Ready to blossom

Producing higher-value pro-ducts from refuse is driving the advanced biofuels and chemicals market. More advanced processing is often required to produce a higher value fuel product than heat or electricity, but several developers continue to push forward.

“I’d tell a town’s mayor to keep their eyes open. There is no better proof of a process than the proof itself,” says Craig Stuart-Paul, CEO of Fiberight, Baltimore.

Fiberight, a privately held company founded in 2007 with operations in Virginia, Maryland, Iowa and soon Maine, takes municipal solid waste (MSW) and other organic feedstocks for conversion to next-generation renewable biofuels. The company’s process relies on residential waste and is not suited for construction and demolition waste or similar materials, Stuart-Paul notes. The end product typically is compressed natural gas (CNG).

With cellulosic ethanol as its core product, Fiberight has operated pilot plant facilities since 2008. Its latest project is in Hampden, Maine, where Fiberight will develop a $60 million solid waste processing facility that it calls state of the art.

“Our first two projects will likely start with anaerobic digestion to CNG, with the option to produce sugars if we wish,” Stuart-Paul says.

Second-generation (or advanced) biofuels are produced from a range of nonfood crops and waste biomass, and proponents claim they are more energy efficient than conventional fossil fuels. Such biofuels minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 90 percent, say advocates.

Another firm converting waste into advanced biofuel is Enerkem, Montreal. Its patented technology chemically recycles the carbon molecules contained in wastes, explains Marie-Hélène Labrie, Enerkem senior vice president for government affairs and communications.

A key to Enerkem’s process is simplicity. Limited feedstock preparation is required, and the waste materials are shredded after inert materials such as glass and metals are removed. Such a system provides a cost-effective alternative to landfilling and incineration while producing high-value products such as cellulosic ethanol and biomethanol, Enerkem says.

“We are complementary to recycling, composting and biogas as we take the waste materials that cannot be used,” says Labrie.

The ethanol serves as an oxygenate for gasoline and helps refiners meet renewable fuel obligations. It is also competitive with alternative fuel products such as corn ethanol, according to Enerkem.

Labrie explains that the process converts carbon molecules into a pure synthesis gas (i.e. syngas), then turns the syngas into biofuels and chemicals using commercially available catalysts, all within minutes.

The key to Enerkem’s biorefining process is that its feedstock is flexible yet carbon-rich.

“We complement recycling and composting and we can use a wide range of waste materials, from textiles and wood residues to nonrecyclable plastics,” Labrie says. “Our feedstock is therefore comprised of mixed urban waste materials [otherwise] destined to landfills.”
 

Waste to CNG

In late 2009, Fiberight purchased a shuttered first-generation corn ethanol plant in Blairstown, Iowa, with the intent to retrofit for second-generation ethanol production. That project, serving Marion, Iowa, is a typical small-to-midsize plant and will operate in the 350-400 tons per day range. The design works best below 750 tons, says Stuart-Paul.

While incinerators can cost upwards of $500 million to build, Stuart-Paul says the project in Maine costs around $60 million. The Fiberight process is suited to smaller cities, while incinerators often are in larger cities producing 2,000 to 3,000 tons per day, according to Stuart-Paul. “There is a much lower [capital expense] and the resultant product value is much higher,” he says.

In Maine, most local towns now ship their garbage to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. (PERC) in Orrington, where it is incinerated and converted into electricity. However, with the expiration of a government-mandated power purchase agreement, the facility will be forced to sell electricity at a much lower market price after March 2018. Without subsidies, the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) projects a revenue gap of $13 million.

Fiberight is financing the construction of its facility in Maine while MRC member towns own the land. That site will be an upgrade to Fiberight’s Virginia plant. There, material is off-loaded into bays, pushed onto a belt, screened and sorted. Textiles and recyclable fibers are hand-picked. The result is two distinct fractions running on parallel lines. The organic waste is put into a pulping vessel where the material is processed at modest pressures of 10 pounds per square inch (psi) or less. The result is a pasteurized, deodorized product. The pulping vessel is one area ripe for upgrading to a larger, more modern design, according to Stuart-Paul.

Meanwhile, recyclables are sorted out with biomass going in one stream and plastics, films, used beverage containers and other materials being sorted with standard methods. Biomass then moves to processing as biofuel. The fiber goes to the cooking system designed to handle clean biomass pulp. Here, enzymatic conversion to liquid sugars produces a fermented biofuel, Stuart-Paul says.
 

Other enterprises

Several other companies are in the advanced biofuels market. Most play it close to the vest when it comes to discussing operational details.

POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels LLC is a joint venture between Royal DSM and POET LLC of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. POET-DSM built its first commercial-scale plant co-located with POET Biorefining in Emmetsburg, Iowa. Based on this plant, the joint venture called Project Liberty expects to license an integrated technology package for the conversion of corn crop residue into cellulosic bioethanol.

Another entrant to the advanced biofuels market is Ineos. The company has facilities at Vero Beach, Florida, called the Indian River BioEnergy Center and a pilot location at Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Site director Nigel Falcon says the Vero Beach facility has recently completed “a major turnaround that included upgrades to the technology as well as completion of annual safety inspections.”

Ineos focuses on gasification of biomass to syngas followed by conversion to bioethanol. Its process is based on converting cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin efficiently to bioethanol. Ineos says its product delivers more than 90 percent greenhouse gas savings compared with gasoline. However, the company declines to talk publicly about its operations.
 

Proprietary process

Labrie says Enerkem is the first company to have developed a proprietary process to break down mixed waste materials and convert them into a pure, stable and homogeneous synthetic gas that can serve as a feedstock for biofuels and chemicals.

“It is also unique in that it can produce a wide variety of products and can use many types of waste feedstocks,” Labrie says.

It is little surprise, then, that Enerkem finds municipalities around the world are attracted by the technology as they look for a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to landfilling and incineration. Refiners are equally interested in the company’s process as a way to meet renewable fuels obligations. In addition, chemical groups want to partner with Enerkem to have access to a pool of renewable chemicals to meet customer demand, Labrie says.

She says that by using garbage instead of corn to produce ethanol, Enerkem helps solve waste issues and reduces GHGs further by avoiding landfill methane emissions. In addition, she notes that MSW is “the cheapest feedstock of all.”
 

Demand outlook

There is high demand for biofuels and renewable chemicals, and the market for these products is global. According to Allied Market Research, Portland, Oregon, the global second-generation biofuels market will reach $23.9 billion by 2020. At present, 62 countries have established blending mandates or targets for renewable fuel content in conventional transportation fuel. And global chemical groups want to add renewables to their hydrocarbon-based product lines to meet demand. Therefore, the global renewable chemicals market could reach $83 billion by 2018.

“There is no problem selling CNG,” Stuart-Paul says. In fact, the system can become almost a closed loop with collection trucks bringing household waste to be processed into CNG that is used to fuel collections, with the excess sold into pipelines.

The author is a contributing editor to Renewable Energy from Waste and can be reached at curt@curtharler.com.