Verbio made the decision to coproduce ethanol and RNG two decades ago. At the time, it was risky—a decision between the energy-intensive method of using stillage for DDGS or developing a complex system using the stillage leftover from ethanol production to make renewable natural gas and fertilizer. Out of a desire to avoid reliance on fossil fuels, Verbio ultimately decided to take the risky route.&nbsp;Claus Sauter, CEO of Verbio, set out &nbsp;to reduce energy’s climate impact by partnering with farmers to make energy—both liquid fuels and RNG. Since its founding in Germany back in 2005, Verbio has grown and developed biorefineries across three continents, transforming organic material into energy.&nbsp;“Our approach is to achieve the best margin per ton of CO2 that is saved,” Sauter says. “And that’s for everything—it applies not only to vegetable oil and grains as feedstocks, but also to the use of all residues.” Whether processing corn, corn stover or other cereals, Verbio’s goal is to maximize profitability and maintain sustainable production.Entering the U.S.&nbsp; In 2017, the company started considering entrance into the North American market following increased European skepticism toward crop-based biofuels. In 2022, Verbio held a grand opening for its first plant in the United States, located in Nevada, Iowa. Verbio Nevada utilizes the company’s proprietary biorefinery process, which integrates corn starch-based ethanol production and RNG processing by fermenting the stillage leftover from ethanol production, along with corn stover.&nbsp;The first of its kind in the U.S., the plant promised a unique approach to extracting value and fuel from Iowan corn, producing 60 MMgy of ethanol and 2.3 MMbtu of RNG. However, being the first of a kind comes with a number of unique challenges, ranging from market and policymaker education to processing hiccups. The Verbio team has worked to overcome each of these challenges at its Nevada facility and continues to grow in the U.S. through its purchase of an ethanol plant in Indiana.Conquering Challenges&nbsp; The engineering steps of Verbio’s proprietary process are well-established, Sauter explains. The company has been operating several such plants in Europe for over 10 years. However, applying it to a new location and navigating the complexities of a different country’s regulatory landscape changed the timeline for getting the ethanol side of the facility up and running. In August 2024—two years after the biorefinery started injecting RNG from corn stover into the grid—the Nevada plant started up the ethanol production side of its process. “The first plant is always the most complicated and challenging, but you know, that’s not the first plant from us,” Sauter says. “We know the technology works, we know the yields, we know the flexibility.”&nbsp;There are three major technological challenges at the facility, according to Oliver Lüdtke, Verbio’s chief technology officer and vice chairman of its management board. First, corn stover for RNG production has a high moisture content, and Verbio targets less than 25%. The stover needs to be harvested and covered by a roof or tarp as soon as possible to prevent feedstock degradation, which could cause process problems. If the stover gets wet and degrades during storage, it will disrupt the RNG production process and prevent Verbio from achieving maximum throughput. To prevent that from happening, Verbio’s team works to remove stover from the field before rain. “They’ll have a lot of organizational discussion with the farmers, with the local companies which are supporting us, [such as] certain companies which are supporting us in the baling,” he says. “That’s a big challenge to get this quality on the ground and get this to our storage location.” Each fall, Nevada’s team works with 80 to 100 local farmers and gathers the 135,000 stover bales needed for full production throughout the year, according to the company.Another problem causing production issues has been the subpar quality of certain components supplied to the Nevada plant. When components do not reach required specifications, Lüdtke and his team must find a way to get the process into the correct performance range. And Verbio’s process is uniquely complex, so personnel training is a challenge, too. It is crucial that the team has thorough knowledge of the system, empowering them to run the unit, he explains. “This ethanol and RNG biorefinery that’s based on our own technology and basically the knowledge ... only [exists] in our teams and where we developed it,” Lüdtke says. “But it’s a complex interconnection of the different process steps between each.”&nbsp;The third challenge is the biological processes used in the facility. Developing yeast and bacteria populations takes at least 12 months, meaning Verbio biorefineries need more time to complete the startup process. The RNG side of the process offers its own array of unique challenges, as well, Sauter explains. “RNG goes into the gird, but at the very beginning, when we started the process, we had a lot of challenges because it was not stable,” he says. “It [is] a biological process, and a lot of digesters just died, so Oliver and his team had to find out what [was] harming the process and what kind of technologies we need to keep the process stable. As part of the stabilization of the process, we are extracting some components where we are producing biofertilizer.”Educating Policymakers&nbsp; The soil conditioner Verbio offers—also known as humus—is derived from the material remaining after anerobic digestion, which is recycled for use as soil conditioner by local farmers. Sauter explains that it contains potassium and nitrogen at a quality comparable to fossil-based fertilizers. Verbio wants to build two-way relationships with farmers, where the company can buy local corn and corn stover and sell liquid fertilizer and soil conditioner for nearby fields. The humus has similar characteristics to peat moss and serves a similar purpose in improving the fertility of the soil by increasing the amount of moisture it can hold.Verbio Nevada is working with Iowa State University to determine how much CO2 is stored in the soil when humus is applied to a field each year. Humus must be applied yearly to achieve visible results, Lüdtke explains. The novelty of products such as humus in the U.S. agricultural community means that there is work to be done in educating policymakers about the carbon storage benefits of humus as well as its value as a soil conditioner. These unique strategies to decarbonization are not recognized under tax credit frameworks such as 45Z, but are a simple, yet effective solution, Sauter argues. “You don’t have to drill a hole and make CCS; you can also store the carbon in the soil.”Lüdtke expects it to take time for farmers to recognize the value of humus as a soil conditioner. Farmers are conservative when it comes to change, and they prefer to see the results before using a new product. “We’ve already got a couple of farmers [who] really like our material,” he says. “[It’s] really developing, and they are spreading the information to the community basically.”Expanding Production&nbsp;&nbsp; Verbio continues to move forward with project development at other locations, even while problem-solving in Nevada, embarking on a new ethanol plant retrofit in South Bend, Indiana. Formerly known as South Bend Ethanol, the operating ethanol plant was purchased by Verbio from Mercuria Investments in May 2023. An estimated total of $230 million will be spent on upgrading the plant into Verbio’s biorefinery model—coproduction of ethanol and RNG, along with liquid fertilizer and humus.&nbsp;The production goals for the facility are currently estimated at 90 MMgy of ethanol and 3.5 MMbtus of RNG, Sauter and Lüdtke explain. Verbio South Bend currently sells its CO2 to the beverage market. “From a commercial perspective, it’s a good location,” Sauter says. It’s an old plant, he adds, and the former owner would have needed to invest in the DDGS line to be competitive in the ethanol industry. “So, that is a good target for us because we don’t need a DDGS line.”In May 2024, construction began to convert the facility to Verbio’s biorefinery model and improve production. The technology additions include a total of 16 anerobic digestion tanks, process equipment for energy efficiency optimization, equipment for upgrading methane gas to pipeline-quality natural gas, 10 new buildings, updated IT operating systems and flares. Injection of RNG is expected to begin in 2026.Protecting the Planet&nbsp; The “why” behind Verbio’s innovative biorefinery model is simple, according to Sauter. It all boils down to finding a way to make the most energy possible in an environmentally responsible way. Coproducing RNG and ethanol has the benefit of removing the most energy intensive element of ethanol production: drying DDGS. Excluding the dryer helps lower the CI of the fuels by directing stillage into RNG production. “To have stillage with 90% water and 10% protein, cellulose to evaporate this water to make a product like DDGS takes a lot of energy and destroys your CI,” Sauter says. The top priority for Verbio has always been CI reduction, he explains. For that reason, the amount of natural gas needed to produce DDGS was a nonstarter.&nbsp;“It was already 20 years ago we made this decision,” Lüdtke says, adding Verbio’s management board discussed at length whether to produce DDGS or go with the riskier RNG solution. But the environmental advantages tipped the scales. &nbsp;Sauter entered the ethanol market from a different perspective. Even in the early 2000s, the European framework prioritized climate impact, followed by farmer support, then energy security. “With this approach, our focus was always CI,” he says. When the ethanol industry started booming in the U.S. during the same time, the top priority was energy security, then helping the Midwestern farmer, with environmental benefits as a lower priority, Sauter explains.&nbsp;Lower energy usage, as well as innovative carbon sequestration through humus, has the potential to contribute to a lower CI score, too. Currently, Verbio is gathering data to determine the carbon intensity of the Nevada facility’s fuel. The score that Verbio’s process has received under the EU’s model is at 10 to 12 grams of CO2 per megajoule. Although the model differs from GREET, Sauter expects that the U.S. CI score for the facility will be well below 50 kg per MMbtu.Not long after Verbio entered the U.S. market, the Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022. The legislation’s focus on decarbonization is a “home run” for Verbio, Sauter explains. “We came at the right time to the right location.” For Sauter, replacing 1.1 million barrels of fossil fuels each day with ethanol produced across the Midwest—including Verbio Nevada’s 60 million gallons, and soon, 90 million gallons from the South Bend plant—is a perfect solution.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Author: Katie Schroeder&nbsp; katie.schroeder@bbiinternational.com

2024-11-27 - Energy Escalation (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

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Germany-based Verbio overcomes challenges in applying its novel ethanol and RNG coproduction process in the U.S. 

Energy Escalation

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