In Florida, Henry Maclin of TSTO provided the following update regarding their Mobile Bio-Oil Plant flash pyrolysis system. “We have completed our agreement with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and with Keeneland Racing of Lexington KY.  Our  modular pyrolysis equipment is now containerized and will be used to reduce the disposal costs of horse muck (95% hay 5% manure) at NTRA track communities.

“Our web site is here and will be updated soon to show the commercial units which are near completion now.  The entrained gas flow design of John Tharpe, R & L Engineeering, Albany GA, will process 24 dry ton equivalent (about 30 tons with 20% moisture) per day into about 3,000 gallons of pyrolysis liquid and 4 tons of bio char per 24 hour period.  Unique to the MBOP is the small footprint brought about by the speed of the entrained gas flow, the fully automated operational design, the automated self cleaning and the hot gas filtration down to about 2 micron.  No plans exist for further upgrading of the oil with catalysts at this time.  Additives will be used to increase the pH and cetane in order to meet the fuel characteristics needed for large medium speed diesel (compression ignition) engines.

“The high speed entrained gas flow together with the hot gas filtration have a homogenizing effect on the oil produced. Our oil marketing plans currently are to be used in boilers and medium speed stationary diesel genset which currently have Title V emissions permits.  After a proving period of time in this Title V market we expect to find acceptance in the marine fuel market for inland and ocean going vessels.  Uniquely we are also entering into agreements for delivery of the oil to Aisian markets as backup to the preferred U.S. markets. ”

More on the story.

TSTO updates on its mobile flash pyrolysis system; will deploy with National Thoroughbred Racing Association is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Michigan, eFarms said its “Renewable Fuel System,” will accept crop products including corn, apples, cherries and other fruits and vegetables and turn them into ethanol and animal feed. The RFS is a stand-alone machine that will be able to to accept up to 7500 gallons of organic material per batch and will retail for under $100,000 through farm supply and equipment dealers.

Independent farmers mad co-ops are among the intended customers. The company recently received a $120,000 development loan from Michigan’s Pfizer Retention Fund.

More on the story.

eFarms says its small-scale ethanol producing Renewable Fuel System is farm waste ready is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Florida, 32 percent of biofuels industry executives said that mandates were the most important factor in reviving US biodiesel production. Responding to a Biofuels DIgest industry poll, 26 percent identified “More biodiesel-friendly cars and trucks” as the most important factor, while 21 percent opted for “tax credits” and 21 percent for “alternative feedstocks.

Poll results.

32 percent of biofuels execs say that mandates are the most important factor in reviving biodiesel is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Pennsylvania, the 110 Mgy Bionol Clearfield corn ethanol plant in Clearfield has commenced operation and commenced performance testing yesterday. The plant was constructed by Fagen and is the first commercial-scale ethanol plant in the Keystone State. Getty Petroleum Marketing will market ethanol and Land O’Lakes will market the distillers grains from the plant, which will be supplied with corn from Pennsylvania and Ohio.

More on the story.

110 Mgy Bionol Clearfield corn ethanol plant opens in Pennsylvania is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Florida, 43 percent of biofuels industry execs identified costs and yields from current technology as the biggest barrier to the growth of biofuels over the next five years. In the Biofuels Digest poll, 25 percent indicated that financing would prove the greatest growth barrier, while 19 percent identified feedback, 6 percent said “scare tactics” and six percent said “lack of infrastructure for fuel distribution or use.”

The complete poll.

Biofuels industry execs say that “costs and yields” are the biggest barrier to biofuels growth is a post from: Biofuels Digest

By Biofuels Digest special correspondent Sam A. Rushing

BACKGROUND

Carbon dioxide emissions total, at a minimum, some 75 million tons daily, of which, at best, up to 25 million are taken in by the global oceanic activity, probably the world’s greatest natural CO2 sink, followed by the ever – shrinking rainforests, and other plant life. As we all know, and thanks to being recently reminded by the activity during the climate exchange, CO2 is one of mankind’s greatest challenges; that being taking control of the ever growing burden precipitated by ever-growing CO2 emissions – and hoping to back off the level of gross emissions, and contain the damage, and perhaps reverse much of what we fear – loss of many species, and making the planet uninhabitable for us.

WASTE BORNE CO2 – A PERCEPTION WHICH DRIVES THE DESTINATION OF THIS COMMODITY

CO2 recovered from Landfill Gas, MSW, Etc.

With respect to biofuels based  landfill gas and CO2 borne from MSW, for example, that being derived from ‘garbage decomposition, or animal / human waste like material’; this type of ‘waste’ as a feedstock for the CO2 to be recovered is purely unacceptable for most food and beverage service – at least for human consumption; largely due to perception issues. This being perception, ultimately by the actual consumer and consumer groups and food manufacturers – the fear of anything derived from waste. Of course, it is technically feasible to produce a very fine quality CO2 which could be used in the service of food and beverage needs (i.e. beverage carbonation, food chilling, freezing and packaging) – however, this is not the case, in part due to perception fears.

Separately, when CO2 is derived from landfill gas, MSW, etc (due to emissions reduction needs, that being mandates or on a voluntary basis), it would be an excellent agent in enhanced oil recovery – otherwise termed ‘EOR’ (often pipeline fed operations for long term requirements), other industrial projects using CO2 such as enhanced coal bed methane (CBM) projects, large chemical manufacturing operations, and perhaps some of the cultivation of plants of various species to be used in fuels or otherwise. The need for any of these industrial applications must be studied, evaluated, and confirmed in terms of application acceptance; however, there is no reason why many of these sources would not make sense with such industrial applications – this could provide a nice revenue source; and depending upon the application and site, a capital investment would be a component within such CO2 application schemes for the industrial sector v. food and beverage

Other Waste Sources, such as biomass – based by-products, which are applicable to Food and Beverage Service

If a wood waste facility, many of the cellulosic ethanol projects derived from trees, straw, grasses, and other organic matter are the source of material for downstream processing, or feedstock in applications ranging from combustion to fermentation; the application in food and beverage service could well be a perfect destination for some of the CO2 derived in cases such as this. In this case as well, the essential capital investment would be needed to serve the greater merchant CO2 market via recovery, liquefaction and purification of the CO2; and then again producing a reliable long term revenue source. A full consideration of the markets, options, location, source type, and process needs is again essential in order to piece together such a reliable source of income.

CO2 Sequestration – The Last Option

In due time, and in some world markets, today is not the longer term with respect to reduction of CO2 emissions. The U.S. is finally moving toward voluntary or eventually mandated carbon reduction – so the last option as I state it in this article is at hand in this case. In the greater scheme of things, the merchant market globally is over 20 million tons of consumption / utilization annually, only a tiny fraction of the global emissions – however, if the industrial or food/beverage markets are available for money making opportunities, or as a means of using the CO2 in industry, this is a net gain v. simply sequestering the CO2. The forms of sequestration range from biofuels in the form of third generation algae (CO2) uptake projects – using the CO2 as one of the simple ingredients in photosynthesis; thus producing a high yield crop, generally with extraction of the oil for biodiesel; and perhaps the cellulose for ethanol production. Most forms of sequestration under consideration have been geological in nature, a wide variety of possible targets, depending upon location; as well as natural aquifers deep below the ground. The ocean is not an avenue for sequestration, unless is in a subterranean aquifer – or other geological formation; largely due to the current state of the world’s oceans – that being often supersaturated with CO2, often in an acidic state; which has killed many of the coral reefs. The case for sequestration is unique to each region, and project; and in the end, the CO2 must be dealt with in due time, whether this be to generate revenues, or simply sequester; however, all of this represents a step toward healthy, happy living and the well being of the globe.

About the author:

Sam A. Rushing is President of Advanced Cryogenics, Ltd., a global CO2 and cryogenic gas consulting firm operating for decades serving all CO2 sources, projects, and applications of the commodity. Mr. Rushing is a chemist, and a major consultant who offers a full menu of consulting services to the client, from technical to business in nature; and you can reach him via phone at 1 – 305 – 852 – 2597, rushing@terranova.net, www.carbondioxideconsultants.com

Carbon Dioxide recovery from waste sources: a Biofuels Digest special report is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In California, the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab will bring together a panel of early-stage biofuel CEOs and investors to discuss “whether biofuels 2.0 can really provide sustainably better solutions, and how a new generation of companies are going from Garage to Gargantuan.” The February 16th event will be held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business at 6pm.

The panelists for the exploration of “From Garage to Gargantuan” include famed Silicon Valley VC David Berry of Flagship Ventures, co-founder of LS9 and Joule Biotechnologies; Paul Bryan, PhD, Biofuels VP-Technology, Chevron Energy Technology Co; Eric McAfee, CEO of cellulosic ethanol pioneer AE Biofuels; Jack Oswald, CEO of bio-chemicals pioneer SynGest; Leandro Vetcher, co-founder of early-stage algal fuels venture Green Pacific Biologicals. Digest editor Jim Lane will moderate the event.

More about AE Biofuels here, about SynGest here, about Chevron here, and about Flagship here.

The event will explore economic, social and environmental sustainability, as well as feedstocks, processing technologies, infrastructure, finance, policy and business models for emerging ventures. 300-400 people are expected for the event, which is co-sponsored by BayBio.org and CleanTech.org.

Event details here.

MIT/Stanford Venture Lab event to feature AE Biofuels, SynGest, Green Pacific Biologics, Chevron, Flagship Ventures in “From Garage to Gargantuan” is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Florida, 48 percent of biofuels industry execs identified drop-in renewable gasoline, diesel or jetful as the “fastest-growing” biofuel in the next five years. In the Biofuels Digest poll, 22 percent chose ethanol, 19 percent opted for biodiesel and 11 percent selected biobutanol as their choice for fastest-growing fuel.

The final poll results, here.

48 percent of biofuels execs identify drop-in fuels as most promising, Digest poll finds is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Washington, the Biotechnology Industry Organization followed up on a shift in US biofuels policy with a call for four new steps it said would increase the pace of biofuels commercialization.

BIO called for:

• Revising the risk assessment process for advanced biofuels projects in the current Department of Energy loan guarantee program;
• Double funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture programs to deploy cellulosic feedstocks; include eligibility for value-added biobased materials, products and chemicals;
• Funding the reverse auction for cellulosic biofuels already incorporated in law;
• Funding development and deployment programs for biobased products and renewable specialty chemicals.

“The Obama administration correctly recognizes that large-scale production of advanced biofuels can be a significant driver of green job creation, energy security and greenhouse gas reductions,” said BIO executive VP Brent Erickson. “We applaud the policy initiatives announced yesterday, which call for federal coordination of programs to help integrate the complete biofuel value chain. This is a good first step in helping to stimulate the private investment needed to build new biorefineries. However, more needs to be done to de-risk investment in new technologies so that they can scale up to meet national goals. Congress can take action to ensure that these programs are adequately funded and targeted so that the effort will stimulate additional private capital investment.”

BIO recently projected that development of advanced biorefineries could create as many as 29,000 jobs over the next few years. The report, U.S. Economic Impact of Advanced Biofuels Production, is available for download here.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, ZeaChem CEO Jim Imbler repeated his call for national governments to adopt a more sophisticated subsidy program, where subsidies would be linked to a floor price for oil, and the industry would be eligible for subsidies only if the price of oil dropped below a target price in the $70-$75 per barrel range, at which point many developing, advanced biofuels companies would become uncompetitive (Note: ZeaChem’s fuels is modeled on a break-even in the $50 per barrel range).

“The fact is that what the industry really needs is not protection from the market, but protection from oil price volatility,” Imbler said. He noted that the price of oil had swung between highs of $145 per barrel and lows of $35 per barrel in the past two years, and added, “those conditions make investors highly nervous, and a floor price subsidy has worked in other industries to provide protection against that kind of risk.”

He added that what the industry needed, primarily, was long-term price stability, or a floor price subsidy that would assist in generating stability if the market itself could not provide it. “If you can’t make money on $100 oil, then there’s something wrong with your business model, and there’s no need to provide a subsidy when oil is at that price.” Imbler agreed that, with inflation over time, the floor price subsidy would eventually become obsolete — for example, if a floor price had been set in the 1970s it might have been in the $15-$20 per barrel range, a price floor that would not be reached and trigger subsidy payments today.

“Just having the floor price,” noted Imbler, “you might not even have to make subsidy payments, and still you would be giving certainty to investors against downside market risk that the [biofuels] industry has no control over.” Imbler said that financing was a major challenge for the industry, given the economic conditions, and financing demonstration and commercial-scale plants required operators to de-risk the investment by securing long-term feedstock contracts with dedicated energy crops and proving their technologies at scale. But downstream end-user market price risk, which depended on oil price volatility, was of great concern to investors.

Asked if his team was celebrating after the news of a shift in Obama Administration biofuels policy, Imbler said “We’re not going to do any celebrating until we have completed our new plant construction later this year, and demonstrated our technology at scale.”

In California, biobutanol pioneer Cobalt Technologies’ CEO, Rick Wilson, welcomed the shift in biofuels policy, saying that “it validates the fuel route for butanol. He said that the policy shift would help make more believers in the investment community and called the announcements “a great day for biobutanol,” yet expressed surprise over thaw announcements because, although the USDA had expressed enthusiasm for biobutanol in meetings during 2009, the DOE had told Cobalt as late as November that they didn’t believe in biobutanol as a transport fuel. “It’s great to see, and reflects a growing belief that biobutanol is real, and here now.”

Wilson cautioned that the industry would need to develop more sophisticated hedging strategies for itself in the months and years to come.

Wilson said that, because there was not a futures market for certain advanced feedstocks and fuels that enabled the execution of sophisticated hedging strategies, the industry should tie its pricing to oil so that oil futures could be used as a proxy for hedging against downside risk. “If you peg a fuel contract to the price of oil, say RBOB plus 10 or RBOB minus 10 or whatever your commercial deal needs to be, then you have the tools to begin to develop a  hedging strategy using some of the techniques used by major fuel traders such as BP.”

Commenting on the news that the US federal government would developing a program offering up to $40 billion in loan guarantees, Wilson said, “What we really need at this stage are grants. If someone builds a small project and it works, then the market can take it from there. What investors need is to be convinced that the technology risk has gone away.”

What next? Biofuels Industry leaders contemplate future moves, after Obama shift in biofuels policy is a post from: Biofuels Digest

In Japan, Toyota Tsusho Corp, parent of the Toyota Motor Corporation, has announced plans to begin growing jatropha and and producing biodiesel. Toyota Motors ‘ sales have fallen off lately due to manufacturing faults and massive vehicle recalls. While the company sorts out its problems, Toyota Tsusho Corporation is diversifying its investments.

The Nagoya-based trading corporation is in negotiations with a Philippine banana plantation to produce the feedstock, Makoto Hattori, a project development manager, said in an interview, without naming the company or disclosing the size of the investment. The Philippines is quickly developing into the third-ranked Jatropha producing nation worldwide, with 2.2 million acres currently under cultivation.

Toyota will partner with the Philippine-run National Development Corp (NDC)T and start off by planting and cultivating a one acre plot of jatropha and conducting a feasibility study of biodiesel refining. The company will fund the initial planting as well as research to be done by Philippine researchers. ??Depending on the initial results, Toyota and NDC will look at further collaborations on large scale cultivation and refining. Jatropha is a preferred biodiesel feedstock because it consists of 30-40 percent oil and it can’t be used as a food source.

Fuel made from jatropha seeds helped power a Boeing 747 flight last year as record oil prices spurred companies to grow feedstocks for biofuels. Toyota Tsusho bought a stake in Singapore-based seed researcher JOIL(S) Pte. to develop an improved plant lines after erratic yields prompted BP Plc and rivals to pull out of jatropha production ventures.

“We need to dramatically increase the plant’s yield in order to make this profitable,” Hattori said in an interview with Bloomberg. Rising oil prices and government legislated use of biofuels would also help make the business viable, he said. Crude oil rallied 77 percent last year as a rebound in emerging markets pushed prices to the highest level in 12 months.

Hattori said he expects the business to be profitable within five years, without giving a specific forecast. Research at JOIL, which specializes in tissue cultures and selective breeding of the plant, is headed by Nam-Hai Chua, winner of Japan’s International Prize in Biology in 2005.

More on the story.

Toyota to diversify into jatropha production this year is a post from: Biofuels Digest