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August 5, 2008

Pulp and Paper Industry Poised to Take Center Stage in Global Bioenergy Arena

International bioenergy conference explores new and emerging pathways, technologies, financial, legal, and operation issues.
by Ken Patrick
Georgia, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

The pulp and paper industry is uniquely positioned to immediately produce significant amounts of biofuels, bioenergy and bioproducts. With a mature, operating infrastructure capable of delivering double-digit billions of gallons of biofuels annually, generally without adding any new fiber processing capacity, many pulp and paper mills around the world are only a one-step investment away from becoming major renewable energy producers. Especially important, paper industry capacity that can be re-aligned and re-purposed toward bioenergy co-production would be 100% cellulosic feedstock based, with no agricultural attachments at all.

Considering that there are 200 or more similar chemical pulp mills in the U.S., and at least an additional 100 in Canada, basic arithmetic shows this barrelage capacity for Fischer-Tropsch synthetic crude oil could total somewhere upwards of 420 million barrels per year, or between 15 and 20 billion gallons per year for the entire North American pulp and paper industry.

Pulp Mills as Biorefineries

Pulp mills are ideal sites for integrated biorefinery operations for four basic reasons. First, they are already set up to receive and process massive amounts of delivered roundwood and woods chips, served in this capacity by rail, truck and some also by barge operations. In the U.S. alone, pulp mills use more than 120 million dry tons of wood per year, and they have access to at least an equal amount of forest residuals and even a greater amount of agricultural wastes and energy crops if needed.

Second, these mills have basically the same existing infrastructures for warehousing and shipping out finished products around the country. Third, they have a well-established in-place administrative infrastructure and related human resources that can be extended to serve a biorefinery business without incurring significant new costs. Fourth, pulp mills have operating utility support systems for process water, electricity, steam and waste/environmental treatment that can easily be umbrella'd to support biorefinery operations without major new investments.

And possibly as a strong fifth reason, chemical pulp mills already operate as biorefineries of sorts, producing fiber used to make paper and paperboard as well as some specialized dissolving pulps used to make viscose types of "bio-plastics" and rayon materials. Bio-byproducts made from sulfate (or kraft) spent cooking liquors (black liquor) include ingredients used in making coatings, adhesives, detergents, paint, varnish, ink, lubricants, waxes, polishes, gasoline additives, agricultural products, etc. Turpentine is obtained by condensing exhaust vapors during the pulping of softwoods with the kraft process. There also is a spectrum of lignin-based byproducts produced from refinement of black liquors.

This same black liquor that, in fact, after it is thickened through evaporation and the byproduct streams removed, is currently used as a "fuel" to fire what are known as chemical recovery boilers, so named because their initial, primary purpose was to burn the hemicellulose/wood sugar content of the thickened, spent cooking liquor, resulting in a char bed deposit that can be regenerated backing into fresh cooking liquor chemicals. Heat from the combustion process is used to co-generate steam used in the process and electricity via turbo-generators. Today's mills produce on the average 60% of their power from wood residuals and spent pulping liquors.

Cellulosic Pathways to Bioenergy

Rather than burning these high volumes of spent cooking liquors directly in recovery boilers, integrated biorefineries can process them into an array of value-added cellulosic biofuels, including ethanol, various synthetic gases (syngas), synthetic crude oil and biodiesel. These fuels could be used to offset petroleum-based fuels being burned in the mill and/or to sell as transportation/motor fuels.

There are as many as 12 clearly defined pathways into integrated biofuel/bioproduct production at pulp and paper mills. These include the thermochemical approaches that generally involve gasification of either biomass and/or spent cooking liquor streams alone or in combination with advanced gas-to-liquid technologies such as Fischer-Tropsch-based systems, and various pyrolysis techniques involving fluidized bed boilers.

Other pathways involve established sugar platforms and value-prior-to-pulping (VPP) approaches, where hemicellulose content is extracted before cooking of wood chips in digesters in various ways, such as cooking in pure water to produce a "prehydrolyzate" that can be fermented to mixed alcohols or gasified to produce a syngas.

The American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) recently conducted a detailed study of the most feasible routes to integrated biofuel production at pulp and paper mills, versus stand-alone cellulosic biorefineries, as part of its Agenda 2020 program. This study is detailed in a two-part series of reports just completed in the July issue of Paper360° magazine, the official publication of TAPPI (the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry) and PIMA (the Paper Industry Management Association).

A committee of Agenda 2020 CTO's, representing 90%-plus percent of chemical pulp producers in the U.S., evaluated four general pathways that appear to be most likely for chemical pulp and paper mills based on existing infrastructures and operations. This study focuses basically on thermochemical approaches as being the most feasible, and looks generally at four related pathways.

The business case discussed in the AF&PA report is based on a post-2010 gasification biorefinery operation at a kraft pulp and paper mill as described in a recent report by Princeton University. The reference mill is in the Southeastern U.S. and produces 1,580 dry tpd of kraft pulp using a 65/35 mix of hardwood and softwood.

Compelling Payoff Potential

The main economic benefits of biorefining in the cases outlined by AF&PA for this reference mill include additional revenues from sale of synthetic fuels (511 tpd of dimethyl ether to be used as an LPG (propane) blend stock, or 2,362 barrels per day of petroleum equivalent or 4,757 barrels per day petroleum equivalent of Fischer-Tropsch synthetic crude oil for refining to diesel and gasoline blendstocks at petroleum refineries), as well as a savings of 226 tons per day of pulpwood due to increased pulp yield, and slightly overall lower steam use.

Considering that there are 200 or more similar chemical pulp mills in the U.S., and at least an additional 100 in Canada, basic arithmetic shows this barrelage capacity for Fischer-Tropsch synthetic crude oil could total somewhere upwards of 420 million barrels per year, or between 15 and 20 billion gallons per year for the entire North American pulp and paper industry, based on existing infrastructure and operations only, without adding any new capacity.

This is a very significant potential considering that the President's 2007 renewable fuel standard (RFS) is 36 billion gal/yr by 2022, and that at least 21 billion gallons of this are to be obtained from cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels. This clearly indicates that the forest products industry, and pulp and paper mills in particular, are in a very unique position to help meet this critical national challenge.

TAPPI Bioenergy Conference

These issues, and specifically the AF&PA position paper study, will be explored in considerable detail at the TAPPI International Bioenergy and Bioproducts Conference (IBBC) to be held in late August in Portland, Oregon.

The 2008 Technical Conference Program features 14 sessions that will take attendees through an in-depth analysis of where the industry currently is on the biorefinery front to where it will be in the next five years and beyond. A key issue underlying all sessions is the immediate need to attract investment community involvement on an on-going basis. The intensive program explores not only the latest biorefinery technologies, but also developing markets and the legal-legislative-investment sides of the bioenergy/bioproducts equation

The IBBC program includes several sessions that examine biorefinery approaches already in commercial operation, with from-the-field updates by those "already doing it." Systems technologies being reported in these sessions cover pyrolysis, gasification/gas-to-liquid, acid hydrolysis, enzymatic, and other fermentation-based approaches.

Ken Patrick is Senior Editor for TAPPI and PIMA's Paper360o magazine.

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Reader Comments (64)
 
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August 5, 2008
This is a perfect development. I've been urging people to invest in bioenergy companies. There are drawbacks though.

Investing in startups is risky. There are large potentials for high returns, but also risks. Basically, make your bets, but don't bet more than you can afford to lose.

Larger well established companies getting into the market mean that investors who cann't afford high risk can invest in companies that will do the same thing and have high potential returns, not as high as startups, but conversely, the risk is much lower too.

The product is a perfect fit. And there is a huge area for potential strategic alliances improving efficiency for both industries.

And they both are taking aim at competing with a product market that is posting the highest profits ever recorded. The expansion possibilities are almost limitless. And the competition(oil) is a finite resource that will only get more expensive as time goes on.

It all seems like Win-Win-Win to me.
Comment 1 of 64
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August 6, 2008
i believe that ethanol that is produced from cellulosic
plants or trees cannot be pumped through our existing gasoline pipelines and that ethanol produced from sugarbeets,which is a non-cellulosic plant ,can be pumped through existing pipelines.if this is factual can anyone think of another plant whose ethanol could be pumped through our existing pipelines.
Comment 2 of 64
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August 6, 2008
I can't agree more Fred. It looks good on paper and I can hardly think it's pulp fiction!

Mike H.
Comment 3 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Being in Georgia, maybe it is time to look at using all the KUDZU for something useful.
Comment 4 of 64
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August 6, 2008
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia...KUDZU HEAVEN, producing enormous cellulose every day. I lived in kudzu for many years and could literally watch it grow by the minute, well over a foot per day. The vine is that prolific. The seeds in "Jack and the Bean Stalk" were kudzu seeds. Powdered kudzu root is an expensive cullinary thickener at health food stores. The purple flowers are an exceptional perfume additive. Here is the big one. Kudzu leaves are a super food high in amino acids and essential nutrients, minerals, chlorophyll, enzymes. Eat the young leaves fresh in a salad. Dry the large leaves on a screen. Then grind them up in a blender and remove the stems and cellulosic material. What remains is the powdered superfood for adding to cerials, breads, soups, you name it. Food getting too expensive? This free food covers Appalachia and the piedmont.
Comment 5 of 64
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August 6, 2008
One fly in the ointment: The article states: "Today's mills produce on the average 60% of their power from wood residuals and spent pulping liquors."
And: "Rather than burning these high volumes of spent cooking liquors directly in recovery boilers, integrated biorefineries can process them into an array of value-added cellulosic biofuels..."
Well if they're going to divert the spent pulping liquors and residuals into biofuels, then they won't be using it to make 60% of the plants power! So they'll have to get energy from elsewhere to power the
process.
Looks to me like this is one of those things where it sounds good at first blush, but when you do the "energy math" it don't look so good anymore.....
Comment 6 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Actually I think this has promise, but is likely not as good as the hype. Not unlike 99% of the stories posted here. The truth is there is an energy penalty. Pulp mills use their wastes fairly efficiently. This will divert some of those wastes to biofuels. That said the plants are well suited to become the key to affordable biofuels. They already have the workforce, technology, and equipment in place with minor expansion. The economies of scale are huge. They are growing a rapidly renewable feedstock on land not currently used in food production. You add a source like Miscanthus grown in highway medians for example, and you have a relatively large carbon neutral source of energy. The potential of the Miscanthus was mentioned in another article. I'm just suggesting we plant it in land not now used for food production.
Comment 7 of 64
August 6, 2008
I agree with Jeffrey Viola. The infrastructure is there at paper plants as the article indicates, but details of whether the energy yield would be positive or not are sketchy. Why, for example, with all this energy potential are the mills only producing 60% of their own energy needs? Wouldn't there need to be a surplus in energy production, say 150%, for the mills to export usable energy in the form of bio fuels?
Comment 8 of 64
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August 6, 2008
To James Perkins---partly true, partly not true.

Ethanol is ethanol, not matter where it comes from. It has the same chemical formula, if it did not, it would be something else, not ethanol.
The term "cellulosic" ethanol simply means that it was made from cellulose as a raw material source. Cullulosic ethanol is identical to that produced from beets, corn or any other source, the "cellulosic" just tells us what was used to make it.

Petroleum gasoline is not a very good solvent. When it is stored or transported it loses heavy hydrocarbons out of solution. Ethanol is however an excellent solvent---that is why it is so widely used industrially. If a service station owner wants to put in ethanol or pipe it through a pipeline for instance, and he has previously had gas or oil in the tank or lines, it has to be cleaned before ethanol use. This is to remove sludges and varnishes left by petroleum. The ethanol being a much better solvent would dissolve the sludges and become contaminated. Fuel line cleaners that you put in your gas tank to clean your car's fuel lines and injectors are primarily alcohols for this reason. If however, you want to put gasoline into tanks or pipelines that have handled ethanol, no problem. But you'd have to do a clean up job before you could put ethanol BACK in. So basically, oil is dirty, ethanol is not. The only changes besides cleaning you might have to do to pipelines is maybe change some gaskets or fittings made from cheap plastic----alcohols can dissolve some types of cheap plastics. Otherwise, there is no problem with useing our entire current pipeline and storage system for ethanol---which is a big plus for biofuels over other types of fuels, we can use the system we already have built and are using. Biodiesel is the same situation. However, biodiesel does not need any particular gasket changes, just clean out the tanks and lines before use
Comment 9 of 64
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August 6, 2008
To Jeffrey Viola: ------".One fly in the ointment: The article states: "Today's mills produce on the average 60% of their power from wood residuals and spent pulping liquors." "----------------

We simply input energy from another source to substitute that being used from residuals and liquors-----wind or solar for instance, can produce electrical energy which can be used for any need. You are only talking about producing heat----there are plenty of ways to produce heat to input into the system to divert the residuals and liquors to produce fuels. In which case use are simply reusing the heat currently used burning those in another setting. Let's say we produce electrical energy with solar power to run the plant, the plant produces ethanol, you buy the ethanol and put it in your car to drive your car----you are driving your car on solar power.
Comment 10 of 64
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August 6, 2008
To Joe Fairstein-------" but details of whether the energy yield would be positive or not are sketchy. Why, for example, with all this energy potential are the mills only producing 60% of their own energy needs? Wouldn't there need to be a surplus in energy production, say 150%, for the mills to export usable energy in the form of bio fuels?"----------

They only supply 60% of the power needs because that is all the amount of fuel(residuals and liquors) they have. Input fuel from another source, wind, solar, hydo, whatever----and you divert the energy in the residuals and liquors now being used at the plant to another use, like driving your car.

Wind and hydro energy are simply secondary forms of solar energy, the energy that makes the wind blow and water flow comes from the sun.

So producing energy from biosources means you are driving your car on energy captured by plants using photosynthesis. Plants are natures solar cells, they simply convert solar energy to chemical energy rather than electrical energy.

Ethanol and biodiesel are solar power in a mason jar, and using solar or wind or other renewable energy source to produce them would mean that you would be driving your car on solar energy.
Comment 11 of 64
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August 6, 2008
BTW---these are not new processes---ethanol was being produced from wood waste from logging and mill work in commercial quantities in both the US and Germany as far back as the 1890's.
Comment 12 of 64
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I kind of disagree with Jeffrey Viola's comment because writer is saying that available forest residuals and agricultural wastes would be utilized to produce bioenergy based fuels. Paper mills never collect or utilize these wastes, even though they are available.
As in the article, "In the U.S. alone, pulp mills use more than 120 million dry tons of wood per year, and they have access to at least an equal amount of forest residuals and even a greater amount of agricultural wastes and energy crops if needed."
Could you let me know, if the article failed to emphasize this point?

Peter K Duttaroy
PDR Assocs Group
732-390-8069
Comment 13 of 64
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Re. transporting ethanol by pipeline.

There are two issues that prevent ethanol from being transported by pipeline.

1. Ethanol is hydrophilic: it's drawn to water and it dissolves easily in it. Once there's more than a very small percentage of water in oil (no higher than 2% but possibly lower) , the ethanol draws water to itself , leaves the oil-ethanol "solution", and dissolves into the water instead. Since crude oil and refined-liquid products float on water (perhaps some components can be heavier than water?), the ethanol-laden water settles at the bottom of holding tanks and takes the ethanol with it. In other words, "ethanoling" gasoline or anything else too early means that water vapour, water in transport lines, etc., that it's exposed to will be drawn into the oil-ethanol solution and precipitate the ethanol.

Ethanol precipitating out of gasoline actually makes the latter worse than if the ethanol had never been there in the first place. Gasoline is actually a class of liquid-hydrocarbon blends that has to perform to industry specifications; it's NOT a substance in itself. Different (though substantially similar) gasolines come out of different refineries, and a given refinery will produce different blends over time (for example, "winter" blends have alcohols or other compounds blended in). When a given gasoline is to be an "ethanol" one when sold, then the gasoline itself is blended accordingly, for example to have a higher-than-commercial octane number (ethanol has a lower octane number than regular-grade gasoline, which must be compensated for by making the gasoline that it's blended into have a higher octane number). If ethanol is taken out of the gas-ethanol blend, the blended-for-ethanol gasoline burns "dirtier" than straight, not-blended-for-ethanol gasoline ... emissions increase, which is exactly the opposite of what "ethanoled" gasoline is meant to do.

(Continued below)
Comment 14 of 64
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(continued from above)

To prevent ethanol from leaving the gas-ethanol solution, ethanol is kept separate from gasoline as long as possible, that is until a distributor (tank-farn operator) blends it just as it's about to be delivered to a retailer (gas station). Typically, this involves pumping blended-for-ethanol gasoline out of a dedicated tank and mixing in ethanol in the piping that conveys the gasoline to a delivery truck. Before a delivery truck takes on gas-ethanol, any water present in the holding tank is removed. While the gas-ethanol is being pumped into it, the air inside the tank is sucked prevent pressure buildup inside the tank (the tank is sealed to prevent air and humidity from leaking in and hydrocarbon vapors from leaking out). Any humidity in the tank air gets sucked out with the tank air, too.

The gas-ethanol then gets delivered to a retailer (gas station), which stores it in sealed tanks on location.


2. The second reason for ethanol's not being transported by pipeline again has to do with its being hydrophilic. Since it'll pick up all humidity, water, and water vapour present in the pipeline, transporting it by sealed truck or tanker-railcar is the only practical way to keep it segregated and water-free. The ethanol gets transported from ethanol plants to tank farms operated by gas distributors, where it gets stored until it's blended with blended-for-ethanol gasoline as a delivery truck is being filled.
Comment 15 of 64
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August 6, 2008
As a practical point, ethanol is not shipped by pipeline primarily because it is not needed to be. It is produced locally from available resources and does not need to be shipped great distances by pipeline. This keeps costs down. Put production near consumption and reduce shipping costs.
This cann't be done with petroleum products that are restricted in where you can get them. We won't be using ethanol produced in the arctic or middle east---it's inefficient and there is no reason to have to do so. Ethanol will be produced in the local market area for the local market by workers who live in the area and use the raw materials that are available locally.
You are trying to apply the production nessecities of petroleum to ethanol, but ethanol does not have the production needs of petroleum that make extensive pipeline shipping necessary.
Comment 16 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Also, as a matter of practical use, ethanol being hydrophillic is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. We use it now and always have to remove moisture from fuel lines, especially diesel tanks and lines.

Heet is alcohol. It can absorb up to 60% water and still burn. If the fuel line seal is broken or something happens and water gets into the fuel in sufficient quantity to prevent it igniting, simply add more alcohol until you raise the alcohol content enough to allow ignition. This is where the term "proof" came from. You tested the alcohol content of liquor in the old days with gunpowder. If you mixed the liquor to be tested with gunpowder and touched a match to it and the gunpowder didn't go off, it contains too much water. You add alcohol to the mixture until the gunpowder goes off.

Hydrous alcohol will still burn just fine---all you do is add more alcohol to the mixture if there is too much water.
Comment 17 of 64
August 6, 2008
Stratos; I thot ethanol raises the octane rating of gasoline?

On the net energy of the pulp mills; don't they make paper? With large machinery to dry and roll it out? Without that great need,(the main end product being ethanol or synfuels), would there not be less electrical energy to run the plants needed? The thermal energy needed could then be supplemented by solar thermal, which would ad to the end result in fuel production.
Comment 18 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Having lived in a few Alaskan towns serviced by fuel barges or tanker I always added a few shots of alcohol stove fuel everytime I added gasoline to my boats. This also worked when cars or trucks started bucing after fueling or during the winter as I always parked outside. Never any engine problems either.
Comment 19 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Ed-----HEET is the commercial equivalent of doing the same thing you were doing with the alcohol stove fuel. Except that if you buy a can of HEET it is $4.98 for 16 0z., and you were probably paying about $.10 for the alcohol you were using.(if even that much, don't know what you mean by a "shot")

Phil---yes. Heat is energy. If you get heat from the sun, you are using solar energy.
Comment 20 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Maine's FRACTIONATION Center has chased the holy grail of making ethanol or a suitable fuel from cellulose or the byproducts of the pulp & paper industry, i.e. black liquor.

In the meantime; the industry has mostly died and the support industries along with it.

If you want cellulosic ethanol, and remember BLUE ENERGY, DYNAMOTIVE and Koshla's startups others are still prototyping; you have to have chips.

To get the chips you need a logging industry...good luck in finding truck loads of chips in New Hampshire; Maine's often go to Canada and the emerging Pellet industry.

No loggers; no chips. Lisbon's GYPSUM(major fiberboard supplier) just laid off 75 production workers...lot is filled with weathered fiber and resin board; speciality mills are still functioning....barely.

RED SHIELD which held the promise of alt. fuels from wood declared bankruptcy, and then got rescued by Gov. Baldacci(D) who put much political capital into this showcase.

There are some homebrew approaches using native funghi to break down cellulose into starches; but they are secretive operations.

So If Maine, can't make this work the support industry will wither away..as I write logging trucks are getting sold off----remember, logging, etc. is a fossil fuel dependent operation and that increases the price of the chips, talking spruce or hardwood?

Plum creek has proposed a major North woods eco-resort out of their pulp lands....clear cut them, and built mini-mansions.

Lots of wood; biomass increasing 2-3% over current use thanks to Global Warming; but gettting it to a viable ethanol refinery won't be easy nor cheap.

Write away, folks....plenty of people want to believe your fairy tales!
Comment 21 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Frank---Spain produces 70 million liters per year of ethanol from wood waste right now, and is planning to double production in the next two to three years.

Germany produced all of its fuel needs with alcohol derived from the Fischer-Tropsch process during WW2 after the loss of North Africa and the bombing of Ploesti severely restricted oil supplies. They powered everything from 140 metric tonne Panzer tanks, larger, heavier and faster than anything the Allies had, to V1 and V2 rockets with alcohol, even the Me 262 Swallow, the world's first operational jet fighter.
Comment 22 of 64
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August 6, 2008
I don't think that reviving the logging industry and employing many people from Maine and all over the US to work in that industry producing fuel to run America is a bad thing. The money will come from using what we are currently sending to arab despots and other highly questionable "allies" overseas. Seems to me to be a very good outcome, keep our money here and make jobs for people who need them here. And in place of depending on foreign dictators and kings to provide our energy in the future, I think we need to provide forest industry jobs not only cutting down trees, we also need forest service jobs planting trees. I think that will do far more to rescue our sinking economy than the government borrowing money to give you a tax rebate, which YOU have to pay back later with interest---or giving away billions of taxpayer $$$ to friends and cronies in the financial market to "rescue" investment banks.

Don't worry, the technology to make it work has been around for over 100 hundred years. It has worked before and it is working right now here and in other places. Ethanol is being made right now from sugar cane bagasse in LA at a rate of 20 million gal./yr.---it is being made in WY using an enzyme process. Plants in both the US and Germany were producing ethanol from wood waste commercially using a thermo-chemical process 120 years ago. We can do it now.
Comment 23 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Burning is burning is INCINERATION which pollutes whether it is from a Plasma Enhanced Melter, Plasma Arc, Gasification, Pyrolysis, Thermal Oxidizers, Thermal Depolymerization, etc

So you want to burn something to derive a fuel so that you can burn it in another machine. Not to burst too many bubbles, but combustion is an inefficient engine. These companies are running in circles and are in need of a good honest conversation. Same with the Trash to Ethanol group who would include hazardous waste in the feedstock. I've also looked into various paper mills and there are almost always loopholes that allow them to burn tires, trash, sewage sludge, and sometimes even treated telephone poles.

If you want investment tips - don't bet on combustion in any of its forms or however they twist the linguistics of burning things. The future is in electromagnetic, solar, and - wind to help us transition. Perhaps ocean power and geothermal, although I know less about those technologies.

I love my renewables - but are they sustainable? economical?
Comment 24 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Fred...reviving 'wood's work' isn't going to be easy. The Fractionation plant was predicated on extensive clear cutting to get the chips...Maine is dominated by environmentalists to whom 'clear cut' is a red flag.

There are several ways to make alcohol...and it is a very good fuel, my bias came from a visit to COLD RIVER VODKA which makes 'alcohol' from potatoes...at $31 a liter! However, no one is making it from wood at a cost competitive basis to gasoline!

Then there are the secondary costs to 'mine' the wood; my preference is for fast growing hybrids like switchgrass....or a cross between poplar and sugar cane.

I'm leaning towards compressed bio-gas created in large anaerobic digesters that used organic household and ag. wastes, yup, human wastes as well.

The bio-gas will run fuel cells and can be blended with diesel for heavy trucks.

Then you have WHISPERGEN which is fueled from wood pellets and makes electricity! Gotta be one of the best damn alt. energy inventions.
Comment 25 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Frank---I don't see anything in what you say to be very pessimistic about the future of alcohol fuel. First look at what you are saying. You list 5 sources to make ethanol from in your post. Only one of them is not viable for Maine, sugar cane. Well, you can grow potatos in Maine pretty well, and make Vodka---and sure, nobody is going to put the vodka in their car for $31 a liter---so we'll save the potatoes for the vodka. And we'll give the fermented mashed potatos to the pigs. It is a high protien food.
Ok, so we cann't grow sugar cane in Maine, but you CAN grow sugar beets, they are almost productive as cane in terms of yield per acre. AND sugar beets are legumes, they have nitrogen fixing bacteria in their roots that actually leave the soil more fertile than when you planted them. Brazil raises enough sugar cane on just 2% of available cropland to provide all of their domestic gasoline needs---AND be the world's largest exporter of ethanol. The current commodity price of ethanol is running about $2.60 where most ethanol production comes from corn as a by product of animal feed production. This is not highly efficient as an ethanol production method---the main product is a high protien, low cost animal feed substitution for soy meal. Brazil produces ethanol at a price low enough to sell the ethanol, AND pay a $.54 per gallon tariff tax and still be cheaper than US produced corn ethanol. With sugar beets we can do that here too. That is MORE than competitive with petroleum gasoline.

------"Maine is dominated by environmentalists to whom 'clear cut' is a red flag."----------------------------
Comment 26 of 64
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August 6, 2008
ooops---it just posted and I wasn't finished----anyway, I'm an environmentalist. But, I'd have NO objection to clear cutting. So long as we replant and manage our timber stands. Nature will regenerate. And clear cutting in sections is one way to have healthy forests. I think environmentalists would not have any objection to having healthy forests. What you need to do is have some forestry people who know what to do to have a healthy forest explain it all. Some people mean well, but don't understand. If WE don't harvest forests, Mother Nature WILL, with fires. And when we harvest, we need to replant, because many trees need the fires to clear areas, fertilize and germinate seedlings. We can use all the forest we want, but we need to put back what we use. And we can do that if we are smart about it.

Biomethane as a fuel is good, the more we use, the more we will lower greenhouse gas effect.

Wood pellets are also a good fuel.

One key to having an abundant, steady and reliable supply of energy with alternative fuels is not which one we chose---we should use ALL of them. The more differing smaller supply inputs we have, the less vulnerable we are to some disaster causing us to be caught up short.

A spider web is so strong BECAUSE it is made up of so many small threads.
Comment 27 of 64
August 6, 2008
The world doesn't give a tweedle dee if you have enuf energy at all. Only those organisms that leave the place in better shape for the generation will survive. (that's not the generation of electricity). We currently use all crop stover and return little or nothing to the soil for organic matter. Our nations top soil is wasting away at an alarming rate thru intensive farming, so it matters little if you cut all the trees, even though they rebuild the oxygen level faster than green stem foliage near ground level. Burning puts carbon into the atmosphere. If nature does it sometimes does not mean we can do it in additional careless excess. Current sunshine heating processes do not heat the globe.
Comment 28 of 64
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August 6, 2008
The carbon in biofuels came from plants. The plants removed the carbon from the atmosphere and used H20 in the presence of sunlight and chlrophyll to produce sugars and give off oxygen. Burning biofuels returns the CO2 to the atmosphere where the plants take it up and start the process over. We can never burn more biofuels than we have plants(the green kind) to make them from. Net CO2 gain to the atmoshpere = 0.
Biofuels are solar energy stored in chemical form by plants---natures original solar cells. Biofuels are solar energy in a mason jar.

Plants will grow whether we plant crops or not. Our using biofuels will not affect that. All dead plant matter is either burned or decomposed by bacteria and fungi or eaten in nature. With only a very few exceptions in extremely harsh conditions all life on earth is powered by the sun. Our use of some of that solar energy for biofuels will not change that equation.

Fossil fuels that are dug up or pumped out of the ground are a different matter. Every molecule of carbon burned from a fossil fuel goes into the atmosphere as NEW CO2. Burn fossil fuels fast enough and long enough and the CO2 will build up in the atmosphere and produce global warming.

It doesn't matter whether we burn carbon or not---what matters is where the carbon came from.
Comment 29 of 64
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August 6, 2008
topic= more questions

given the correct conditions,what would the ethanol yield be from an acre of corn,or sugarcane or sugarbeets processed into ethanol ?

also
of the three above types which one takes the less input energy {electrical,natiral gas and etc.} to be converted into ethanol.
Comment 30 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Energy and Biochar from Paper and wood waste;

BEST Pyrolysis, Inc. | Slow Pyrolysis - Biomass - Clean Energy - Renewable Ene
http://www.bestenergies.com/companies/bestpyrolysis.html


Agri-Therm, developing bio oils from agricultural waste
http://www.agri-therm.com/
Comment 31 of 64
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August 6, 2008
James---

Current average yields

corn 110-140 bushels per acre
corn 2.7 gallons per bushel.
corn about 1.8 to 2.4 gallons of oil per bushel depending on variety
corn DDG(hiprotien animal feed) 38 lbs.
I don't have any figures on it, but the plant in my hometown draws off the CO2 produced during fermentation, and produces dry ice, which is then used on refrigerated truck trailers and train cars. This will refrigerate loads 3-5 days and eliminates the the need to run diesel refrigeration units saving a LOT of expensive diesel fuel and replacing it with cheaper electric. They are currently installing a solar concentrator with a heated oil circulator to provide heat for processing, and lowering electrical input.
1 bushel = 56 lbs. All that for each bushel.

The co-op sells E-85 from a station at the plant. About 40% of the people in town use E-85(also available at gas stations and convenience stores in the area) E-85 has 70% of the BTU content of petroleum gasoline, and gets about 20% less mileage per gallon, but it also sells for about $.80 - $1.00 less than gasoline. The plant produces 45 million gallons of ethanol a year which replaces about 31.5 million gallons of gas.

Sugar cane and sugar beets are very similar in yield and produce about 8X the amount of ethanol per acre as corn does.

Cellulosic ethanol made with the Fischer-Tropsch process(thermal reduction) is currently yielding about 70 gallons per ton from wood.
Comment 32 of 64
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August 6, 2008
The main product of corn is DDG high protien animal feed, the ethanol is just a by product. Field corn has a protien content of about 2-4% and a very high starch content. In order to make a good feed, soy meal is mixed in to increase the protien content. Soy is more expensive than corn because corn produces 2.5-3x the yield of soy per acre. Fermented corn has a protien value of 12-14% so it makes an excellent feed substitute for soy at about 1/2 the price. The oil can be removed before fermentation because it is not utilized by the yeast at all. Corn oil can be used directly as biodiesel with no refining and no modification to standard diesel engines.
One gallon of biodiesel replaces the need for 2.3 gallons of crude oil considering production, transportation and refining costs.
Comment 33 of 64
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August 6, 2008
------"Could you let me know, if the article failed to emphasize this point?
"--------

I'd say it does. Any kind of plant material could be used. Using USDA and Montana State figures, managed timber stands need to be culled when saplings reach a hieght of 15-20 ft for optimal growth. Each tree of that size with have a trunk circumference of about 1 foot and yield about 1.6 tons of pulp. Depending on the microclimate and species culling yields about 2,000-3,000 trees per acre. All this plant material is for the most part just stacked up and burned to eliminate wildfire dangers and insect infestation. Using the current F-T yield of 70 gallons per acre, we are looking at a possible 140,000 to 210,000 gallons of ethanol per acre from a resource that is just stacked up and burned for the most part right now.

Biodiesel is being produced from saltwater algae right now in Rio Hondo TX. 4.4 million gallons is being produced from 1180 acres of shallow holding ponds that grow algae in sea water. A desert climate and heat induce a high growth rate that would never be possible in its natural habitat the sea. That is a production of rate of 3,279/acre but with fine tuning production of 5500 gal/acre is possible. The left over biomass can also be put to use later on, it could feed fish or shrimp, or it could be converted to ethanol.
Comment 34 of 64
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August 6, 2008
fred linn.........

thank you very much for the information. i have one or two more if you dont mind .

1. what is the octane rating for ethanol.
2.with the right incentives could the farmers in your area grow
sugarbeets on part of thier land and produce more ethanol from less acreage and thereby produceing more corn for food.
Comment 35 of 64
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August 6, 2008
Ethanol octane rating is about 115. Ethanol has a significantly higher flash point than gasoline which makes it a superior fuel. That means higher compression ratios can be used getting more fuel and air in the cylinders = more power from a smaller engine. About 2X as with gasoline. That is why alcohol fuels are used almost exclusively in racing cars now. The dragster record of 1/4 mile in 4.5 sec. @ 325 mph was set with ethanol---that is about the speed of a .45 ACP bullet in 4.5 sec. from a dead standstill.

The issue is not making more food---ethanol is the byproduct, DDG is the product. High protien animal feed, it feeds cattle, pigs, fowl, even catfish. They are all food. It feeds dairy cattle, milk, cheese, cream, and everything else that uses dairy products go back to DDG. About 20% of the corn crop is used to produce DDG.
If you are worried about food--over twice as much corn is devoted to high fructose syrup production than DDG, about 40%. This is a main ingredient of candy and soda pop. If you want to blame world hunger on something, why not blame candy and soda pop rather than biofuels? You will be twice as close to being correct.
Comment 36 of 64
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August 6, 2008
My personal opinion on the hunger problem. The main grain involved is rice. No one makes biofuel from rice. Blaming hunger on biofuels is propaganda to maintain the status quo and profits from oil it seems to me. This year Bush requested $900 Billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he FINALLY responded to requests to do something about world hunger, he requested $770 million. This makes starving people .0086% as important to the Bush administration as maintaining a war whose only aim is to secure oil rights for American oil companies.

In answer to your question about beets or corn---neither one. Let market conditions and farming conditions prevail. The more and different sources we have, the more resistant to catastrophic calamity the system and the more reliable our energy supply. It is not a huge switch from corn to sugar beet processing, in fact, using sugar instead of corn is easier---corn facilities could easily process beets also.
Comment 37 of 64
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August 7, 2008
t0: fred finn
once again thank you for the info............
Comment 38 of 64
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August 7, 2008
Fred..don't let your enthusiasm for glowing press releases get in the way of the facts....like:

"The big problem has been figuring out how to collect and press the algae, and in the case of open ponds, to prevent contamination by invasive species. PetroSun 'seems' to have figured it out, and this may be the first algae biofuel plant to get off the ground.

PetroSun won't be making fuel immediately, but plans on either building or acquiring ethanol and biodiesel production plants. They've conveniently located themselves in an area accessible by barge, which should make fuel distribution a snap"
In other words, they aren't producing anything yet except press releases.

The alt. fuels industry is plagued by hype used to pump up stock offerings, and resulting scandals, like this one I almost bought into:

"Xethanol Corp. is trying to unload a former pharmaceutical plant in Georgia that had been the centerpiece of its plan to turn wood chips, paper pulp and other organic waste into ethanol.

The Augusta(GA) Chronicle reported last week that Xethanol (AMEX: XNL) told workers who have been tending the property that it was for sale. When Xethanol and a joint venture partner bought the idled plant in August 2006, they said it would be retrofitted to produce 50 million gallons of ethanol a year, and would employ as many as 100 people".
Comment 39 of 64
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August 7, 2008
Then there was Maine's sugar beet scandals which drew in the political elite and something Democrats would rather put behind them:

FRED VAHLSING
Fred H. Vahlsing, Jr. (c.1936–1991)

Vahlsing was the erstwhile Sugar Beet King of Maine who, in the 1960s and 1970s, became the state's most notorious environmental villain. Shady businessmen with big ideas are a dime a dozen in Maine history, but Vahlsing, with his cowboy hats, snakeskin boots, and private planes and helicopters, had a certain flair and swagger about him that made him easy to dislike when his promises of a second cash crop (after potatoes) for Aroostook County started to fall through amid defaulted loans and polluted streams.

Vahlsing built a potato processing plant in Easton in 1960 and, in 1965, added a sugar beet plant next door. In 1967, he successfully sought reclassification of Prestile Stream from a Class B stream to a Class D, essentially an open sewer for processing waste. In 1968, irate Canadians dammed the Prestile in protest of the filth that was flowing out of Maine.

In 1972, after Vahlsing had defaulted on thirty million dollars worth of state and federal loans, Representative Louis Jalbert was forthright enough to say he was "an ashamed patsy" for ever having fallen for Vahlsing's sugar beet song and dance, but then plenty of other Maine pols were (or should have been) red-faced, among them Senator Ed Muskie and Governor John Reed, who both supported reclassification of the Prestile, and George Mitchell, who prior to his senatorial career was Vahlsing's Augusta lobbyist."

Fred, time to stop quoting press releases...unless of course your a huckster for carbon traders, and bogus stock offerings; and start using evaluation studies and performance facts!
Comment 40 of 64
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August 7, 2008
I don't see one single mention of ethanol in your Obit.(?) from someone who died 17 years ago and events that took place 40 years ago. The events happened even before the first arab oil embargo---the only people who even knew anything at all about ethanol at the time were a few high performance race car builders and some chemists. And no one cared about ethanol, because we were told that oil was going to solve all the world's problems and it would be cheap and plentiful forever. Remember?

PetroSun went into operation April 1, there is no refining needed for biodiesel, it can be used straight as produced. Refining is not necessary, however transesterification is commonly done on virgin oils to take off co-products of commercial value, primarily glycerin, a common industrial base for a wide range of products from lipstick to explosives.
However, vegetable oils can be used as is, and there are a large number of individuals and trucking companies that use vegetable oil used for cooking discarded by restaraunts with no more processing that simply filtering the oil and pouring it into the tank of their diesel vehicles.
South Africa operated their diesel trucks and heavy equipment for mining on biodiesel in WW2 because oil was in short supply due to the war and the threat of German Uboat attacks. A situation we may be seeing again very soon--although not from German Uboats. One lucky hit from a silkworm missle on a ship in the Gulf of Hormuz could shut down middle east oil shipments for months. Iran has silkworm missles and is within range of the gulf.
Comment 41 of 64
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August 7, 2008
So one company had plans to build an ethanol plant that didn't work out. That is why you do research. Why did the plans not work out? Did they find a better site? Did the building prove to be unsuitable? Was the company unable to find enough venture capital to complete the project? I happen to know of a plant that DID start business and has tripled in output over the last 15 years. 300% growth is not the kind of growth you get with long established well capitalized companies. Look at the very first post on this thread.So I'm a huckster? Do you see me recommending any specific stocks or offerings anywhere? If you had read the very first post you'd see that I applaud the fact that the pulp industry development means that investors can have a choice of high risk/high return possibility or investing in pulp industry companies with proven track records and greater safety moving into a market using a product that is a by product that they have been making for over 120 years and a just burning to produce electricity now. GM has already partnered with Coskata and is actively promoting ethanol use---it makes the best business sense in the world for GM to do so. Although many people seem to think they know better, GM DOES know something about the automotive industry and the biofuel markets. GM opened the first plant in Brazil producing Flex Fuel vehicles.
Comment 42 of 64
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August 7, 2008
Fred,

Have you looked into the Kansas State study linking the DDG's to increases in E Coli 0157?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/ksu-krf120307.php

Kansas State University researchers in December of 2007 found an increased prevalence of the deadly E. coli 0157 bacterium in the hind-gut of cattle fed distiller's grains. This strongly suggests a link between the increased use of distiller's grains by the beef industry and the increased prevalence of nation-wide beef recalls due to E. coli 0157 contamination.

I'd like your opinion because I tend to disagree with you on many points - but you don't appear to be a shill AND your responses are well thought out with good intentions to boot.

I've also heard from some dairy farmers that they won't feed their cattle the DDG. Dairy cows live longer and are better treated in general.

Another concern with the DDG product we've seen is a concentration of industries of corporate dairies/beef and hog farms (CAFUs). Or just with ethanol refineries building next to landfills, incinerators, coal, etc to take their excess steam. While economical this places an even greater burden on the communities.

I also liked what you said about forests and I agree the some enviro's get adamant without being informed, however this is often within good reason due to previous actions taken by industry. I'd like to see the loopholes closed and protections put in place so that any biomass cultivation remains sustainable and the integrity of our forests preserved. Emissions ought be observed and regulated for any incineration technologies.
Comment 43 of 64
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August 7, 2008
Eserichia Coli is normal intestinal flora. In humans as well as cattle. If you are careless when gutting and dressing the meat you can contaminate it. That's nothing new. Undercooked or raw foods can be a source of E. coli infection. That happened with Jack in the Box hamburgers awhile back. Undercooked hamburgers. Why they would try to connect DDG with E. coli infections doesn't make sense to me, it has nothing to do with the mode of transmission. It sounds to me like they are using purely statistical evidence to make the connection(there's new ethanol plants around here, feedlots are next to ethanol plants, cattle eat feed from ethanol plants, there is a sudden increase in E. coli infections ergo: DDG causes E. coli infection). It might make sense to someone not familiar with DDG(it has been used for hundreds of years) or the known mode of transmission--but it makes no connection for a mode of transmission from (DDG) to (meat) to (human). I suppose it is not a totally bad thing to investigate, but I wouldn't put much stock in it. For instance, a recent outbreak of E. coli on raw spinach was traced to washing with contaminated water. At least the mode of transmission makes sense. If there is an outbreak of E coli, I'd investigate the butchering processors and the food preparation---that would be the known transmission modes.
Comment 44 of 64
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August 7, 2008
-----"I've also heard from some dairy farmers that they won't feed their cattle the DDG."-------

That is their choice what they feed. I don't know why they wouldn't but if they want to use something, ok.

-------" Dairy cows live longer and are better treated in general."-------

That's a subjective statement, maybe maybe not, they aren't pets.

-----"Another concern with the DDG product we've seen is a concentration of industries of corporate dairies/beef and hog farms (CAFUs). Or just with ethanol refineries building next to landfills, incinerators, coal, etc to take their excess steam. While economical this places an even greater burden on the communities."---------

What burdens? What is wrong with efficiency? FYI, I'm no big fan of agribusiness, I prefer the smaller independent operator economic profile organized into loose knit co-op type investment groups for larger projects.

Energy, mineral, and land use policy has been pretty much slash and burn for the last 8 years. No matter WHAT the choice the environment and the good of the people seems to have taken the back seat to corporate profits and pleasing Big Business lobbyists. Energy policy is entirely caveman hunter/gather mentality--hunt for oil, coal, whatever, use it up and hunt for some more. Biofuels will require us to farm for our energy. Farming means providing what we need today but also making sure we protect our means of production for tomorrow, that means taking care of the environment. Farming is the most fundamental invention of mankind and allowed man to come out of caves, live in cities and build civilazations. It's time to start farming for our energy, and taking care of our environment.

http://groups.msn.com/BreakingTheChains/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=166&LastModified=4675683423566427272
Comment 45 of 64
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August 7, 2008
---------"I also liked what you said about forests and I agree the some enviro's get adamant without being informed, however this is often within good reason due to previous actions taken by industry. "-----------

Ever seen a stripmine? If not look it up and see what it does to the earth and the watersheds. That damage will last for thousands of years. Is that worth it for a mineral that we burn once to power video games and leaving the lights on all night? I don't think so, I think we have better ways of making the power we use. I think that it isn't just "previous actions", it is actions being taken RIGHT now. What I present in the link above is what I think is a better way. I think we can make things work if we all get on the same page.
---------"I'd like to see the loopholes closed and protections put in place so that any biomass cultivation remains sustainable and the integrity of our forests preserved"-------------

I would too.

-------"Emissions ought be observed and regulated for any incineration technologies."-------------

I agree. Fischer-Tropsch is a closed cycle technology. No emissions need to be generated from there. If we use some for of sustainable energy input then we have no emissions. Wind, solar, hydro, biofuels are all sustainable and renewable. The issue is not that we cann't use carbon, the issue is where the carbon we are using came from. We can even use some carbon from fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse warming effect as I explain in my plan.
Comment 46 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Fred your ignorance of the scientific community and the ethanol industry is astounding!

The University of Maine has hosted the forest products industry's research and if you could make fuels from cellulose or papermaking byproducts, they'd have been doing it a long time ago.

Tens of millions of dollars have been spent trying to do so, bringing in researchers from around the world and developing detailed plans.

"Rumford doesn't deserve jilting from biorefinery, Monday, January 22, 2007

"We have been moving very, very fast on several fronts simultaneously, and what we are doing has the potential to significantly contribute to the employment and economic activity in the River Valley."- Scott Christiansen, Feb. 2004

Times have changed.

Christiansen, the current guru of the Rumford-based Fractionation Development Center, spoke these words during his tenure as executive director of the River Valley Growth Council, the organization which has helped, over the past several years, support his entrepreneurial vision to turn trees into oil.

Now, with plans for a $45 million biorefinery plant on the horizon, the community that nurtured Christiansen's vision could be jilted. The science of pyrolysis, Christiansen's timetable, and a reluctant NewPage mill has Rumford out of contention for the first phase of this development.

NewPage says because FDC and the mill need the same raw material for its products, it's unsure what accommodating FDC will mean for production of its paper. NewPage is also awaiting a wastewater permit from the state, and accepting FDC's overtures could put that in jeopardy.

...Maybe in two years, he says, when the second phase of FDC builds a plant to convert biomass into a kind of natural gas, will Rumford reap some reward.

Selectmen are puzzled, with good reason.
Comment 47 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Fischer-Tropsch is not the panacea you think it is.

First, it requires a complex process to convert coal into syngas and in turn into hydrocarbons. Which community is going to host it?

The few operating plants in the WORLD use natural gas, not wood.

There is big problem with the enormous amount of CO2 produced and sequestering it is expensive.

BOTTOM LINE..any fuel produced would be very expensive; and why bother, when you can use natural gas directly to power vehicles?
Comment 48 of 64
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August 8, 2008
The Spanish are doing just fine with it. They are producing 750 million liters per year from plant waste.

Germany produced all of their energy needs in WW2 with F-T from wood and coal and powered everything from 140 metric tonne Panzer tanks, to V1 and V2 rockets, and the Me 262 jet fighter.

Why dig up coal from 2-300 ft underground when you can rake up dead leaves and branches and put in it. F-T can convert any type of hydrocarbon materials, and it is a closed system, it produces no CO2 other than what is used to provide the thermal energy input. If you use electrical energy generated by solar, hydro, or wind power it would produce no CO2 at all.

Natural gas requires vehicles be converted to use it. That is expensive. And when you do, you are still left with the problem of where to put the tank to store it. If you put it inside the vehicle, it is dangerous from the standpoint of leaks(asphyxiation or explosion) and it uses up interior room. If you mount it outside the vehicle, it is cumbersome, unsightly, increases areodynamic drag significantly, and is dangerous in event of a crash.

Flex Fuel cars that can use up to 85% ethanol or gasoline whichever is available and can be mixed in any proportion are being manufactured now, cost the same or minimally more that conventional cars and are indistinguishable in looks and performance from a conventional gasoline only vehicle.

-----"The University of Maine has hosted the forest products industry's research and if you could make fuels from cellulose or papermaking byproducts, they'd have been doing it a long time ago"--------

They were making ethanol from wood as far back as the 1890's, in both the US and Germany, using chemical processes that are still used today. Fischer -Tropsh was developed in Germany in 1924, over 80 years ago.
Comment 49 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Fred,

I checked out that link you provided on Breaking the Chains.
I agree with your points in there, but I believe you're missing a BIG part. What can be achieved via Conservation and Efficiency.

check out the link below
http://www.energyjustice.net/solutions/c_and_e/
Provides 3 different projections (all feasible) with annotated data.

And as what Frank says: after the F-T process the resulting fuel will still be burned and emissions result. And as he alludes, there are pollutants in the process whether it is CTL or another feedstock. The community hosting it would be negatively effected.
Gassification has to happen first before F-T converts the gas to fuel. Gassification will result in slag or solid waste and emissions, so you are ignoring a part in the whole process.

And Frank,
while using some LNG to power vehicles would help diversify - it's not viable for the volumes we need. A transition to PHEV or plug-in hybrids with a clean grid of solar, wind, geothermal, ocean power would be optimal and achievable given the proper energy policy (of which no major pres candidates make the cut).
Comment 50 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Conservation---ABSOLUTELY, do the same things, but use less, or don't use what you don't need. The bonus is, that with conservation, each single renewable installed to the system represents a greater % of renewable, and less dependence on non-renewable.

Coal To Liquid---coal is absolutely THE worst thing we can be doing to the environment. Ash, slag and cinders are only the tip of the iceberg---there is also stripmines, damage to water sheds, and emissions.

The result of using F-T with biomass however is ash. The same thing that nature has used to enrich the soil for billions of years. It can be mixed with water and sprayed whereever it is wanted. A forest fire or praire fire enriches the soils and produces faster and hardier growth later because of the ash left behind. The Indians used to burn the praires to do just that. In the spring, the grasses (not killed because native praire grasses have deep root systems and are adapted to frequent fires) grew back thick and fertile. This would attract the bufallo to the area, which the Indians depended on for all their needs. Burning the praires near their villages to improve forage kept the bufallo herds near where they needed them.

I agree with the PHEV thing, but I would add, that PHEV only makes sense to me if we use either diesel or flex fuel capable for the charging motor. Gasoline only is just treading water. With diesel or flex fuel chargers you can also use biofuels. And they would not cost anything extra to produce.
Comment 51 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Right, right.
We just need to keep our eyes open for what is defined as "biomass".
We don't want tires, telephone poles, MSW, poultry litter, sludge, construction wood waste...
Comment 52 of 64
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August 8, 2008
Biomass is anything of biologic origin. telephone poles would be biomass , (I don't what you MSW) poultry litter is biomass(although that would be better suited to methane production) sludge(depends on what kind of sludge, if it is sewage, it could produce methane) construction wood waste is biomass.
Comment 53 of 64
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August 11, 2008
Fred, once again you've let your enthusiasm obscure the facts.

ABENGOA, the primary producer of Ethanol in Spain uses cereals, not cellulose . http://www.abengoabioenergy.com/sites/bioenergy/en/acerca_de/informacion_tecnica/respuestas/index.html

It's experimental plant in Nebraska is just that another 'experiment' backstopped by a conventional ethanol plant that uses corn and grains.

When it comes to cellulosic ethanol there is a lot of hype but no plants that are competitive with fossil or other bio-fuels. SUGAR CANE RULES!
Comment 54 of 64
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August 11, 2008
Growth of Abengoa in the United States: Cellulose focussed
Looking at the aggressive growth plans of Cosan in Brazil and abroad, or looking at the production capacity of ADM, POET and Verasun Energy, we asked Mr. Salgado about the Abengoa's goals in terms of growth. Focussing on the US market, he said "the important thing for us is to have critical mass in all three markets. We have 200 million gallons in operation today and 200 million that will come online in the next 2 years. Another 100 million gallons with our hybrid project in Kansas, that will produce 88 million gallons from corn, and 13 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol from biomass. That's 500 million gallons and that is what we see a our critical mass. Our strategy is focussed on generating cash flow to invest on our biomass technology. Subsequently, any growth beyond 500 million gallons is going to be much more focussed on 2nd generation ethanol. If the hybrid concept in Kansas is successful in terms of Capex and Opex, we plan to replicate it on all our locations, because we don't believe that second generation biofuels will be established immediately, without a period of transition from first generation."
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.ethanolstatistics.com/Expert_Opinions/Abengoa_The_Only_Global_Ethanol_Producer_Part_2_241207_2.aspx
Comment 55 of 64
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August 11, 2008
Abengoa owns about 20% of US ethanol production. They are installing cellulosic ethanol production in conjunction with corn ethanol production. This will make use of stover---the plant part of the corn, mainly the cobs. This is the application of changes already made in Spanish plants. Co-production was 500 million liters last year and another 250 million liters this year. This is using a thermochemical process that is in standard use in paper pulp production and has been over 100 years. Most US paper pulp producers burn the liquors the ethanol is refined from for energy to supplement mill processing as pointed out in the original article in this thread.

First Cellulosic Ethanol Biorefinery in the U.S. Opens
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=53239#readercomments
Range Fuels expands funding to speed cellulosic-ethanol production
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9935877-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Comment 56 of 64
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August 11, 2008
LMAO----as for being overly enthusiastic---maybe you are right. I've used biofuels for 11 years. I've been told all kinds of stories like the engine on my van will blow up and fall apart in less than 100 miles,(120,000+ and still going)---nobody has starved to death, and I haven't met a single vegetarian who wants to take over the world by forcing everyone to put cattle feed in their car's gas tank.

I look around and see that biofuels are a mature technology, and do anything we need them to do. Oil is cuasing immense problems, economically, socially, environmentally and politically both here and everywhere else.
There's plenty of talk, but not much real change politically.

So, my feeling is forget the politicians---let's get the show on the road.

Get rid of oil and a whole lot of our problems will go with it, many of which are never even discussed here.
Comment 57 of 64
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August 12, 2008
BIO FUELS is a mature technology...WITH ONE GLARING EXCEPTION....celullosic ethanol or cellulosic anything.

All of your productions volumes are for conventional corn based processes, not cellulose.

Oil is a bio-fuel too!

There is a trend to integrated solid and liquid waste anerobic digesters that produce biogas; which when scrubbed and cleaned up becomes CNG. The cleanest engine made is the HONDA CNG engine.

I am involved in designing a waste to energy plant in Mexico---why Mexico? we have carte blanche from the govt.

Just beginning to think about compressing the gas to run public vehicle fleets. So is the Almeda Cnty(Calif) recycling group.
Comment 58 of 64
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August 12, 2008
-------"I am involved in designing a waste to energy plant in Mexico---why Mexico? we have carte blanche from the govt.

Just beginning to think about compressing the gas to run public vehicle fleets. So is the Almeda Cnty(Calif) recycling group."------------

That's great. I'm all for that. Just one thing, take a look at Fischer-Tropsch process before you finalize your design. Depending on the cellulose and other hydrocarbon input to your system, you may be able to produce biodiesel directly and build a larger facillity with the savings of having to engine modifications and fuel storage and distribution changes. You can make your smaller project bigger without any added expense to the client, and far less disruption of the existing system. Clients usually like that.

Good luck---I hope that can help you, and if not, well, does it hurt to look?
Comment 59 of 64
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August 13, 2008
Fischer-Tropsch is pretty much relegated to experiments with coal and paper company black liquor....It also gets us into the refinery business; a place we're not comfortable in going...Anaerobic digesters take a wide variety of feedstock, can be operated with technicans not engineers, and, have low startup costs.

The group as a whole has extensive backgrounds in alt. energy, and K.I.S.S. is something we learned the hard way!
Comment 60 of 64
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August 13, 2008
You get it made and get it to us, the rest of us are just waiting on you.
Comment 61 of 64
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August 17, 2008
CORRECTION:
Stratos misstated the octane math used by fuel blenders. The higher octane of ethanol is added to cheap, low-octane gasoline for a 10% ethanol fuel with 87 to 93 octane.

We need all the energy we can get - from conservation and efficiency, but also natural gas or methane for home heating and gas fired turbines for electricity, diesel and diesel substitutes for rail, trucking, bunker fuel and substitutes for ocean shipping, AND solar, wind, geothermal capacity, and continuing research for more.

My primary interest, though, is motor vehicle development. Remember, gasoline today is not gasoline as it was in 1908, not by a long shot, and neither are the engines that run on those fuels. Any new work will also take time to reach maturity, with some missteps along the way. Hopefully, they won't be missteps as horrific as tetraethyl leaded gasoline.

In realistic terms, development is investment, marketing, politics, PR, and moves in finite steps toward improvement. The paper industry has been geared for a century to produce PAPER, and some byproducts. Expecting a decade of development overnight is ridiculous. Governments and similar bodies make it worse.

Sometimes there are exceptions. President George HW Bush [Bush 1] made a public statement that oxygenated gasoline had better become available or he was going to see to it that renewables funding increased. Oxygenated gasoline, using ETBE and later, the toxic MTBE, was quick to arrive on the scene. Consider the liklihood that Geo. H knew about prior petroleum research into gasoline blends.
Comment 62 of 64
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August 17, 2008
We need all the energy we can get, for today and for tomorrow, and we need it to be clean, storable, and efficient. There is sometimes a statement made that a Manhattan Project for energy is what is needed. Things are not nearly as desperate for the world as they were in post-depression WW2. Most of us have no idea. We might soon learn, though.

If we could clone Teddy Roosevelt to streamline and clean up government, Henry Ford to streamline a production process, and Charlie Kettering to pull the various research projects and innovations together into something that works, we would label them lunatic kooks because they got in the way of business as usual. The business of today is more concerned with making money, like researchers do when they apply for grants, saving our money, by buying foreign when we know the plant across town is closing, and being right, which is fodder for our coddled egos, and has nothing to do with facts or logic.

PS to Heller / Finley, because I know you're lurking out there: There IS a concerted effort on the part of the petro industry to smear ethanol, always has been. Through lobbying, PR, and funding of spurious and apophrycal research papers. Just the public exclamation from the Exxon CEO about 'moonshine' should give the average news-watcher some idea where their minds are. These people will only glom onto the ethanol bandwagon when they have a means of controlling the industry and making it their private, proprietary cash cow.
Comment 63 of 64
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August 18, 2008
David---you are right.

-----"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."------- Teddy Roosevelt

What we need right now is a big stick and some good ole time monopoly bustin'.

Well, the big stick is the free market system. If ordinary people all invest in businesses that will make and market biofuels----the private, proprietary cash cow of the oil cartel will be as dead as Mrs. O'Leary's.

What we need is for ordinary common people to invest in their best interest and that of the rest of the planet and future generations by investing whatever amount of money they can in companies that will produce and market renewable energy. We don't need more research, we have what we need right now---just get it made and out for people to use it.
Comment 64 of 64
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