After a rash of negative publicity, biofuels backers say that advanced technologies will reshape the industry, making ethanol from sustainably grown sources cost-effective within a few years.
General Motors on Friday convened a panel of experts from cutting-edge ethanol companies that described different technologies--acid hydrolysis, specialty microbes, and genetically engineered energy crops--which they say will bring back biofuels' faded luster.
The key technology transition, already under way, is shifting from corn to other feedstocks for making ethanol from plant cellulose. With the right technologies and policies in place, the U.S. could meet one-third of its transportation fuel needs by 2030, said Candace Wheeler, a technical fellow at GM's research and development center.
The near-term projection is that, once ongoing plant construction is completed, ethanol will supply almost 10 percent of the U.S. gasoline demand, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Nearly all of that will come from corn.
Wheeler said that the "low-hanging fruit" feedstock for cellulosic ethanol is wood chips and other agriculture wastes. But to get to one-third of demand, long-promised ethanol feedstocks such as fast-growing grasses need to enter the ethanol picture.
"To really get a significant impact...you are going to have to use purposely grown energy crops," she said. "It's really a timing issue. With improvements in technology and economics, these things will be real in the very near future."
Backlash
After a period of government support and rapid investment, a biofuels backlash kicked into gear last year, with people questioning the environmental and economic benefits.
One concern is that farmland diverted to grow energy crops has contributed to higher food prices. Some U.S. senators, including John McCain, have called for repealing the existing biofuels mandates; European political leaders have also reconsidered its policies.
Also, corn ethanol emits roughly the same amount of greenhouse gases as gasoline, according to studies. Ethanol's impact on air quality is being studied by academics. GM has commissioned a study on this issue as well, Wheeler said.
Researchers say that cellulosic ethanol can lower greenhouse gas emissions significantly and that grasses, such as miscanthus and switchgrass, can be used to make ethanol on marginal crop lands.
However, cellulosic ethanol has yet to be produced on a commercial scale at competitive prices.
That will change once genetically optimized energy crops begin to be harvested, predicted Richard Hamilton, CEO of Ceres. The company uses genomics to analyze plant genes and breed grasses and fast-growing trees like poplar, willow, and eucalyptus.
"We need energy crops to get the industry to scale," Hamilton said during the conference call of panel speakers. "Within the next years, we are going to see competitive production costs. Cellulosic biofuels will be very cost-competitive with oil or other sources of biofuels."
Ceres' first sorghum and switchgrass seed products, sold under the Blade Bioenergy Crops brand, will be available this fall and planted next spring, he said. They are bred to be drought-resistant and grow rapidly.
Multiple technology paths
Right now, most ethanol production is going to the pumps in the form of a 10 percent blend with gasoline. Flex-fuel cars can run E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and gasoline, which is available at only about 1 percent of U.S. filling stations.
GM has committed to making half of its fleet flex-fuel capable by 2012. To prime the pump for E85, it has invested in two ethanol start-ups which are among the most favored to bring cellulosic ethanol to market.
Mascoma, spun out of Dartmouth College, is designing an ethanol-producing microbe that it says will lower the cost of ethanol production by cutting out the traditional step of using enzymes to make sugars.
Another GM investment is Coskata, which uses a combination of gasification and microbes to turn carbon-carrying feedstocks, including agricultural and forestry wastes or even trash, into ethanol at $1 a gallon.
Municipal waste can produce 20 billion of gallons of ethanol per year near city centers where the fuel is consumed, said Arnold Klann, CEO of BlueFire Ethanol, who spoke on the conference call. Earlier this year, an executive from Coskata estimated that municipal solid waste could yield about 8 billion gallons per year.
BlueFire recently received permits to begin construction of a trash-to-ethanol plant in Lancaster, Calif., that is expected to produce ethanol at $1 per gallon by September, Klann said. Its plans call for a 17 million-gallon-per-year facility next year and then 55 million-gallon-per-year plants after that.
After pretreating incoming trash, the company's concentrated acid hydrolysis process sprays the trash with sulfuric acid which turns the starchy materials into sugars that are then fermented into ethanol.
The remaining lignin material is burned to partly fuel the operation, meeting 100 percent of its steam requirements and 70 percent of its electricity needs, according to Klann. Using landfill also reduces landfill methane, a potent greenhouse gas, he added.
Company representatives on the conference call said that they need continued supportive government policies, notably loan guarantees, to scale up their operations.
Although these panel speakers were bullish on the future of biofuels, the question of whether the U.S. could grow enough biomass to make one-third of its fuel is still not completely resolved.
An oft-cited 2005 Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture study, nicknamed the "billion ton study" (PDF), concluded that 1.3 billion tons of biomass could be harvested sustainably each year in the U.S. by midcentury, which would meet about one-third of U.S. fuel consumption.
Wheeler said GM-commissioned research done at the University of Toronto reached similar conclusions. She added that the author of the billion-ton study plans to do a follow-on report with updated data.
BlueFire Ethanol expects to start construction of a plant within weeks that will convert landfill waste into the fuel ethanol.
CEO Arnie Klann on Thursday provided a timeline for the company's trash-to-ethanol projects at the Jeffries Global Clean Technologies conference, saying that there are two other larger plants already being pursued.
A component from an existing concentrated acid hydrolysis plant in Japan, which will be the same design used by BlueFire Ethanol.
(Credit: BlueFire Ethanol)He argued that making ethanol from municipal solid waste is more economical than making it from corn, as is done now, or from agricultural and forestry wastes. Its process can make 70 gallons per ton of waste stream going into its machines.
BlueFire Ethanol intends to locate its plants at landfills, which reduces the need to transport the feedstock. The ethanol will also be produced in urban areas where there is the demand for the fuel, which keeps transport costs down, he said.
"We can use waste streams that are not universally used by other proponents of cellulosic ethanol," Klann said.
The U.S. renewable fuel standard mandates that a significant portion of ethanol comes from cellulosic sources, like wood chips or agricultural residue like corn cobs or the leftover bagasse from sugar cane plantings.
The price of the feedstock is one of the biggest factors in ethanol's end price. Producers need to locate their facilities close to their feedstock source to be economical.
Cellulosic ethanol producers typically are either using thermochemical processes, specialty microorganisms, or enyzmes to break down feedstocks into sugars which are then fermented into ethanol.
By contrast, BlueFire Ethanol is using concentrated acid hydrolysis, where trash is sprayed with sulfuric acid, dunked into a bath, and then pressed. The resulting sugars are then fermented into ethanol, while the acid is separated and recouped for later use.
Competitor CleanTech Biofuels is also using acid hydrolysis in its pilot ethanol plant, which it expects to open later this year. Another company interested in trash as a feedstock is Coskata, which has a conversion process that uses high-pressure gasification and bacteria to produce sugars.
Klann said the company expects its first 3-million-gallon-per-year facility to be constructed this year in Lancaster, Calif.
It expects to complete applications for a Department of Energy loan this year to build a second plant, capable of making 17 million gallons per year, in an undisclosed place. The third plant on the drawing board would produce 55 million gallons annually.
After 2009, the company then intends to build more--at a pace between five and seven plants a year--in the Northeast and Southeast U.S., Klann said. He also anticipated international expansion with its modular plant design.
"When you are talking about waste streams, there are maybe 15 or 20 landfills in the U.S. that could sustain a 100- to 150-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant," he said. "We're looking at those locations to build out, but the vast majority of landfills will handle that 17 million-gallon-per-year size."
MENLO PARK, Calif.--It's going to take nearly a decade and a half, but cellulosic ethanol will overtake corn ethanol, according to an enzyme maker.
Cellulosic ethanol, in terms of volume, will surpass corn ethanol production in 2022, Joel Cherry, senior director of bioenergy technology at Novozymes, predicted at the Nordic Green conference taking place here at SRI International. That's 14 years away.
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Cherry has a good vantage point into the subject. Novozymes makes enzymes for companies that hope to take wood chips and other vegetable matter and convert it to fuel. Thus, he's in constant contact with people on the front lines of cellulosic ethanol.
The time is needed mostly to scale up. Ethanol production in the U.S. is around 7 billion gallons a year. Cellulosic ethanol is still in the experimental stage--people make it in labs, but that's about it. Getting to 7 billion alone is going to require building a lot of refineries--and corn continues to grow.
Corn, though, can only grow so much. Cherry speculated that corn ethanol production will max out at 15 billion gallons a year. (The U.S. consumes more than 145 billion gallons of liquid fuel a year at the moment.)
The cost of cellulosic plants also needs to decline. Cellulosic plants cost about $2 to $4 per gallon per year. First-generation conventional ethanol plants can make corn ethanol for around $1.50 a gallon. This is the wholesale price. When all the distribution costs and taxes are added, regular ethanol turns out to be more expensive than gas.
The price of cellulosic ethanol "has to be reduced to make it a viable technology," Cherry said.
Talk about your low-cost feedstocks.
BlueFire Ethanol wants to set up a series of small ethanol refineries at the world's finest landfills. The company will convert organic waste--paper, vegetable scraps, etc.--into fuel and then sell it locally. The business revolves around the idea that the feedstock is worthless. Landfill operators pay about $6 a ton to get rid of their trash. By converting it to ethanol the operators eliminate this cost and can qualify for carbon credits. BlueFire operates the ethanol refinery and then sells the fuel.
The first plant, a 3.6 million gallon a year facility that will grow to 12 million gallons a year, will go up in Lancaster, Calif. Later, the company hopes to open larger facilities in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Unlike some ethanol refiners, BlueFire's process does not rely on cutting-edge science. The company breaks down organic matter in an acid bath to obtain the cellulose, and then converts the sugars into ethanol. Still, producing the ethanol costs about 30 percent to 40 percent less than the cost of producing corn ethanol, said Chief Executive Arnie Klann. The lignin, a tough fiber extracted from plants in the acid process, is used to operate the equipment.
"It is old school because it works," Klann said. "Most of what goes into garbage is green waste."
The process is also less energy intensive, and hence less costly, than using plasma technology to eliminate waste, he asserted. Earlier this year, the company landed $15 million in investment from the Quercus Trust (which has also invested in algae fuel maker LiveFuels) and a grant from the Department of Energy.
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