricultural waste, inedible to people and animals, to clear fields for wheat crops, as farmers across India do, and in that way contribute to the country’s dire air pollution. But at Punjab Biomass, 120,000 tons of rice straw a year are instead burned to generate 12 megawatts of electricity for the state’s power grid. The plant produces emissions, although its filters reduce the amount that outdoor burning would generate. But such biomass energy in theory is considered carbon-neutral because of what these plants use as fuel — like sugar cane pulp and nut shells that took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grew. Biomass power plants are eligible for carbon credits that translate into cash, and Punjab Biomass hopes to eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the plant. Yet biomass is far from a solution to the enormous energy needs of India and its 1.2 billion people. Alternative energy, like wind, biomass and solar, accounted for less than 8 percent of India’s power generation in 2009. Still, because India imports about 70 percent of its oil and natural gas and relies on coal for more than half of its electricity generation, it must consider all options for energy. In April, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for a doubling of India’s nonconventional energy supply, including biomass, from 25,000 megawatts in 2012 to 55,000 megawatts by 2017. “Energy is both scarce and expensive and yet it is vital for development,” said Mr. Singh at the Clean Energy Ministerial in New Delhi. Developing countries “have to expand all sources of supply, including both conventional and nonconventional energy,” he said. Agricultural waste in India is abundant, since roughly 60 percent of its population relies on agriculture for a living. Sunil Dhingra, a senior fellow at the Energy Resources Institute (TERI), a Delhi-based policy center, estimated that India produced 600 million tons of such “agro-waste” each year, 150 to 200 tons of which are not used. This is “a big resource that needs to be channelized,” he said. Some European countries have already successfully harnessed biomass energy. In Finland, biomass such as leaves and wood from its abundant, managed forest industry accounts for 20 percent of the energy supply, according to the European Biomass Industry Association. Sixteen percent of Sweden’s energy comes from biomass. And nearly half of upper Austria’s renewable energy comes from biomass; the region aims to use renewable energy for all of its heat and energy demand by 2030 . Punjab Biomass began operations in November 2010 after converting the existing coal power plant at the site, an option less expensive than building a new plant or solar or wind farm. In Britain and other parts of Europe, some coal-fired plants are converting to biomass to comply with new European environmental regulations, said David Hostert, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. In India, biomass has the potential to generate at least 18,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the country’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Biomass energy can be produced through big power plants but also in small, rural gasifiers for grass-roots industries like brick kilns. Mr. Dhingra of TERI estimated that there were 800 to 900 biomass power plants and 3,000 small thermal gasifiers across India. Biomass energy also generates extra income for Indian farmers. Punjab Biomass pays 15,000 farmers about 500 rupees, about $8, per acre of rice straw that would otherwise be burned. But there are many challenges to expanding biomass energy, especially collecting, storing and transporting the agricultural waste to power plants. Most farms are fragmented, without organized disposal operations, so energy companies need fleets of threshers and tractors to collect agro-waste from fields. Enough fodder to run a power plant for 11 months must be collected and stored. Punjab Biomass runs mainly on rice straw, but it is considering other agro-waste unfit for livestock, like corn and cotton stalks and sugar cane waste to supplement its current supply. Biomass is stored in enormous depots and must be kept dry even in India’s heavy rains. Companies must get clearance for large swaths of land to store fodder — no easy task in bureaucratic India. Murad Ali Baig, director of Bermaco Energy Systems, one of the partners in the Punjab plant, admitted that getting the plant running “should have taken 18 months but took four years.” The logistics of storing and transporting fodder and maintaining fuel-guzzling equipment is far more complicated than it seems in unpredictable India. “It’s been bloody hard work,” said Mr. Baig. The company is operationally profitable, but still has losses from its first couple of years of business. Still, the company aims to build eight more rice-straw energy plants in Punjab state to generate 96 megawatts of electricity by 2017. Across India, Bermaco hopes to set up about 20 biomass plants generating 240 megawatts during the next three years and about 1,000 megawatts in the next six years. While there is potential for biomass energy in India, the country lacks the efficiency, logistical infrastructure and investments of countries like Finland. There, the public and private sector have invested heavily in research and development. Huge warehouses store leaves and wood to ensure steady, efficient supplies of fodder from well-managed forests. In India, biomass “is low-tech, but let’s invest, like the example we’ve seen in Europe,” Mr. Dhingra of TERI, said. “Industry, academia and government all work on one platform there. You don’t see that happening here.” This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 11, 2013 An article on Wednesday about turning rice stalks into biomass energy in India misstated an estimate by the Energy Resource Institute in New Delhi of the nation’s annual amount of unused agricultural waste. It is 150 million tons to 200 million tons, not 150 tons to 200 tons. Continue reading
