After initially using enzymes to break down wood into cattle feed, Foody turned his attention to using enzymes to produce renewable fuel.
“Back in the early 1980s, the price of oil was forecast to hit $80 a barrel and the world was going to need alternative fuels, and so we started looking at whether we could take fiber and use enzymes to turn that fiber into fermentable sugars to make alcohol. Indeed, that is what we do,” says Jeff Passmore, executive vice president of Iogen Corp. “As it turned out, of course, the price of oil didn't go to $80 a barrel in the 1980s, but in the meantime Iogen learned a lot about how enzymes behave with fiber.”
And so began Iogen’s commercial enzyme business. Today, the company owns and operates a large-scale, state-of-the-art enzyme manufacturing facility in Ottawa that provides enzymes for the pulp and paper, textile and animal feed industries. As well, Iogen says, its cellulosic ethanol process combines innovations in pretreatment, state-of-the-art enzyme and fermentation technologies to produce ethanol from biomass. Using enzymes, pretreated fiber is converted to sugars, which are subsequently fermented and then distilled to make ethanol.
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Since the 1980s, Iogen has moved from conducting fundamental basic research to applied research to pilot-scale, to demonstration-scale. Since 2004, the company’s 2 MMly (500,000 gallons) demonstration plant has been producing cellulosic ethanol from wheat and barley straw. The facility can process up to about 30 tons of feedstock daily. As a result of operating a demonstration plant, Passmore says, Iogen has learned a lot about the integration of the various processes that combine to develop the fuel and has upgraded the plant several times.
Use
“I think it is fair to say we are on the cutting edge,” Passmore says, as he proudly talks about the company’s success stories of demonstrating cellulosic ethanol. His own car, a flexible fuel Chevrolet Impala, runs on the company’s straw-based E85. “It always amazes me that there are all these straw bales here at the plant, and I go and fill up and the fuel I run my car on comes from that straw. I never cease to be amazed by that,” he says.
Not only does Iogen’s own vehicle fleet run on its fuel, but the company has also provided E85 to various departments within the Canadian federal government.
To demonstrate the environmental benefits of Iogen’s fuel, during the summer of 2004, renowned Canadian adventure traveler Garry Sowerby drove a GMC Yukon fueled with the company’s E85 more than 9,000 miles, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia, stopping in 85 communities along the way. The “Mission Green” trip was sponsored by General Motors Canada.
For the past two years, Green Alternative Motorsports has used Iogen’s E85 to fuel its high-performance race vehicles for the 25 Hours of Thunder Hill Endurance Race in Willows, Calif. In 2007, GAM team member and driver Steve Zadig wanted to use cellulosic E85 to reduce his environmental footprint as he raced two GAM LeMans Prototype (LMP3) cars. “So he went out to procure some and, not surprisingly, he couldn't find anybody to sell him any cellulosic ethanol other than a company in Ottawa called Iogen,” Passmore says. Iogen shipped GAM the requested 800 gallons of fuel. In the fall of 2008, Iogen again supplied the company with 300 gallons of E85 for one of its racecars.
“For two years in a row, Iogen has been the only firm actively producing cellulosic ethanol and able to reach into its inventory to provide us with the volume we need – enabling us to ‘go green’ again,” Zadig said in a press statement.
The Canadian government has set a 5 percent renewable fuel mandate by 2010; and a renewable fuels standard enacted in the U.S. Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 establishes annual renewable fuel volume targets, reaching 36 billion gallons in 2022, of which 16 billion gallons is mandated to be cellulosic biofuels.
Even if oil prices remain below $100 per barrel, Passmore hopes that the U.S. and Canadian federal governments will continue to establish renewable fuels targets. “We need the kind of initiatives that governments have established, such as mandates. You need mandates and you need price signals,” he says. “If the goal here is to get off that addiction [imported fossil fuel from the Middle East], then you want to ensure that when conventional energy prices are low, you don't walk away from your commitment to alternative fuels because, if you do, then there won't be any when oil prices go back up again. We need regulatory certainty and we need those kinds of price signals and mandated fuel use. Our customers are the oil companies and some are being very progressive in terms of their involvement in the field, like Royal Dutch Shell plc, but there are others who would prefer not to use ethanol. So, I think that you create a market for the product through mandating it.”
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