Next Generation Energy is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Recently the Department of Energy (DOE) announced funding support for two more biorefineries. This makes for a total of nine small-scale refineries recently selected for assistance to develop demonstration scale plants. In total, they have agreed to pay somewhere around $30 million or one third of the cost to construct each refinery. See the red stars on the map below for their locations. I think the real news here is the potential glimpse into the future as far as biomass feedstocks goes and the manner in which they will be processed.
All but two refineries rely on forest and agriculture residues. This deviates from the most logical paradigm of dedicated energy crops. Simply, there are not enough residues that can be collected in a sustainable manner to supply feedstocks for an appreciable amount of liquid transportation fuel. Presumably the intended residues were selected based on availability today. Farmers are not growing energy crops at the moment. There is no market for such a thing nor is there currently a developed industry to provide planting material. In order to get the lignocellulosic biofuel party started the proposed refineries have wisely chosen to process available materials such as sugarcane bagasse, corncobs, and wood mill residues.
As far as processing goes, most of the refineries intend to reduce plant cell wall polymers, cellulose and hemicellulose, to simple sugars for fermentation to ethanol. Within the group of nine there is variation as far as chosen organisms or enzymes to accomplish this task. Numerous small and large companies are developing a specific suite to become the answer and therefore the moneymaking technology for making fuel and for licensing.
Flambeau LLC and New Page intend to use gas to liquid Fischer-Tropsch (GTL (FT)). This process involves the combustion of plant biomass to syngas (mostly hydrogen and carbon monoxide), which is converted into liquid hydrocarbons with a catalyst. Incidentally, coal and natural gas are also possible inputs for the FT process.
While some may feel squeamish at the thought of these companies making money selling ethanol produced in a facility built in part by taxpayers dollars, I think it is more than responsible of the government to provide such incentives. Numerous aspects of an ethanol economy have yet to be settled including feedstocks and biomass processing. Most critical to this scale of investment is the issue of scalability. Do the production and financial estimates derived from test tube and pilot plant level experiments scale to the point of a facility that produces several millions of gallons of liquid fuel per year? I look forward to learning the answer.
Comments
Yea, the wonderful government, you didn't expect them to do something SMART, did you?
Posted by: Jared | August 23, 2008 6:28 PM
"Yea, the wonderful government, you didn't expect them to do something SMART, did you?"
Not THIS one! But it's not completely out of the question for the next four years.
Posted by: WCG | August 24, 2008 9:05 AM
WCG:
Even the next government is likely to have a foolish ethanol program. At least this particular program aims to utilize an already existing waste stream, i.e. they will do net good. Of course this won't scale beyond the size of the waste streams, and these are already starting to be utilized for thermal power. In any case, better utilization of waste, in some manner means a slightly more energy efficient economy overall. So this stuff might end up being a small silver BB.
Posted by: bigTom | August 25, 2008 12:02 AM
An alternative title might be 'DOE puts money on friends in high places'.
Posted by: Fair Trade | August 25, 2008 5:48 AM
On the positive side, there is nothing wrong with bioethanol production per-se, and subsidizing the development is not a bad thing (research is dominated by direct government funding in the form of university grants).
What is bad is pretending that this will 'solve' the transportation fuel problem. Not only is it just wrong, it also starves other more real options of funding, public awareness/support, and political clout.
Posted by: travc | August 25, 2008 6:05 AM
While I think that GTL has the inside track to produce a liquid fuel for less than the cost of Jack Daniels, I don't think that anyone is going to make any money doing it. Government involvement is necessary to push reluctant, capital averse industry in this direction. They're starting with the cheap and available residuals, but a few million gallons is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to replace petroleum fuels. It will take a much bigger dose of government money to push farmers into growing fuel crops on a large scale.
Posted by: tom quick | August 26, 2008 3:14 PM