Although it&rsquo;s too early to tell what the 2012 corn crop will look like, mycotoxin-contaminated corn is a recurring issue for ethanol producers.
Mycotoxins are produced by an organism of the fungus kingdom, according to information from the National Corn Growers Association. Fungi spores are found almost everywhere in small quantities, consuming organic matter in conditions where humidity and temperature are sufficient.&nbsp; Mycotoxin development occurs at temperatures from 86 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, 62 to 99 percent relative humidity and kernel moisture from 13 to 20 percent. Ethanol producers are well aware of what mycotoxins mean for the industry, including the fact that the ethanol production process concentrates the toxins in distillers grains by about three times the levels found in incoming corn.
Recent surveys of mycotoxin levels in corn and distillers grains show overall levels have been low in the 2011 corn crop, although there are some &ldquo;hot spots.&rdquo; Two separate surveys of DON (deoxynivalenol, also known as vomitoxin) and ZEA (zearalenone) levels in distillers grains, conducted in late 2011 and early 2012, showed Ohio was an area of concern for mycotoxin contamination in distillers grains.&nbsp; Another mycotoxin study in Iowa is part of a five-year cooperative agreement program through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. With the help of a $250,000 yearly grant, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship is recording toxin levels and other information in samples of corn as well as distillers grains and corn gluten, says Travis Knight, laboratory bureau chief for the state&rsquo;s ag department. The survey, which began in 2010, with the first full year in 2011, is recording the levels of four mycotoxins: aflatoxin, DON, ZEA and fumonisin. Although the projects may differ from state to state, Knight confirms that the FDA awarded grant money to multiple states.
Aflatoxin can be a big problem in the southern states. It does, however, occur in other climates, including Iowa. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s usually when there&rsquo;s some kind of insult to the corn crop, be it a hail storm, or wind damage, or drought stress that can allow some kind of injury that can allow these molds to start to grow,&rdquo; Knight says. Other mycotoxins, such as ZEA and DON, were a problem in 2009, a wet crop year in many areas. DON and ZEA contaminations start in the field during extended cool, wet and humid conditions in the weeks after corn silk emergence, says Pierce Paul, an Ohio State pathologist. The mycotoxins can also crop up during a wet harvest or in moist storage conditions. &ldquo;The biggest problems occur when all three of these conditions coincide, wet in field, harvest and storage conditions,&rdquo; he adds.
So which mycotoxins are of most concern? NCGA points to aflatoxin and fumonisin as the primary toxins affecting corn. As far as the Iowa ag department is concerned, aflatoxin is at the top of the list, partially because it&rsquo;s the most toxic, points out David McFarland, feed chemist. In fact, before it started on the recent survey of four mycotoxins, Iowa&rsquo;s ag department had focused solely on aflatoxin. When the five-year project is completed, the state and the FDA should have a better handle on the question of which toxin is of most concern, Knight says. Charles Hurburgh Jr. has an all-encompassing answer for ethanol producers. &ldquo;All [mycotoxins] are important,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;especially now with the Food Safety Modernization Act.&rdquo; Hurburgh is an Iowa State University professor in the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering department and a grain quality expert.
As part of the food and feed supply chain, food and feed safety laws apply to ethanol plants, just as they apply to feed mills or food processing plants. Beginning this year, every ethanol plant must register as a food facility and develop a food safety plan for preventative controls, as well as submit to FDA inspections, Hurburgh says. The law, which the FDA calls &ldquo;the most sweeping reform of our food safety laws in more than 70 years,&rdquo; went into effect Jan. 4. &ldquo;It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it,&rdquo; the FDA says on its website.&nbsp; Survey Points The results of two mycotoxin surveys were presented March 21 in Des Moines, Iowa, during a half-day meeting sponsored by Nutriquest. Mason City, Iowa-based Nutriquest and David Schmale of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University conducted a survey of ZEA and DON levels while Poet LLC did a similar survey on DON levels.
Both surveys pointed to a problem with DON in Ohio, said Ken Purser, general manager of Nutriquest. Looking at the survey results gathered by Nutriquest, Ohio had the highest concentration of DON in DDGS. In fact, there was one sample that contained 16.99 parts per million (ppm.) On average, however, the samples from Ohio contained more than 10 ppm, more than double the FDA advisory level maximum of 5 ppm for swine. &ldquo;These were samples taken from our customers as well as ethanol plants, so these DDG samples were actually in the feed industry,&rdquo; Purser said. The Poet survey showed samples taken in Ohio contained, on average, more than 12 ppm DON.
ZEA levels were also higher in Ohio, according to the Nutriquest survey. The samples collected in that state contained an average of more than 0.6 ppm ZEA. Purser recommended that DDGS fed to swine in Ohio be carefully monitored for high DON levels and potential ZEA contamination.
On the other hand, DON and ZEA contamination in DDGS samples in many other states were of less concern. Nutriquest&rsquo;s survey looked at a total of 141 samples from 83 ethanol plants from 12 states while Poet tested 193 samples of distillers grains from the Western Corn Belt plus Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. &ldquo;The DDGS from other states really appeared to be less affected,&rdquo; Purser said.
Nutriquest found Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois and Missouri all had DON levels of less than 2 ppm. Likewise, Poet&rsquo;s testing in the Western Corn Belt found about 1 ppm DON and little to no DON in Missouri. ZEA testing showed slightly less than 0.2 in Michigan and 0.1 or less ZEA in the remaining states on the list.
Why did Nutriquest conduct the survey? Although it&rsquo;s not something the company does routinely, the company is frequently asked about mycotoxin levels, Purser said, adding that it&rsquo;s probably the second most common question. The company decided to look at DON levels due to a lot of interest in that mycotoxin, as well as the fact that it was a problem during the 2009 crop year.
Ohio did have a mycotoxin problem last year, Paul confirms, however, it was localized and occurred in fields planted and harvested late under wet conditions. &ldquo;There is no reason to believe that Ohio is prone to having any greater mycotoxin problems than any other state,&rdquo; he clarifies. &ldquo;In any given year, these same set of conditions are equally likely to occur in any other state.&rdquo;
In Iowa, the mycotoxin survey under way by the state&rsquo;s ag department showed 2011 probably wasn&rsquo;t a big year for mycotoxins, Knight says. What they are finding, however, is that it&rsquo;s fairly common to find detectable levels of all four types of mycotoxins, especially in the ethanol coproduct samples. Part of the reason for that is the fact that the ELISA testing method used is very, very sensitive, he adds. The detection limits for aflatoxin were the most sensitive, at greater than 3 parts per billion (ppb) and the ZEA detection limit was at greater than 20 ppb. On the other end of the scale, DON and fumonisin detection limits were set at greater than 0.2 ppm.
While there weren&rsquo;t many corn samples that contained detectable limits of aflatoxin and ZEA, the majority of the corn samples contained detectable limits of DON and fumonisin. On the other hand, virtually every sample of both wet and dry distillers grains and corn gluten contained detectable limits of all four. The lowest level of incidence was for the ZEA found in wet distillers grains, which showed up in 17 of the 25 samples. Aflatoxin, DON and fumonisin showed up in every sample of wet gluten. In addition, DON was found in every sample of distillers grains and wet distillers grains. Still, there weren&rsquo;t very many samples that contained mycotoxin levels that were high enough to cause health problems to animals. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not finding anything that looks very alarming,&rdquo; Knight said. &ldquo;In general, there&rsquo;s not a problem with the amount of mycotoxins.&rdquo;
For this study, the ag department collected samples on farm, before the corn or coproducts were fed to animals. The goal was to have a more &ldquo;real world&rdquo; look at the product animals are actually consuming. &ldquo;Our numbers might be slightly higher than the numbers you would take if you were to sample [coproducts] directly from an ethanol plant,&rdquo; he says. Testing Inbound Corn Although mycotoxins are a concern, testing all the time, every time at ethanol production facilities just isn&rsquo;t practical, Hurburgh says. The 10 minutes it takes to complete beta tests and cost of the tests are two reasons for that. Instead, ethanol producers should step up testing as needed. &ldquo;I have suggested that in every season, the plants keep a running composite for the day and test those for a while in new crop, to see if there is a problem,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If not, then stop testing.&rdquo;
Early this year, Charm Sciences Inc. received approval from the USDA&rsquo;s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) for a new 5-minute test kit that detects DON in corn and other grains. That&rsquo;s half the time of previously approved test kits. The enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test utilizes rapid one-step assay (ROSA) technology and requires fewer steps, helping to prevent user errors, says Mark Tess, mycotoxin product manager for Charm Sciences. Unlike other testing methods that require a standard curve be run for each sample to calibrate the system, this test uses a lateral flow methanol that allows for single or batch testing using a calibrated reader. &ldquo;The ROSA FAST5 DON Quantitative Test has been manufactured to reduce the assay time and meet the new GIPSA specifications required to quantitate DON in the field.&rdquo; Tess says.
The new tests take advantage of high volume output with batching. In other words, the ROSA incubators can run four test strips at a time and multiple incubators can be used. Another benefit of the test is that it utilizes water for mycotoxin extraction, rather than ethanol or methanol used for extraction by other testing methods.
Testing time is a barrier for farmers, as well, confirmed Charles Ring, a Texas farmer and vice chair of the NCGA Mycotoxin Task Force. The task force met in April in Corpus Christi, Texas, and watched an on-farm demonstration of aflatoxin testing at his farm. &ldquo;It was interesting to find out what farmers thought after watching a standard test for mycotoxin,&rdquo; said Ring.&nbsp; &ldquo;The group expressed their surprise at the amount of time the test requires, about 15 minutes on average. To those outside of farming, this might not sound burdensome, but, during the busy season, it can add a difficult delay into already rushed schedules.&nbsp; While the test is certainly important, it is vital that we continue research on mycotoxin to improve the ways we both manage and test for it.&rdquo;
NCGA&rsquo;s Mycotoxin Task Force evaluates the problem, searches for solutions, compares testing procedures and analyzes available research on mycotoxins, Ring says. The group also works with the Aflatoxin Mitigation Center of Excellence, a coalition of southern land grant universities and producer organizations that pool funding sources to study the aflatoxin issue. &ldquo;We funded six proposals for 2012 with pool money of close to $400,000,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Unfortunately that was less than half of what was requested.&nbsp; New funding will be one of our goals.&rdquo;
The task force also follows the labeling of products such as Aflaguard and AF36, a biological control approved by the U.S. EPA for fighting aflatoxin spread in Texas, which it would like to see approved for use elsewhere.
Aflatoxin is a big problem for corn producers. Finding a solution could save millions in crop insurance money that is paid out almost every year in the southern states. &ldquo;The more northern states have less of a frequency problem, but even then an isolated case could cause alarm with our foreign buyers such as Japan,&rdquo; Ring says. &ldquo;Storage problems and long distances will make the problem worse.&rdquo;
Author: Holly Jessen Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine (701) 738-4946 hjessen@bbiinternational.com

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 A healthy appearing ear of corn, like this one, may still contain above the threshold levels of mycotoxins, while a moldy ear of corn could possibly contain less mycotoxins than might be assumed.

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One method of spot checking for mycotoxin contamination uses ultraviolet light.

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Corn in regular light is compared to corn in ultraviolet light. 

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Whether ethanol producers need to worry about toxic levels in distillers grains depends upon Mother Nature

Mycotoxins: A Pain in the Ear

At a time when ethanol&rsquo;s high-octane rating is touted as its most valuable asset, a situation in South Dakota shows a lower-octane gasoline scenario could also emerge. In March, officials at South Dakota&rsquo;s Office of Weights and Measures began receiving calls from members of the state&rsquo;s petroleum industry, warning that cheaper 85 octane gasoline had been making its way from the higher elevations in the western part of the state, where it has been historically sold, and into areas where the minimum octane rating is 87. South Dakota, like other states, requires octane labeling, and there was concern that the subgrade 85 octane was being marketed as 87 octane to unsuspecting customers. David Pfahler, director of the weights and measures office, dispatched inspectors who quickly confirmed that some of the stations suspected of selling 85 octane were not labeling the fuel as such. Word of the inquiry spread quickly among the fuel suppliers, however, and within the first few hours of the inspection blitz, Pfahler says officials began encountering hastily applied 85 octane labels on pumps at stations where the fuel was being dispensed, a last-minute attempt to ward off potential fines. As a result, the state identified just 29 stations of mislabeling 85 octane fuel as 87 or even 89 octane. By mid-May, the situation remained under investigation and inspectors were continuing to conduct fuel label compliance checks, but charges had not yet been filed against any retailer or supplier. Fines for mislabeling fuel, however, are relatively small, punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a $500 fine, or both. Why 85 Octane? The use of 85 octane gasoline dates back to carbureted vehicles manufactured before 1984. Engine knock was known to occur in that type of engine due to a number of factors, with altitude being one of the most significant. The American Society for Testing and Materials identified regions, primarily in the Rocky Mountains, where lower octane gasoline performed as well in those engines as 87 octane at sea level, and to this day, 85 octane is sold in those regions, despite the fact that vehicles now use computer-controlled systems unaffected by high altitudes. Western South Dakota receives its gasoline from suppliers in neighboring mountain states, so 85 octane has served as the region&rsquo;s regular unleaded gasoline for decades. The legality of the octane level was never made an issue, but the state&rsquo;s regulations actually prohibit the sale of 85 octane fuel throughout the state. Suppliers were notified of the regulatory discrepancy after 85 octane use was discovered in eastern South Dakota this spring, but rather than comply, they told the state that 85 octane is the only gasoline provided by area suppliers, so if 87 octane is required, the western region of the state would face gas shortages.
Caught in a difficult situation, the state agreed to allow 85 octane gasoline to continue being sold, if properly labeled. Then, in a surprising move, the state said it would propose to legalize 85 octane throughout the entire state. As of May 17, an official rulemaking had not yet been proposed, but it was anticipated that the state would soon issue an emergency rule to legalize 85 octane temporarily statewide before moving forward with the traditional rulemaking process. Lower Octane&rsquo;s Impact on Ethanol While perhaps not immediately recognizable, the South Dakota situation bears significant potential consequences for the ethanol industry. No vehicles are currently approved for use with fuel containing an octane level below 87, and because the 85 octane fuel being used in South Dakota is being blended with ethanol, there is concern that ethanol will take the blame for vehicle damage actually caused by lower octane gasoline. &ldquo;We think people will have problems with it and when they do we&rsquo;re reasonably certain, from what we&rsquo;ve seen elsewhere in the country, that it&rsquo;ll be blamed on ethanol,&rdquo; says Ron Lamberty, senior vice president at the American Coalition for Ethanol, the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based ethanol industry group. Additionally, because lower octane gasoline can be produced more cheaply, if 85 octane is officially allowed into the eastern part of South Dakota, refiners in neighboring Minnesota may feel pressured to lower octane ratings, beginning a domino effect of refiners reducing octane rating. &ldquo;Eventually you create a system where refiners have decided to do something that makes them more money and forced the government to accept it,&rdquo; Lamberty says. &ldquo;That can&rsquo;t happen. That&rsquo;s why there are standards in the first place.&rdquo;
Perhaps most important in the long run is the potential for octane itself to decrease in value. Ethanol&rsquo;s 113 octane rating makes it a desirable octane booster in gasoline-ethanol blends, but if low-octane fuels begin to become acceptable in the marketplace, despite automaker warnings and environmental concerns, ethanol&rsquo;s high-octane rating won&rsquo;t carry as much value. To be fair, refiners would probably continue blending ethanol to bring the lower octane base fuels up to whatever the newest minimum is, but a regulatory decision to lessen octane&rsquo;s importance would be a blow to future market possibilities for high-octane fuels. Ford On Board Increasing fuel economy standards for vehicles will require auto manufacturers to design smaller, more efficient engines that continue to satisfy the consumer&rsquo;s desire for power. Some automakers have already begun introducing these types of engines into the market, the most well-known being General Motors Co.&rsquo;s Ecotec engine and Ford Motor Co.&rsquo;s Ecoboost engine. High-octane fuels have been shown to be the most effective fuel for these types of engines, and some experts have suggested that higher octane gasoline could be beneficial in existing engines as well. Ford researchers noted in a March article in the scientific journal Fuel, that while more research is needed to quantify and optimize the costs and benefits, &ldquo;substantial societal benefits&rdquo; may be realized by capitalizing on ethanol&rsquo;s high-octane rating.
In the paper, titled &ldquo;High octane number ethanol-gasoline blends: Quantifying the potential benefits in the United States,&rdquo; the Ford researchers, led by Jim Anderson, examine the critical role octane rating plays in the design, operation, efficiency and emissions of spark-ignited engines. The researchers state that higher minimum octane ratings would enable higher compression ratios in future vehicles, improving efficiency, and benefit all spark-ignited engines and hybrid vehicles. &ldquo;Incorporating ethanol with its inherent high-octane rating is one opportunity to enable an increase in the minimum octane rating for regular-grade fuel,&rdquo; they said.
Anderson and his colleagues point out that despite increasing blending of ethanol into the nation&rsquo;s gasoline, the octane ratings of regular gasoline have remained unchanged for 40 years. The researchers attribute this lack of octane increase to petroleum companies modifying their base fuels to take full advantage of ethanol&rsquo;s octane at a 10 percent blend. In the paper, Anderson&rsquo;s group says that even if ethanol content is increased, the oil industry can be expected to continue to reduce the octane ratings of its blend stocks so that the final product meets minimum octane requirements, unless government policies raise the minimum octane rating. And, because automakers design the vast majority of their vehicles to operate on the minimum octane rating, the opportunity to increase vehicle efficiencies through the use of higher octane gasoline is limited. &ldquo;If vehicle manufacturers knew with certainty that the minimum octane rating of fuel would increase at a known future date and remain at these levels, it would be possible to provide future engines that are designed with higher [compression ratios] and operate with correspondingly higher thermal efficiencies, which could also provide the potential for engine downsizing and turbocharging to further improve fuel economy,&rdquo; the researchers said.
Interestingly, the researchers note that the &ldquo;logical first step&rdquo; towards improving the nation&rsquo;s octane rating would be to eliminate the use of 85 octane fuel in high altitude regions and establish a nationwide minimum octane rating. &ldquo;This relatively simple change would affect a very small fraction of fuel produced, but would have an immediate efficiency benefit for vehicles using such fuel in those areas of the country, and would allow more efficient future use of nearly all fuel used by the [light-duty vehicle] fleet in the U.S.,&rdquo; the researchers wrote.
Anderson and other Ford researchers also contributed to a paper recently published by global automotive engineering association SAE International that details research funded by ICM Inc. and conducted by AVL Powertrain Engineering Inc. to examine several aspects of increased ethanol blends as related to vehicle fuel systems.
The paper, titled &ldquo;Effect of Heat of Vaporization, Chemical Octane, and Sensitivity on Knock Limit for Ethanol-Gasoline Blends,&rdquo; was co-authored by experts at AVL, Ford, BP Products North America Inc., Deere &amp; Co., and Steve Vander Griend, head of research and development of ethanol engines at ICM. AVL researchers tested a number of ethanol blends during the study, ranging from E0 to E98, and found that when ethanol content is increased, the knock-limited performance and the thermal efficiency of engines significantly increases, particularly in turbocharged direct-injection engines. Vander Griend says the most exciting part of the study is that it demonstrates ethanol&rsquo;s full value as a fuel. &ldquo;There is value beyond E10 by simply adding ethanol,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When you give more octane via ethanol, you increase the range of efficiency.&rdquo; Auto manufacturers still need to determine what their ideal octane rating will be before the ethanol industry can begin targeting a specific blending ratio, but based on current and previous research data, Vander Griend says he believes E30 could be &ldquo;a great starting point&rdquo; because it offers the increased cooling effect desired for fuel efficient engines and a research octane number, or RON, of about 100. The Ford researchers stop short of identifying an optimal ethanol blend in their paper, but note that large increases in octane could be possible by blending 10 to 20 percent more ethanol into the 10 percent ethanol blends currently on the market.
Not surprisingly, the petroleum industry has yet to express a willingness to increase the U.S. minimum octane level. &ldquo;We feel the three levels of octane currently available serve the customer best,&rdquo; says Bob Greco, downstream director for the American Petroleum Institute. He admits that refiners have adjusted their blend stocks to produce gasoline that meets minimum octane requirements when blended with ethanol. Ethanol&rsquo;s high-octane rating is its most desirable property to blenders, he says, but he declined to discuss the financial benefits for refiners who take full advantage of ethanol&rsquo;s high-octane by using lower-cost blend stocks, stating that the costs vary on a refinery-by-refinery basis.
According to Greco, consumers have the option of purchasing higher-octane fuels so there is no need to increase the minimum. But Anderson and his fellow researchers pointed out in their paper that as long as fuel with a high ethanol content and/or high octane number is classified as a premium grade gasoline, manufacturers will not optimize their vehicles to use the niche fuel. &ldquo;Ideally, for a maximum societal benefit and to ensure a successful transition, the minimum octane ratings of all U.S. gasoline should be increased, rather than positioning the high ethanol content/high octane number fuel as a premium grade,&rdquo; the researchers say in the paper.
ACE&rsquo;s Lamberty also believes the future of the ethanol industry will focus greatly on its octane rating and the benefits of high-octane fuel. Ethanol is currently the cheapest, cleanest, highest-octane fuel available, and Lamberty says producers who were focused primarily on expanding and improving production just a few years ago will be paying more attention to increasing the value of their fuel now that the industry has matured. And if value is the focus, octane will be the subject of interest. &ldquo;Anything we can do to maximize ethanol&rsquo;s position as an octane product rather than just as an extending product is where we&rsquo;ve got to move that product eventually,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Overall, the volume of gasoline or gasoline replacements being sold is not going to go up, so other than just making gallons, the next thing we have to establish as an industry is our value as octane.&rdquo;
Author: Kris Bevill Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine (701) 540-6846 kbevill@bbiinternational.com

Ford Motor Co.â€™s 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine is designed to offer fuel efficiency without detracting from the vehicleâ€™s performance.

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In Europe, Ford Motor Co. plans to more than triple its annual production of vehicles equipped with fuel-efficient EcoBoost engines, cranking out more than 1.3 million EcoBoost engines for vehicles from 2012 to 2015.

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Minimum octane rating decisions could greatly impact ethanol's future market opportunities

Octane: What's in Your Fuel?

Stainless steels are the materials of choice for numerous applications in ethanol plants and have an excellent track record. They offer excellent corrosion resistance, good strength and high ductility and toughness. Stainless steels are easily maintained and give an attractive, hygienic, high-tech appearance. The 100 percent recyclability of stainless steel supports the biofuels industry&rsquo;s long term sustainability concepts and goals.
An increasing number of ethanol process engineering companies specify stainless steel for equipment. Companies are aware that construction, handling and fabrication costs can frequently be lower when stainless steels are used, compared to much heavier carbon steels.&nbsp;
There is sometimes still a perception that stainless steels are expensive materials, and that they should be confined to more corrosive applications. The many advantages of stainless steels, however, allow them to be used cost effectively. This has been demonstrated extensively and successfully in ethanol plants in all main producing regions. As the industry grows and develops, this trend becomes clearer. This does not mean that stainless steels are economically justified in every application. Nevertheless, ethanol plants will increasingly be looking for reliable operation, low-maintenance cost and long-lasting service, which stainless steels provide. &nbsp; General Process Conditions Ethanol production processes are moderately corrosive, with pH ranging from 5.8 to 2 (slightly to moderately acidic) in most parts of the production process. Temperatures are often relatively low, with a few exceptions where they will reach 115 degrees Celsius (240 degrees Fahrenheit). Standard austenitic stainless steels are therefore widely used and recognized as cost-effective and reliable materials solutions.
We estimate that close to 90 percent of stainless steel used in existing ethanol plants is accounted for by Type 304 (UNS S30400) or its low-carbon version, 304L (S30403) stainless steel. The L grade is preferable where welding will be done. These popular stainless steel grades often meet the required corrosion resistance and are readily available in all required product forms all over the world.
Sometimes 316L (S31603) stainless steel will be specified where the operating conditions in the ethanol production process are more corrosive due to higher temperatures and/or&nbsp; the presence of acids, cleaning agents or higher levels of chloride from feedstocks. In addition, there can be selected applications for specialty stainless steel grades and even for nickel alloys.
There are some differences between the stainless steel requirements for dry milling and wet milling. In dry milling, the stainless steel used is primarily Type 304(L).&nbsp; In the milling section of the wet milling process, Type 316(L) stainless will be specified for equipment as the corn will be steeped in a more corrosive solution, containing sulfur dioxide (SO2) and lactic acid.
There is a similar scenario regarding materials used for evaporators and dryers. In a dry milling ethanol plant, this equipment will typically be made from Type 304(L). The same equipment used in wet milling plants preferably will be made of Type 316(L) stainless steel, which offers improved corrosion resistance. Cellulosic Pretreatment Needs The pretreatment phase of cellulosic ethanol process designs can be considerably more corrosive than the rest of the production process. This is particularly the case in plants using acid hydrolysis, where the biomass is treated with diluted sulfuric acid at high temperatures up to 240 C and under high pressure. With such a highly corrosive operating environment, nickel alloys such as Alloy C276 (UNS N10276) and other C-type nickel alloys must be used. The concentrated acid hydrolysis process, using higher sulfuric acid concentrations but much lower temperatures, is somewhat less corrosive.
Many pretreatment process technologies designed for enzymatic hydrolysis break down the crystalline structure of the lignocellulose to remove the lignin and liberate the cellulose and hemicellulose molecules. Depending on the biomass feedstock, physical or chemical methods will be used.&nbsp; Some of the most cost-effective technologies may involve a combination of an acid pretreatment stage and enzymatic hydrolysis. Various stainless steel grades and nickel alloys have been tested and used for the pretreatment production equipment in both pilot and commercial plants. These include Types 316(L) and 316Ti (S31653) and specialty stainless grades, such as 904L (N08904), duplex 2205 (S32205) and super duplex grades such as 2507 (S32750). Super-austenitic 6 percent molybdenum alloys have been tested and used. Trademarked names for these grades include 254SMO and AL-6XN.
Thermochemical technologies can also be used for biomass pretreatment processing. Specialized high temperature alloys may be required for equipment used in the related operating environments. Stainless Steel in Brazil Stainless steels are also increasingly used in the integrated sugar/ethanol plants in Brazil. Carbon steels are more commonly used in the sugar plants, while the distilleries typically use stainless steel. The use of carbon steel in sugar plants causes frequent wear and corrosion issues, which many plants have resolved by switching to stainless steels.&nbsp;
Where sugarcane is fed on a conveyor to be transported to a crushing mill, carbon steel suffers severe erosion and wear. Donnelly chutes are often made from Type 304(L) or S20400. A 12 percent Cr stainless steel (S41003), called 410D in Brazil, has sometimes been used because it has improved erosion and abrasion resistance over carbon steel and lower cost than the higher alloyed stainless steel grades.
For several other areas in sugar plants where corrosion is more severe, Type 304(L) will be used. In South America, ferritic stainless steel Type S43932 (a modified 439 type) and 444 (S44400) are commonly available, especially in thinner sheet thicknesses, and therefore are often used.
Types 304L, S43932 and/or 444 stainless steels are suitable for most applications in a sugar mill, such as in the cane juice extraction process (ducts, diffuser top), steam generation process, cane juice treatment and evaporation process, and in the sugar milling. Types 444 and S43932 are not recommended for the sulphitation (addition of SO2) stage of the process, where columns require 316(L) stainless. The distillation columns are also typically made of either Type 304(L) or 316(L) stainless steel. Piping Systems Ethanol plants require substantial amounts of pipe, tubes and fittings&mdash;of which 75 percent is estimated to be stainless steel, and Type 304(L) accounts for the vast majority. In the U.S., some 80 to 90 percent of the pipe used is ASTM A 778 as-welded pipe, with ASTM A 774 as-welded fittings, also in Type 304(L). Ethanol plants in Canada have opted for a higher quality of product, using ASTM A 312 (welded and annealed) in Type 304(L) but also Type 316(L) where required. The Types 304(L) and 316(L) fittings used in Canada are specified to ASTM A 403 Class WP, similarly welded and annealed.
Other systems in ethanol plants require stainless steel as well. Heat exchangers require Type 316(L) stainless tubes. Tubing for evaporators can be both type 304(L) and 316(L). Brazil&rsquo;s sugar cane ethanol industry also uses Types 444 and S43932 for evaporator tubing. In Europe, Type 304(L) is commonly used and at times Type S43932 will also be suitable. The cleaning systems and chemicals used, which may contain strong chemicals, will impact material choices for evaporators.
The power washing, cleaning-in-place (CIP) systems to clean fermentation tanks use caustic soda with an acid rinse and evaporators require regular cleaning due to scale build up. Stainless steels are used within CIP systems, with Type 316(L) used in heat exchangers and in the associated piping systems. Various components within the sulfuric acid skid systems typically use N08020 (Alloy 20). Other Applications The numerous mixers in ethanol plants are mostly made from Type 304(L) stainless steel but also Type 316(L) or Alloy 20. It is expected that the usage of the Type 316(L) alloy will increase when commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plants will be built.
Decanter centrifuges are mostly made from Type 316(L), but also from Type 317L (S31703) and 2205 duplex. The numerous processing pumps at ethanol plants are made from cast Type 316 (ACI CF8M) or Type 316L (CF3M) stainless steel, but increasingly also from duplex cast alloys, such as ASTM 890 Grade 1B (CD4MCuN), 3A (CD6MN) or 4A (CD-3MN).
Leading pump manufacturers indicate that some 60 to 70 percent of pumps supplied to ethanol plants are made of Type 316(L) and 30 to 40 percent of one of the duplex alloys. As duplex alloys are more erosion-corrosion resistant, performing well where solid particles are present, there has been a clear increase in their use in the past five years.
Ethanol plants also contain stainless steel valves, filters, regulators, quills, thermo-compressors, steam ejectors, screens and various other parts and components, mainly from Types 304(L) and 316(L). Alloy 20 is also used in sulfuric acid environments. Applications for Type 304(L) stainless can also be found in equipment used to control air pollutants and odor emissions and for food-grade ethanol applications. Some of the new high-strength, lean-duplex grades such as S32101 will be suitable for the very large tanks that use heavier plate.&nbsp;
As new processes are commercialized, stainless steel usage will only increase. Properly chosen and fabricated, stainless steels will be the material of choice for generations to come.
Author: Kristina Osterman Consultant to the Nickel Institute (905) 727-4615 kristina.osterman@miyainternational.com
&nbsp;
The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ethanol Producer Magazine or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).

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Commercial-scale cooking reactor by Andritz Ltd designed for a lignocellulosic ethanol facility.

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Different grades available for different applications


Stainless Steels: Cost-effective Materials

&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mess with the RFS&rdquo; was the mantra of several speakers at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo, including Tom Buis and Jim Collins. &ldquo;[The renewable fuel standard] was a visionary piece of legislation and it really put the U.S. on the map as a world leader in biofuel production,&rdquo; said Collins. Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, gave opening remarks the morning of June 6 at the conference in Minneapolis, followed by a keynote presentation by Collins, president of DuPont Industrial Biosciences.
The RFS is likely safe from appeal in an election year, Buis said, but efforts to repeal it are brewing. &ldquo;If we roll the RFS back we will pick winners and losers and the winner is oil,&rdquo; he said, adding that it will halt the progress of advanced biofuels as well. Buis urged every person in attendance to get involved immediately. &ldquo;Write a letter to every congressman and senator in your area,&rdquo; he said, adding that there are plans to create a large coalition in support of the RFS.&nbsp;
Collins seconded Buis, adding that the industry must stay on track with a unified and consistent message. Besides writing letters, Collins urged attendees to talk to their neighbors about the positives of ethanol. Employees working in the ethanol industry need to hear the story, too. &ldquo;Fire them up as well, get them involved,&rdquo; he said.
Cellulosic ethanol is finally becoming a reality, with companies building commercial-scale facilities. DuPont has operated a pilot plant in Vonore, Tenn., for the past two years and is now building a 28 MMgy corn stover cellulosic ethanol plant adjacent to Lincolnway Energy LLC, a corn-ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa. The location was chosen partially due to a good supply of corn, access to rail and existing infrastructure. Being next to a well-run plant was also a draw. &ldquo;We chose to work with Lincolnway so we can build on each other&rsquo;s strengths,&rdquo; he said.
DuPont is in good company, Collins said, mentioning BP, Abengoa Bioenergy and Poet-DSM Advanced Biofuels as three others working on major commercial-scale plants. Altogether, the facilities will produce about 100 MMgy cellulosic ethanol and create more than 500 direct jobs. &ldquo;All of these numbers start to tell a story,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen, that story is, commercial development of cellulosic ethanol is a reality. It&rsquo;s here today.&rdquo;&nbsp; &mdash;Holly Jessen

Jim Collins, president of DuPont Industrial Biosciences, described the progress made in the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol by several major developers in his remarks at the FEW.

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Protecting the RFS is critically important 

Cellulosic Ethanol Here Today

For the 12th year, two members of the ethanol industry were honored with awards at the 2012 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo.
Larry Johnson of LLJ Consulting and Business Development received the High Octane award, given to individuals that have helped the ethanol industry grow. Gerald Shurson, a University of Minnesota professor who was traveling in Japan during FEW, was selected as the winner of the Award of Excellence, given to those that have made significant technical contributions.
Johnson served as Minnesota&rsquo;s Ethanol Answer Man for 10 years, working to educate consumers, manufacturers and mechanics about ethanol. He helped get legislation passed in 1986 for a 20-cent-per-gallon incentive on the first 15 million gallons of ethanol produced. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the key piece of legislation that got the Minnesota industry started,&rdquo; he said.
In 1998, Shurson, a professor in the U of M&rsquo;s department of animal science, was asked to meet with a group of general managers from Minnesota ethanol plants and a marketing company. Wanting to expand beyond the cattle industry, they sought to learn why swine producers or animal nutritionists weren&rsquo;t willing to use DDGS in swine diets. A voluntary 10-cent-per-ton checkoff program was established and the funds were used to conduct the first experiments on whether the coproduct was a suitable feed for swine, he said. That led to other groups funding similar research, which led to a large body of research on the use of DDGS in swine production. Shurson also developed and manages a U of M website about DDGS, which he calls a one-stop shop for research-based information. The website helps him manage his time, he said, as he is often &ldquo;bombarded by emails and phone calls&rdquo; about DDGS. Scholarship Winners In addition, two students were named as the winners of the 2012 Kathy Bryan Memorial Scholarship, each receiving a $2,000 scholarship. Jason Croat of Rushmore, Minn., has worked as an intern on the fermentation research team for Poet Research and is working on a double major in biotechnology and microbiology at South Dakota State University. Lamberton, Minn., resident Hillary Kletscher, the daughter of the CEO of Highwater Ethanol LLC, is a student at Iowa State University majoring in biological systems engineering with a biorenewables emphasis.&nbsp; &mdash;Holly Jessen

Larry Johnson, right, received the High Octane award at the 2012 FEW, in recognition of his long service in promoting ethanol. The award was presented by his longtime friend, Mike Bryan, chairman of BBI International.  

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Ethanol Answer Man, DDGS researcher honored 

2012 FEW Awards

Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen covered a wide range of topics during his keynote address to the 2,200 attendees at the FEW, but as the &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Mess with the RFS&rdquo; button prominently displayed on his lapel indicated, the renewable fuel standard and the need for ethanol producers to combat the efforts of Big Oil to unravel the policy were the core of his message.
&ldquo;We will not be misled, nor will we allow the American people to be misled by their misinformation,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We are going to come together, we are going to defend the RFS [renewable fuel standard], we are going to ensure that this industry continues to grow and evolve because of the innovation that you will show at the plant and because of the passion that we will bring to Washington, D.C., to remind them of the importance of this industry, the importance of the RFS and the importance of the continued evolution of this industry.
Expanding the domestic market for ethanol is crucial to meeting the escalating biofuels volumes mandated under the RFS. The U.S. EPA&rsquo;s approval for E15 to be used in vehicles manufactured in 2001 and later could provide some market expansion opportunities, but the regulatory steps required to introduce the fuel to the market have notably delayed that process. Dinneen told attendees he expects the final regulatory issues to be resolved within days, but warned that the oil industry will &ldquo;do everything possible&rdquo; to shut E15 out of the fuel supply. Anticipating misinformation campaigns similar to those historically lobbied against ethanol&rsquo;s impact on vehicle operations, he said, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be up to all of us to explain to people how E15 can&rsquo;t hurt your radiator and how one fill-up can&rsquo;t hurt your fuel pump. Brace yourselves. It will be brutal. We are going to have to be vigilant for when this occurs.&rdquo;
The oil industry has more political strength than ever before, according to Dinneen, and therefore the ethanol industry must also be proactive in reminding lawmakers of the benefits ethanol provides in lowering gas prices and reducing oil imports. He drew applause from the audience when he called for a &ldquo;war-to-wheels analysis&rdquo; of oil production as a comparison with the seed-to-wheels analysis of ethanol suggested by some members of Congress.
The oil industry is threatened by cellulosic ethanol&rsquo;s looming commercialization, Dinneen added, and believes it must thwart biofuels expansion plans before cellulosic biofuels become readily available. According to Dinneen, cellulosic ethanol is likely to be commercialized in the U.S. within two years. &ldquo;The oil industry then has a two-year window with which to try to stop this program, before we can demonstrate the success of the RFS.&rdquo; &mdash;Kris Bevill

Dinneen tells ethanol industry to expect brutal RFS fight

Brace for  the Fight

First, I want to say thanks to everyone who attended, contributed to and sponsored the 2012 Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Minneapolis: more than 2,200 attendees, nearly 300 exhibitors and more than 90 percent of ethanol producers represented. It was indeed a wonderful event and one that demonstrated the vitality of the ethanol industry.
As many of you may know, I live in Australia, and from time to time like to update folks on the biofuels industry here and how things are progressing because not only does Australia provide a potential market for American technology, but the whole of the South Pacific does as well.
Australia is mineral rich and has a huge export mining business of coal, uranium, iron ore, natural gas and other commodities. The economy of Australia is one of the best in the world, but the focus has not been on renewable energy. Interestingly, with all of the mineral resources that Australia has, it is very dependent on imported oil. In fact, the refining industry in Australia is in grave danger of totally closing down because it simply cannot compete with the huge refining capacity in places like Singapore and other Southeast Asian refineries. If this happens, Australia will be forced to import 100 percent of its refined fuel, putting it in a potentially perilous liquid fuel position.
Currently, the state of New South Wales has a mandate in place for ethanol and biodiesel. The requirement is that 6 percent of all fuel contain ethanol and 2 percent of all diesel be comprised of biodiesel. The mandate has run into a bit of trouble, however, in that concerns have been raised about performance and compatibility with the existing automobile fleet (all totally nonsense). In spite of the opposition, the current premiere of NSW, Barry O&rsquo;Farrell is pressing forward with the mandate with some potential modifications.&nbsp;
Queensland, the largest state in Australia, has a mandate approved by parliament, but has yet to implement it. There has been a very recent change in government in QLD and the new party in power is reviewing the matter and is expected to make a decision soon. There are several pending ethanol and biodiesel projects that are waiting for a decision on the matter. While other states either have or are considering such legislation, to date NSW and QLD are the only two of the seven states and territories that have adopted a mandate.
The South Pacific islands have tremendous potential for biodiesel and ethanol. There are literally several thousand inhabited islands in the South Pacific that depend on clean water, wastewater treatment, power for their homes and light industry. Not to be flippant, but you can&rsquo;t simply run an extension cord from the mainland to these islands. Therefore, many of them depend on diesel power to operate their wastewater treatment system, desalinization units, and to power their homes. It is an especially unique opportunity for the biodiesel industry, since many of these islands have ample supplies of feedstocks to facilitate a small biodiesel plant and the available indigenous labor to run the plant.
To sum it up: it&rsquo;s a big world and a world that is growing increasingly hungry for clean, domestically produced energy. The opportunities abound for those who can think outside the borders of the U.S. and venture out into a global market. It takes planning, coordination, investment, establishing contacts and liaisons, but the rewards can be substantial. While the U.S. market may be somewhat constrained, the global energy market has its arms wide open.
That&rsquo;s the way I see it.
Author: Mike Bryan Chairman, BBI International mbryan@bbiinternational.com

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The Global Energy Market Welcomes US

Another International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo has come and gone. With 90 percent of the nation&rsquo;s ethanol production capacity represented in Minneapolis and 300-some exhibitors, the FEW was truly an industry event.&nbsp; It is a great opportunity to visit with industry product and service providers, learn about the latest innovations and get updates on industry issues at the educational sessions. A heartfelt thank you to all the speakers who take the time to hone an informative presentation into a tight time slot.
Because EPM&rsquo;s print date immediately followed FEW this year, our event coverage of it in this issue is focused on the general sessions. The reflections of four ethanol top managers&mdash; Mark Marquis, Marquis Energy Inc., Ray Defenbaugh, Big River Resources, Randy Doyal, Al-Corn Clean Fuels and Walt Wendland, Golden Grain Energy&mdash;were of great interest. The ethanol industry is at a crossroads. The blenders credit is gone. The blendwall has arrived, the result being price-depressing monthly ethanol stock numbers. It&rsquo;s not an easy time for the ethanol industry, but these ethanol veterans have seen tough times before. We will continue to cover these issues as they evolve, plus look for more coverage of the companies and innovations showcased at FEW in the months ahead.
The nice thing about this year&rsquo;s FEW occurring early in June is that it puts the busiest days at Ethanol Producer Magazine and BBI International behind us early in the summer, making for a longer summer. Let&rsquo;s hope the weather holds out and helps deliver that forecast record corn crop (even a near record would be acceptable). Abundant corn was the impetus for starting the ethanol industry decades ago, and abundant corn is needed now to keep prices stable for farmers, feeders and ethanol producers.
Susanne Retka Schill, Editor sretkaschill@bbiinternational.com

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FEW: A True  Industry Event

Fugitive dust and dust explosions have been a hot topic since the early 20th century as evidenced by the 1922 publishing of National Fire Protection Association&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dust Explosions.&rdquo; The authors, David J. Price and Harold H. Brown, acknowledge the need for a vacuum that could withstand the rigors of an industrial environment recognizing that, despite every precaution to capture dust at the source, small amounts of it &ldquo;will get out into the atmosphere of the mill and gather on floors, walls and ledges.&rdquo;
The authors knew then, as it still stands today, &ldquo;if there is no accumulation of dust and the plant is perfectly clean, the explosion cannot propagate and the plant will not be destroyed.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Primary dust explosions occur when combustible dust is present, forms a dust cloud (in sufficient amounts), in an enclosed environment, with an ignition source and oxygen.
Bill Stevenson, vice president of engineering at Cv Technology Inc. and NFPA 654 committee member, says, &ldquo;the explosion is caused by the rapid pressure rise as a result of the rapid burning of the dust cloud.&nbsp; So it has to be in an enclosure.&nbsp; If it were outside you&rsquo;d just have a big flash.&rdquo; Cv Technology is a Florida-based corporation dedicated to the prevention, protection and mitigation of industrial dust explosions and related fires.
Stevenson further explains that if there were a layer of combustible dust on a desk, &ldquo;you could get it to burn by putting a flame to it, but it wouldn&rsquo;t explode.&nbsp; If you took the torch away, it would smolder and most would self-extinguish; but, if you take the same dust, throw it in the air and then light it on fire, it would literally blow up in your face,&rdquo; he says.
Catastrophic secondary explosions occur when the force from the primary explosion dislodges fugitive dust, producing more dust clouds, and creating a domino type effect that can cause further explosions.&nbsp; So if you took that same dust smoldering on the desk and waved a piece of paper to make the particles airborne, a dust cloud could form and explode.
According to &ldquo;U.S. Industrial and Manufacturing Property Structure Fires,&rdquo; an NFPA fact sheet, &ldquo; fire departments responded to an estimated average of 10,500 structure fires in industrial and manufacturing properties per year in 2003-2006,&rdquo; averaging 29 fires per day in the industrial sector.&nbsp; Controlling the Explosion Pentagon The explosion pentagon includes the three elements of the fire triangle, fuel (combustible dust), ignition source (heat) and an oxidizer (air), but needs two additional elements, dispersion of dust particles in sufficient quantity and concentration and the confinement of the dust cloud in a vessel or building.&nbsp;
If one of the elements is missing, an explosion cannot occur.&nbsp; Although every precaution is taken to eliminate ignition sources to prevent fires, and dust collection equipment designed to safely contain most of the dust in the plant is present, producers must make housekeeping for fugitive dust equally important. Fugitive dust can potentially become a dust cloud that fuels an explosion.&nbsp;
Industrial vacuum cleaners to control fugitive combustible dust should be suitable for use in Class II Div 2 areas&mdash;generally areas where accumulations of combustible dust are present such as milling, drying and screening areas, as well as in and around conveyors and where spillage occurs. &ldquo;Vacuum cleaners in particular are vulnerable to ignition and that is why there are only a few companies that do it right,&rdquo; says Stevenson.&nbsp; &ldquo;They take extraordinary care to make sure there is no chance for the product to come into contact with anything ignitable.&rdquo;
Vac-u-Max, a pioneer in industrial vacuum cleaning and pneumatic conveying since 1954, makes a line of combustible dust vacuums that are redundantly grounded.&nbsp; Any time there is powder flowing in one direction through a plastic vacuum-cleaning hose it can create a significant static electric charge. In addition, there is the possibility that there may be static electricity build-up on individual dust particles. If a charged, ungrounded hose used to vacuum combustible dust powder were to contact an object that was grounded, the static electricity could arc and trigger a violent explosion. This is why the Occupationational Safety and Health Administration&nbsp; has issued numerous citations for using standard vacuum cleaners where Class II Div 2 equipment is required. The Right Tool for Combustible Dust Bill Bobbitt of Bobit Associates Environmental Systems, who&rsquo;s been working in the clean air industry for over 25 years, says, &ldquo;I always tell my clients, it is not a matter of if, but when.&nbsp; Conditions have to be perfect and that &lsquo;when&rsquo; can be 30 years from now, or it could be next week.&nbsp; But if you eliminate the fugitive dust, it cannot create a secondary dust explosion,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Employing an industrial vacuum cleaner that is redundantly grounded in five different ways, &ldquo;eliminates the possibility of any kind of explosion from the vacuum,&rdquo; says Bobbitt. Although Vac-u-Max does make electric vacuums designed for Class II Div 2 environments, the most economical solution for cleaning combustible fugitive dust is its air-operated vacuums.
Beyond the fact that air operated vacuums use no electricity and have no moving parts, the first of the five ways that Vac-u-Max vacuums are grounded begins with the air line that supplies the compressed air to the units.&nbsp; Because most plants have compressed air lines made from iron that conducts electricity, the company&rsquo;s air operated vacuums use static- conductive, high-pressure compressed air lines. In addition, static conductive hoses, filters and casters are employed to further reduce risk.&nbsp; A grounding lug and strap that travels from the vacuum head down to the 55-gallon drum, eliminates the potential for arcing. &nbsp; Unclear Regulations Fugitive dust &ldquo;is a moving target that changes depending on the nature of the process and how well plants manage keeping the dust contained,&rdquo; says Stevenson.&nbsp; Most NFPA guidelines for combustible dust state that a layer of dust the thickness of a paperclip is enough to cause a significant secondary explosion.&nbsp; The problem, he says, &ldquo;is that it doesn&rsquo;t account for the different Kst values between different dusts. [Kst is used to classify dusts according to their explosivity&mdash;the rate of pressure rise of a dust in the test vessel upon being ignited.] Some are more reactive than others. Some are more easily suspended into a cloud. Some tests found that depending on the type of dust, even half of the thickness of a paper clip would be too much.&rdquo;
In situations where many different dusts are handled, testing all of them can be prohibitively expensive.&nbsp; For instance, in a high- performance rubber plant where several different products are manufactured within the same plant, the dust in each area of the plant may have different Kst values in each area. For this circumstance, it is recommended to work with an expert in the field to select samples for test that represent the worst case.&nbsp;
This is why, Bobbitt says, that when you are dealing with explosive dust, you may need a Class II Div 2 vacuum in a non-Class II Div 2 area. &ldquo;You might have explosive dust small quantities, and it might take a very hot and prolonged source of ignition, but with the new combustible dust initiative, facilities need to be very careful that they comply because there is a lot of question as to what compliance means.&rdquo;&nbsp;
&ldquo;Although the regulations for combustible dust aren&rsquo;t real clear,&rdquo; Bobbitt adds, &ldquo;I find that a lot of companies are simply just trying to get better at general housecleaning.&rdquo;
Cv Technology&rsquo;s Stevenson agrees.&nbsp; &ldquo;The one thing you can do very simply and easily is to keep everything clean&mdash;it is as simple as that.&nbsp; If you clean the place up and protect your dust collectors, you&rsquo;ve gone a long way toward minimizing the chance for an explosion even if you do nothing else; and those are pretty straightforward, easy things that everyone can do,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; Author: Doan Pendleton Vice President, Sales and Marketing,&nbsp; Vac-u-Max (973) 759-4600 info@vac-u-max.com
&nbsp;
The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ethanol Producer Magazine or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).

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Industrial vacuums help prevent secondary explosions

Protecting Ethanol Plants from Catastrophic Combustible Dust Explosions

If you&rsquo;ve never heard of Blair, Neb., no worries&mdash;if you know anything about ethanol, someday you will. Just ask Kris Ronnei, a chemical operator who lives in Omaha, 30 minutes south of Blair, about his place of employment and why he makes that drive to work every day. When people ask Ronnei what he does, or who he works for, he says, Novozymes in Blair. &ldquo;Most folks ask what that is,&rdquo; he says. After he tells them what enzymes do for ethanol, he goes into a different story, telling them how &ldquo;someday very soon, with the use of our enzymes, people could theoretically make ethanol fuel out of any plant material, yard waste, tree branch, grass clippings or corn stalk. That usually gets their attention.&rdquo;
But for the folks who already know about the promise of cellulosic ethanol, there&rsquo;s more to the story of Blair. Speak to Mark Young, another chemical operator who makes the drive from Omaha to Blair every day, or Fred Reikowsky, who after living in North Carolina for 15 years, moved to Blair to manage the facility. Both of them could tell you what the largest, newly operating enzyme production facility in North America has already done. A Home for Enzymes Soon, the enzymes used in many of today&rsquo;s ethanol facilities, and in future fermentation-based advanced biofuel projects, will come from the new facility on the Blair Biorefinery Campus, says Reikowsky. He is the general manager of the $200 million Novozymes facility built next to Cargill&rsquo;s Natureworks LLP facility and another facility operated by Evonik.&nbsp; The Novozymes&rsquo; facility has already held its grand opening, and just begun producing enzymes.
The plant will employ the production system used at Novozyme&rsquo;s other facilities. Much simplified, the path of an enzyme made at Blair looks like this: First, microorganisms are genetically engineered in a lab. They are then isolated and grown through submerged fermentation in a rich broth of nutrients (corn starch, sugars or soy grits) and a lot of oxygen at a large scale. As the organisms grow, they produce enzymes, which are filtered out, tweaked and shipped. &ldquo;Operational parameters like temperature, pH, feed rate, oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide formation are measured and carefully controlled to optimize the fermentation process,&rdquo; says Reikowsky about the process that allows Novozymes to produce at a large scale to meet demand. Although the enzyme production process can utilize both batch and continuous fermentation, the most important piece of technology used is the strain of microorganism, he says. The Blair facility&rsquo;s main focus is, and will be, on pumping out the most efficient enzyme on the market, and there won&rsquo;t be much work on the research side of enzymes. That will be for other facilities, he adds, using the 14 percent of annual revenue the company sets aside each year to improve the entire process.
Making enzymes in Nebraska isn&rsquo;t just about fermentation and super bugs in the new facility. It&rsquo;s also about Nebraska. On the east edge of Blair is the Missouri River. Reikowsky and his development team were able to utilize the river to bring in the huge equipment needed for the facility. The company enhanced an existing port to offload that equipment, and brought in other supplies by rail and truck during the three years it took to build the facility.
Before the Danish-based company even decided to build in Blair, however, Reikowsky says a number of places and factors were considered, including the possibility of a strong partnership with city and state governments, the distance to raw materials, energy costs, the distance from customers and an educated and highly-trained local workforce.
Paula Hazlewood, executive director for the Gateway Development Corp., a part of the Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership, became educated about enzymes when she began working with members of Novozymes to attract them to Nebraska. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned that [the enzyme and ethanol industries] can be volatile at times,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ve also learned that these companies truly care.&rdquo;
By caring, Hazlewood doesn&rsquo;t just mean Novozymes commitment to the surrounding community or the environment; she also means the company&rsquo;s ability to run a successful facility by providing customers with product in a timely manner. &ldquo;We were close to losing the Novozymes project to Iowa,&rdquo; she says, but after all of the work that included site, infrastructure, labor and tax incentive information, she says she just learned that an old saying still applies. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned,&rdquo; she says of her experience, &ldquo;to never take &lsquo;No.&rsquo; for an answer.&rdquo; Partnering in Training A community college in Omaha stepped up to fill the need for a highly trained local workforce to land the new plant. The Metropolitan Community College provides career and technical degrees, one of which is based on ethanol&mdash;only at MCC it&rsquo;s a little different. &ldquo;We went a little bit broader,&rdquo; Bill Owen, associate vice president of academic affairs, says of the program his team created. &ldquo;We call our program a process operations technology program,&rdquo; he explains. Give credit to Owen for identifying a need for a broader view of what the ethanol industry in his region requires. But don&rsquo;t give it all to Owen, Novozymes deserves some credit as well. Before MCC began the process operations technology program&mdash;a curriculum that includes courses on the basics like stationary engineering (boilers and pressure vessels) and applied physics, in addition to the more specific topics like instrumentation and control&mdash;they hashed out the curriculum with the Danish enzyme company. &ldquo;We started from before we had any bricks and mortar, before we had any equipment,&rdquo; Owen says of the partnership. &ldquo;We had the college and the industry sitting down together and making the decisions, not only as to what this program should ultimately be about, but how it was going to come to be.&rdquo;
That discussion led to a newly remodeled and user-friendly campus building paid for by Novozymes, and staffed by MCC. More importantly, after only one year of operation, the program has two groups in the program, one of which is already employed at the Blair Biorefinery Campus. &ldquo;We are trying to fill the pipeline with generally skilled individuals who can be the future workforce in these industries,&rdquo; Owen says of the program&rsquo;s early success. The school has already spent over $200,000 on software and other equipment that allows the students to move beyond pencil and paper and actually witness how a tweak to pressure here, or a change to power there, affects the outcome of a process technology, that not coincidentally, could be used in an enzyme manufacturing plant.
Owens says the newly trained students will be ready to unite technology and agriculture. Novozymes wants the students to understand and touch and feel the sorts of things they want them to be working with as part of their education. But, what they say again and again,&rdquo; Owens says, &ldquo;is that we have to have someone who doesn&rsquo;t just react to A plus B equals C, but instead can think about A and B and all of the possibilities it might equal.&rdquo;
As the community college works to fill the pipeline with newly trained workers, the small town of Blair, population 8,000, prepares to welcome them. Take Mark Young, a chemical operator at the facility. Young&rsquo;s wife works in Omaha, but someday, he hopes to move to Blair. He&rsquo;s been to China and North Carolina because of his role with the company, and in a time when the word &ldquo;job&rdquo; is more important than words like &ldquo;time,&rdquo; or &ldquo;place,&rdquo; this is the best part about Young&rsquo;s take on the facility in Blair. &ldquo;The challenge for me,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;has been trying to be involved in everything that is going on around here.&rdquo;
Ronnei, the chemical operator telling folks in Omaha about his work in Blair, also dreams of moving to Blair someday (he bought his house in 2005 during the boom and doesn&rsquo;t want to take a hit by moving quite yet). He is also an example of an employee enamored with the change happening in Blair because of Novozymes. Before 2011, Ronnei had no experience in a production plant setting, but now he&rsquo;s starting to get it, he says, and so is the rest of the community. &ldquo;Everything is so big, busy and exciting, all at the same time,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It took a bit for me to get used to it all. There is always something to do, and so many new things to learn, it was easy to get overwhelmed,&rdquo; he says of his early time at the plant.
Sarah West mixes food for organisms at the plant that are used in the biofuels industry. She&rsquo;s also a chemical operator and from Omaha, and like Ronnei, was overwhelmed by the intricate, multistep process it takes to produce a single enzyme. She&rsquo;s getting it now, however, she says, and she might speak for everyone in the community when she talks about the effect the facility is having on the community. As the enzyme facility grows, she says, so will the town. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Author: Luke Geiver Associate Editor, Biomass Power &amp; Thermal (701) 738-4944 lgeiver@bbiinternational.com

Novozymes held the grand opening May 30 for its new enzyme manufacturing facility located in Blair, Neb. 

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In anticipation of cellulosic ethanol production adding to the existing demand from corn-ethanol plants, Novozymes has built an enzyme plant in Blair, Neb.

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Nebraska town grows enzymes and community 

Stepping Up to a New Facility

Up to three years ago, there was substantial excitement in the U.S. for the use of sweet sorghum as an alternative feedstock for fuel ethanol production. The noted advantages of sweet sorghum were, and continue to be, the drivers for touting its benefits: 1) yield potential and composition, 2) water-use efficiency and drought tolerance, 3) established production systems and, 4) the potential for genetic improvement using both traditional and genomic approaches. Public and private entities continue to perform research to maximize sugar content, increase or diminish its grain production capacity and increase production yields. A typical composition of sweet sorghum is shown in the accompanying table.
Even with these positive attributes, the use of sweet sorghum in the U.S. has been slow to develop. Some of the impediments to its commercialization are the same ones facing all new technologies. Even though sweet sorghum harvesting and processing is similar to sugarcane, it is considered a &ldquo;new&rdquo; technology by many. That&rsquo;s because it&rsquo;s never been produced in large commercial scale in the U.S.&nbsp; To produce the crop in large scale, several issues need to be addressed which are important but not insurmountable. Agronomic Best Practices Optimal growth of sweet sorghum for fuel ethanol production depends on numerous growing conditions and considerations. Since sweet sorghum hybrids produce both grain and sugars, harvesting must be timed appropriately to maximize the sugar yields that can be obtained. Optimum sugars are attained just prior to physiological maturity of the grain. Plant density is also important. Densities that are too high will result in thin stalks and reduced juice and sugar yields. Weed control is also of concern, so appropriate herbicides should be used.
Continuous cropping of sorghum will result in systematic reductions in biomass yields over years. Therefore, it is critical that any sweet sorghum production system include a crop rotation system that maximizes land use and maintains the productivity of all crops. As with any large agricultural operation, diseases and insects can be a problem. Field trials can be performed to determine which chemicals or insecticides are most beneficial for growth.&nbsp; Rotation of crops not only provides soil benefits but it also mitigates damage from insects and diseases.
Sweet sorghum has reportedly been a good rotational crop for soybean and cotton. Sugar beets (energy beets) are also an ideal feedstock for ethanol production. Recent trials by international seed company Betaseed using new varieties indicate that energy beets can be grown in the Southeast. Sugar beets could be a possible rotation crop providing a second complementary feedstock. Plant modifications and additional unit operations would be required, however, for multifeedstock processing. A pilot program proving the integration of sweet sorghum and sugar beets was completed by the company BioDimensions Delta BioRenewables LLC of Tennessee in 2010.&nbsp; That year the company produced and sold nearly 100,000 pounds of sugar juice at up to 14.8 brix (One degree brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of liquid solution). It also tested harvesting and extracting beets produced in a 20-acre field trial. Plans are to plant 960 acres of sweet sorghum by 2016&mdash;still considered a small effort by commercial standards. Economic Requirements Questions were initially asked about the economic viability of sweet sorghum ethanol facilities. Several studies that we have performed, which include power-production units, have shown these projects can be economically viable, as have other studies. Small sweet sorghum trials in the U.S. have been performed mostly by universities and a few private sector organizations and seed companies. A large cultivation effort is required, however, for any significantly sized ethanol plant. For a large plant to be financed, the lender needs to be assured that the feedstock will be available at a price that makes the plant economically viable. Similarly, the growers need to have assurance that there will be a physical plant in place to accept the crop once they harvest it. As a result, you have the obvious chicken and egg scenario faced by many of the second- and third-generation biofuels technologies.
One approach used by various groups is to involve farmer cooperatives, such as the Delta Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Producers LLC in Lake Village, Ark. Other scenarios address the issue of feedstock availability by growing sweet sorghum as a complementary crop to existing sugarcane operations. One such group is Highlands Envirofuels LLC in Riverview, Fla., near Tampa. The company is on its way to constructing a 30 MMgy sugarcane and sweet sorghum ethanol facility. The planned groundbreaking for the facility is mid-2012. Similarly, the Louisiana Green Fuels Group in Lacassine, La., has used its sugarcane processing facilities and infrastructure for processing sweet sorghum syrup for ethanol production. Since sweet sorghum can be harvested within 120 days of planting, its growth can be staggered with the harvesting of sugarcane, either before or after sugarcane harvesting, thereby extending the yearly ethanol production operations.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Internationally, sweet sorghum projects are proceeding slowly. The most active countries have strong biofuels programs including Brazil and the Philippines. As in the U.S., projects are still in precommercial scale, usually incorporating sweet sorghum into existing sugarcane operations. In some cases, the projects are performed in conjunction with agriculture departments in universities and the private sector. Sugarcane harvest last year was lower than expected in Brazil. The lower harvest numbers stimulated the use of sweet sorghum to make up some of the difference. Monsanto and Ceres deployed their sweet sorghum varieties in the country in last year, however some of these plantings were affected by drought.&nbsp; Monsanto expected to sell enough sweet sorghum for about 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) in Brazil this year. That&rsquo;s enough to produce about 80 million liters per year of ethanol (21.1 million gallons).&nbsp; The company is working with 20 sugarcane mills.
Various projects continue to be developed in the Philippines. Recently, San Carlos Bioenergy Inc., a sugar and ethanol production company in the city of San Carlos, announced that it will be incorporating sweet sorghum syrup as a supplement for ethanol production. Supported by the Philippine National Oil Co.&rsquo;s Alternative Fuels Corp., a pilot trial of 1,000 hectares is planned for conversion to syrup. The trial plantation would supply feedstock for 2.5 million liters annually and the bagasse will be consumed by the onsite biomass power facility.&nbsp;
In San Mariano, Philippines, Isabela Green Future Innovation Inc. will use sweet sorghum as complementary feedstock when it begins running a primarily sugarcane-based plant in the first half this year. Green Future Innovation Inc. is a joint venture between Itochu Corp. of Japan, JGC Corp.-Japan, Philippine Bioethanol and Energy Investment Corp. and Taiwanese holding firm GCO. The Isabela plant has a production capacity of 52,840 gallons of bioethanol per day. A total planting of 400 hectares of sweet sorghum is planned by June this year.
Although efforts to commercialize sweet sorghum are slowly developing, opportunities to integrate this crop&rsquo;s unique qualities into the nation&rsquo;s and the world&rsquo;s biofuels industry are real. As efforts to integrate sweet sorghum into new and existing processes continue, establishment of large commercial plantations will require investment capital from well-informed investors, experienced agricultural specialists and diligent planning.&nbsp;&nbsp; Author:&nbsp; Rafael A. Nieves, PhD Managing Director, BBI Consulting Services (303) 895-8180 rnieves@bbiinternational.com
&nbsp;
The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ethanol Producer Magazine or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).

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The author, left, and his colleague Mark Yancy visit a sweet sorghum test plot.

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Obstacles to scaling up production are surmountable 


Sweet Sorghum, Other Sugar Crops Show Promise

What would life be like for the biofuels industry without the renewable fuel standard (RFS)? Would there be a domestic market for even a small portion of the billions of gallons of ethanol produced each year in the U.S., or would producers be forced to export all of their product? Or worse, would they have to shutter plants for good? Would consumer gas prices skyrocket? Would refiners openly celebrate the revival of petroleum&rsquo;s unchallenged grip on the U.S. transportation fuels market, or would they struggle to meet domestic demand and turn back to foreign supplies for help?
The RFS was created in 2005 to establish regulations ensuring that transportation fuel sold in the U.S. would contain a certain amount of renewable fuels. Congress modified that policy in 2007 to increase the minimum volume of renewable fuels to be blended into the supply and to set new categories, and related volume requirements, of renewable fuel sources. The basic goals of the policy are to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reduce the demand for imported petroleum, and expand the domestic renewable fuels sector. By most accounts, the RFS has already overwhelmingly succeeded in these goals and will continue to do so as biofuels volume mandates continue to increase through 2022. But petroleum groups, disgruntled with the notion of having to share an already shrinking gasoline market with biofuels producers, are ramping up their efforts to do away with the RFS, filing a lawsuit against the U.S. EPA to challenge its RFS mandates for cellulosic biofuels volumes and threatening consumer price hikes as the consequence of implied forced noncompliance as biofuels volume requirements grow in coming years. &ldquo;The RFS is a critical issue for our industry and is growing in importance as we get closer to the blendwall,&rdquo; says Bob Greco, downstream and industry operations director for the American Petroleum Institute. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re starting to find that it&rsquo;s becoming increasingly unworkable and unrealistic in its current form.&rdquo; Cellulosic Biofuels Regarding the &ldquo;unrealistic&rdquo; aspect of the RFS, API has zeroed in on the cellulosic biofuels portion of the mandate. EPA was given the authority to waive or reduce portions of the RFS if the predetermined annual volume is deemed unachievable, and it has done precisely that for the first few years of the cellulosic biofuels category&rsquo;s existence. This greatly reduced the amount of cellulosic biofuels obligated parties are required to blend, or purchase replacement credits for, in the event that actual gallons are not available. In 2012, for example, the mandated volume for cellulosic biofuels set by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 would have been 250 million gallons, but the EPA reduced that number to just 8.65 million gallons to reflect much lower anticipated actual volume from qualifying biofuels producers. Still, API says that number is too high. It believes the agency is exercising improper use of its authority by setting an unattainable level that will ultimately require refiners to pay for cellulosic credits when no actual fuel is available. &ldquo;Since we have zero gallons of those cellulosic biofuels commercially available, we don&rsquo;t understand how the EPA could actually raise the 2012 mandate to a higher level when we have yet to see any fuel,&rdquo; Greco says. &ldquo;It becomes a fairness and equity issue and whether EPA is arbitrarily setting a standard without any basis in reality.&rdquo;
Refiners would prefer that cellulosic volume requirements be based on several months of proven production. They have proposed this alternative repeatedly, but the EPA has said it believes it necessary to be optimistic when setting standards for cellulosic biofuels in order to encourage investment in the new industry. Supporters of cellulosic biofuels expansion have pointed out that the fees paid by refiners to purchase cellulosic credits has been minimal compared to the profits generated by those companies each year, but Greco says fines aren&rsquo;t the issue. &ldquo;The issue at hand is whether EPA is fully utilizing its existing authority to adjust the biofuel mandate to what it should be: recognizing available production,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Right now, it seems to be based on press releases and promises.&rdquo;
The lawsuit filed by API to challenge EPA&rsquo;s regulatory authority over RFS volumes was still in the very early stages in mid-May and no briefing schedule had been set, but the court did agree to allow six biofuel industry groups to intervene on behalf of the EPA and defend its implementation of RFS requirements. Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, says the EPA has demonstrated the flexibility of the RFS in reducing cellulosic biofuels mandates and he believes cellulosic biofuels producers will soon be able to meet production goals. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all disappointed that cellulosic hasn&rsquo;t come on as rapidly as anybody anticipated, but no one anticipated the economic collapse in 2008 either, and it is that situation and the devastating impact that it had on the financial sector that made it so difficult to secure funding for new projects like cellulosic ethanol,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s beginning to turn around.&rdquo; Advanced Biofuels API indicated in legal documents that it may also address possible Clean Air Act violations made by the EPA in failing to decrease the 2 billion gallon advanced biofuel volume requirement or the overall 15.2 billion gallon renewable fuel volume for the 2012 RFS. Concerns related to the advanced biofuel mandate were somewhat substantiated by a recent Hart Energy report, which found that a lack of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol supply could make it difficult for obligated parties to meet advanced biofuel requirements as early as this year. Sugarcane ethanol is deemed by the EPA to meet the 50 percent GHG emissions reduction required to qualify as &ldquo;advanced&rdquo; and has therefore supplied a significant portion of the advanced biofuels volume until recently. If Brazilian ethanol is not available, obligated parties will need to turn to more expensive advanced biofuels such as biodiesel or renewable diesel, but the availability of those fuels is also limited and Hart Energy analysts predict that there simply will not be enough to satisfy RFS mandates. Some ethanol advocates have suggested that improved production techniques should qualify at least some of the nation&rsquo;s corn ethanol supply as &ldquo;advanced,&rdquo; but Dinneen says the scientific community has yet to reach a consensus on the issue and it would be premature to request that type of policy change at this time. &ldquo;We are not in favor of changing the RFS right now,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We think it&rsquo;s a risky political strategy.&rdquo; Over time, corn ethanol could meet the 50 percent reduction in carbon, he says, but the chances of convincing Congress to modify the RFS to allow corn ethanol into the advanced biofuels category will be better after more evidence is amassed.
Meanwhile, API is doing what it can to convince legislators to downgrade RFS requirements, or eliminate the policy completely. Greco says he believes pressure is growing in Congress to act in response to the various issues brought up by the petroleum groups, including cellulosic biofuels production, the blendwall and invalid renewable identification numbers in the biodiesel industry. Dinneen expressed confidence that no action will be taken this year. However, it&rsquo;s up in the air what will happen when a new Congress enters Washington, D.C., next year. &ldquo;Certainly there will be legislative activity,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The long arm of Big Oil is going to make sure there is a constant drumbeat of negative attention on the RFS. Our job is to make sure there is a constant response so that members of Congress and the public understand the real benefits of the RFS.&rdquo; E15 Implementation It&rsquo;s true that demand for gasoline is diminishing as consumers drive more fuel efficient vehicles and travel fewer miles. This shrinking gasoline pool brings the E10 blendwall ever closer and refiners say it will soon be very difficult to comply with total renewable fuel volume requirements because the market is already nearly saturated with E10. This situation makes the introduction and expansion of E15 &ldquo;critically important&rdquo; to the continued success of the RFS, according to Dinneen, who says increased market opportunities for various renewable fuels and ethanol blends, including E85, will be needed to meet future RFS mandates. But the petroleum industry would rather not have E15 as an option and is awaiting a decision in a lawsuit it filed against the EPA based on its belief that the EPA&rsquo;s decision on E15 was premature and could potentially damage millions of consumer vehicles. Besides, Greco says, even if E15 were compatible with all vehicles, 50 percent of the current retail infrastructure cannot be used with E15. API predicts that E15 implementation would at best delay the blendwall by two years. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t get to the underlying problem of these large mandated volumes of ethanol that we will be unable to blend into fuels,&rdquo; he says. Efficiency Standards By 2017, the RFS as it currently stands will require 24 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into the nation&rsquo;s transportation fuel. President Barack Obama&rsquo;s administration has also proposed continuing to increase fuel economy standards for vehicles that, if approved, will require passenger cars to achieve 40 miles per gallon in 2017. Greco admits the combination &ldquo;raises challenges&rdquo; with regard to oversupplies of gasoline and excessive refining capacity in the U.S., but he suggests that the petroleum industry is not trying to push ethanol out of the market. &ldquo;Ethanol has a number of desirable blending properties, octane being first and foremost,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Regardless of whether or not there&rsquo;s a mandate, ethanol has a use and a place in the gasoline pool.&rdquo; He concedes, however, that the RFS is certainly the driving force behind the volumes of ethanol currently being used.
If the RFS is reducing the market share for refiners, then it&rsquo;s just more evidence that the policy is working as intended, Dinneen says. &ldquo;The desperate need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to generate domestic renewable energy resources, is as critical today as it was in 2005 when the RFS was passed,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When the RFS was first enacted we were 60 percent dependent on foreign oil. As a direct consequence of the RFS, we are now only 45 percent dependent. The RFS has been a huge success. Big Oil doesn&rsquo;t like it. Big deal.&rdquo;
Author: Kris Bevill Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine (701) 540-6846 kbevill@bbiinternational.com

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Cellulosic biofuels, the blendwall, E15 and future fuel economy standards become weapons in the grudge match between Big Oil and ethanol

The Battle for the RFS

The results of a Google search of the words ethanol and water use are varied and interesting. Some of the information is up-to-date and lays out the industry&rsquo;s dramatic reduction in water use in the past 10 years, to an industry average of less than 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced. Other articles contained dated and downright sensationalized information, pigeonholing the ethanol industry as a water guzzler.
That&rsquo;s simply not the case, says Nandakishore Rajagopalan, associate director for applied research at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. While a few groups have either looked into building or have built an ethanol plant in a poorly chosen site where water is in short supply, the majority are located in places where there is enough water to go around. Just one negative story can paint the whole industry in a bad light, however, and that&rsquo;s often what sticks in people&rsquo;s minds.&nbsp; &ldquo;They are worried that an ethanol plant will suck out all the water and leave them high and dry,&rdquo; he says, adding that the truth is there are other industries that use much more water than the ethanol industry.
How much water the industry uses depends on whether the source is looking at water consumption or total water footprint, which examines the full life cycle, starting with the water (including rainfall) required to grow the crop. According to Water Footprint Network, from which the U.S. Geological Survey takes some of its water use statistics, the global average water footprint of corn is 1,222 liters of water per kilogram of corn. On the ethanol side, it estimates a global water footprint for corn ethanol at 2,854 liters of water per liter of ethanol produced&mdash;a number that is vastly larger than the water consumption figure cited by the ethanol industry. To keep that in perspective, however, the global average water footprint of beef is 15,400 liters per kilogram and the global average water footprint of chocolate is about 17,000 liters per kilogram.
Ethanol&rsquo;s opponents have really blown the industry&rsquo;s water use out of proportion, says Rick Schwarck, chairmen, president and CEO of Absolute Energy LLC, a 115 MMgy ethanol plant in St. Ansgar, Iowa. The water use of ethanol plants operating in northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota is what he calls a &ldquo;flea on the back of an elephant.&rdquo; Absolute Energy is located in Mitchell County, which has had 13 floods and not one drought in the past 10 years. &ldquo;Worrying about ethanol water usage here is like someone in Phoenix, Ariz., worrying about not getting enough sunshine in July for a good tan,&rdquo; he says.
Schwarck points to information from the National Weather Service, USGS and Colorado State University to back up his data. For one thing, water consumed by crops such as corn doesn&rsquo;t just disappear into thin air. It becomes part of the water cycle, which USGS refers to as evapotranspiration. This is basically the combination of water evaporation and transpiration from plant leaves. About 10 percent of the moisture in the atmosphere comes from transpiration with nearly 90 percent provided by bodies of water on the earth, the USGS says on its website. Water Conservation Winners It&rsquo;s one thing to point out that the ethanol industry is not, in fact, the water guzzler that some have portrayed it, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean the industry isn&rsquo;t actively working to conserve water either. Like many other ethanol production facilities, Absolute Energy has taken steps to reduce the amount of water used in its ethanol production process. The company has employed advanced water recycling technologies, including a proprietary technology in the company&rsquo;s CO2 scrubber and others, Schwarck says.
According to a 2010 report completed by Steffen Mueller of the University of Illinois at Chicago, on average, a dry mill corn-ethanol plant used 2.72 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol in 2008. It also revealed that ethanol production facilities discharged an average of 0.46 gallons of water. &ldquo;Our survey showed that ethanol plants have been very successful in reducing their water consumption,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The survey also indicated that many plants had plans to reduce their consumption even further.&rdquo; Those are the most recent figures available and there are no specific plans to update them at this time. Currently under consideration, though, is a best-practices book to showcase all the energy and water efficiency measures ethanol plants have put into place since 2008, Mueller says.
Industry giant Poet LLC has made significant strides in achieving a 22 percent reduction in water use&mdash;or a total of 1 billion gallons&mdash;at all its facilities by 2014. The company, which operates 27 ethanol plants in seven states, announced the Ingreenuity initiative in March 2010, which is aiming for an average of 2.33 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced. Poet is saving water at its plants primarily by installing its proprietary Total Water Recovery process, which recycles cooling water rather than discharging it. &ldquo;We believe that water is a precious natural resource and we are committed to using as little of it as possible in our ethanol production process,&rdquo; says Nathan Schock, director of public affairs and corporate social responsibility at Poet.
As of May, 18 Poet ethanol plants were operating with Total Water Recovery and installation was under way at a 19th plant. &ldquo;Poet plants have cut their cumulative water rate by about 770 million gallons per year, which is ahead of the pace necessary to achieve our goal,&rdquo; he tells EPM. The company is closing in on its goal to install the system at all its ethanol plants, with two possible exceptions. The Poet Research Center located in Scotland, S.D., may not have the water recovery system installed because of its smaller size of 11 MMgy, Schock says. The other one is the 73 MMgy plant in Corning, S.D., which reclaims water from a wastewater treatment plant that won&rsquo;t work in Poet&rsquo;s water recovery process.
In addition to reducing water use at its ethanol production facilities, Poet is working to survey corn producers that deliver corn to its plants to see how much of that corn is irrigated. &ldquo;Our initial findings suggest that all of the plants are located in areas with little or no irrigation and that only a small percentage of the corn that we grind comes from irrigated acres,&rdquo; Schock says.
In Illinois, Rajagopalan conducted a water conservation study at Illinois River Energy LLC, a 110 MMgy plant in Rochelle.&nbsp; It concluded that, using easily implemented methods, the ethanol plant studied could reduce its water use by 6.5 percent to 12 percent. A more dramatic total water-use savings of 25 percent could be achieved with more innovative methods and, in some cases, regulatory changes would be required, Rajagopalan says.
The study identified opportunities to increase water-utilization efficiencies, including minimizing cooling tower waste to potentially reduce water use by up to 11 MMgy water and increasing reverse osmosis (RO) efficiency for an estimated 5 to 17.5 MMgy in water savings. Finally, it was found that there was another 4 MMgy in potential water savings if the ethanol plant reused its filter backwash water. Rajagopalan found that although current practices were to dump all backwash water into the sewer system, some of that water was clean enough to reuse within the plant. &ldquo;If you actually look at the water quality at different time points, you would find, maybe the first few minutes, the water quality is really bad but after that it does look pretty good,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;You are just wasting water at that point.&rdquo;
Illinois River Energy has implemented several of Rajagopalan&rsquo;s report recommendations and is considering others. &ldquo;One of the ones we implemented right from the beginning was looking at our cooling towers and trying to optimize the cost on those,&rdquo; says David Files, process engineer. By increasing the amount of RO-treated water vented to the cooling tower, the company was able to save money on chemical use, such as bleach and sulfuric acid. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re aiming for a good mixture of RO water and city water,&rdquo; Files says. &ldquo;We use about 50/50.&rdquo;
Using too much city water in the cooling tower means increased ions and minerals, which cause fouled pipes and plating on heat exchanger plates, meaning lost efficiency, says Neal Jakel, general manager of the ethanol plant. The goal is maximizing the amount of times water can cycle though the cooling tower loop. Increasing the amount of RO water used to 50 percent has reduced the amount of blowdown, or water discharged from the cooling tower.
That change was &ldquo;low hanging fruit,&rdquo; Files says, easy to implement immediately with a quick payback in savings of both water and chemical costs. And, there are other ethanol plants out there that could easily do this. In order to evaluate it, plants just need to do a cost-benefit analysis to discover what point gives the best return on investment.
Illinois River Energy is also working on optimizing heat reclamation. Although the project has taken more time to implement, it has had a very good cost return, Files says. By expanding the use of heat exchangers, the company has been able to recover and reuse heat while also reducing the use of cooling towers, which ultimately saves both chemicals and water. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of a cascading cycle,&rdquo; he says. Gray Water to the Rescue One of the more difficult to implement recommendations from Rajagopalan&rsquo;s report was using wastewater from nearby municipalities that would typically get discharged. The idea is not new. Tharaldson Ethanol LLC, a 153 MMgy ethanol plant in Casselton, N.D., has been using treated wastewater pumped in from Fargo, N.D., since the plant was built. The $15.3 million project included building a wastewater treatment plant and installing 26 miles of underground pipelines. About 15 percent of the water used at the ethanol plant is piped back to Fargo as gray water, where it is retreated to drinking water standards.
The former Levelland Hockley County Ethanol LLC ethanol plant, renamed Diamond Ethanol LLC after being purchased at auction by Palmer Energy in mid-May, began utilizing city wastewater for its water needs when the 40 MMgy plant began operations four years ago, Rick Osburn, city manager, tells EPM. The company went bankrupt and put the Levelland, Texas, plant in cold idle in December 2010 but is expected to be restarted by its new owners, a company formed by Conestoga Energy Partners LLC. Although the city has an adequate supply of water, it wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;comfortable&rdquo; selling the ethanol plant city drinking water, considering the plant would need up to 10 MMgy of water monthly at full capacity, Osburn says. Instead, about $70,000 in grant money was used to build a 3-mile pipeline so the ethanol plant could utilize city wastewater. The ethanol plant paid for the needed water filtration system, plus it purchases a small amount of city water for things like drinking and eye wash stations on a separate meter and water system, he says.
Using city gray water is a good way to conserve water, Jakel says, adding that it&rsquo;s something the Illinois River Energy is currently investigating. There are two major roadblocks, however. The first is that the majority of ethanol plants are located in rural areas with their own on-site wells. Not many ethanol plants &ldquo;have the luxury&rdquo; of being co-located next to a city that could supply them with both freshwater and gray water. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s probably only a handful, probably only less than 20 or 25 max,&rdquo; he says.
Cost is also a big factor. Unlike the plants in North Dakota and Texas, both located in areas where getting access to water would have been challenging or impossible, Illinois River Energy has access to plenty of low-cost water. A gray water project would require an additional treatment facility and a 3- or 4-mile pipeline to be built under a major highway, a river and railroad tracks. Such a multimillion dollar project is hard to justify when the $40,000 currently paid monthly for water is considered. &ldquo;We need to have a driver here,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;like some sort of tax incentive or grant to help augment the investment.&rdquo;
On the plus side, the treated water could be used for both fermentation and cooling towers. That would add up to a significant amount of well water displacement, considering that nearly 65 percent of the plant&rsquo;s water use is for cooling tower water. There are some additional boxes to check, including looking at the possible impact to the plant&rsquo;s permit for the vapors released from the cooling tower, as well as coming up with a cost estimate. &ldquo;By the end of this year we hope to have a final decision,&rdquo; Jakel says, adding that the company is hoping for public/private cooperation to make the project happen.
Corn-ethanol plants aren&rsquo;t the only ones that could use treated effluent water to reduce the amount of water consumed. Currently, Rajagopalan and other researchers are working on a study that shows it is feasible to reduce the water consumption of cellulosic ethanol production with the use of treated effluent water and other water-saving methods. Cellulosic ethanol production is expected to use 6 to 10 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced. &ldquo;There is even more interest in seeing if we can conserve water in those operations,&rdquo; Rajagopalan says. Author: Holly Jessen Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine (701) 738-4946 hjessen@bbiinternational.com

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Ethanol producers balance cost and conservation when reducing consumption 

Dropping Water Use

Multiple commercial-scale cellulosic and advanced biofuel facilities are currently in various stages of development throughout the U.S. and on June 6, leaders of a few of those companies gathered for an International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo general session panel, hosted by BBI International Program Director Tim Portz, to provide project updates.
St. Joseph, Mo., is home to a pilot-scale facility constructed by ICM Inc. to test its cellulosic ethanol process. Doug Rivers, ICM research and development director, said corn stover, switchgrass and energy sorghum have been targeted as feedstocks for the 10-ton-per-day facility. He listed strategic reasons for co-locating cellulosic ethanol facilities with corn ethanol plants, including shared infrastructure and synergies with steam, water and some process streams.
Steve Hartig, vice president of biobased energy at DSM, said that since the official groundbreaking in March, construction of the Poet-DSM Advanced Biofuels LLC 20 MMgy corn cob-based ethanol facility has steadily continued at the site in Emmetsberg, Iowa. The cellulosic plant, expected to begin operations in late 2013, is co-located with Poet&rsquo;s 55 MMgy corn ethanol facility. Biogas produced at the cellulosic plant will be used to power both facilities. It is expected that the same farmers who provide feedstock for Poet&rsquo;s corn ethanol plant will also provide corn stover. Hartig said that while the current co-location model is effective for the first wave of next-generation facilities, he expects the industry will move toward an all-in-one concept, producing multiple products from a single facility.
Construction of Abengoa Bioenergy&rsquo;s first cellulosic ethanol plant is also underway in Hugoton, Kan., and due to be completed late next year. Chris Standlee, executive vice president, showed photos of the completion of roads and installation of fermentation tanks. All equipment for the 23 MMgy multifeedstock facility has been ordered and biomass is already being stored onsite. Abengoa decided to construct its first cellulosic facility as a greenfield project, although co-location with existing corn ethanol facilities is likely in the future. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our firm belief that having multiple feedstocks significantly reduces financial and business risks for a new facility,&rdquo; Standlee said. While there are indeed many co-location synergies, Standlee pointed out several challenges as well, including the flowability of feedstocks, varied fermentation parameters and the need to keep feed coproduct streams segregated.
Another option for corn ethanol to participate in the next generation of biofuels is to switch end-products entirely. Gevo Inc. is currently starting up its first commercial-scale butanol facility in Luverne, Minn., a former corn ethanol plant that will produce up to 18 MMgy of isobutanol. Gevo CEO Patrick Gruber commended the ethanol industry for successfully building out its capacity and constantly evolving to improve efficiencies, but he made the case for producers to begin considering other products. &ldquo;All of us need to think of ourselves has having biorefineries,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The product doesn&rsquo;t have to be ethanol. It can be other things too.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Kris Bevill

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Progress Updates

Executives of four ethanol plants formed a panel to address, &ldquo;Holding Strong: How U.S. Ethanol Producers are Achieving Profitability without the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit,&rdquo; at the June 5 general session of the International Fuel&nbsp; Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo in Minneapolis. One executive leads family-owned Marquis Energy Inc., while the others are CEOs of farmer-owned cooperatives. Tom Bryan, vice president of BBI International, served as moderator.
There were some short term effects, with blenders buying up more ethanol at the end of the year before the tax credit expired, but Ray Defenbaugh, president and CEO of Big River Resources LLC, said it was ultimately a good thing for the industry. The tax credit was benefiting blenders, while the ethanol industry was &ldquo;catching flack&rdquo; for it.
A bigger impact to the industry is the delay of E15, said Walt Wendland, president and CEO of Golden Grain Energy LLC. &ldquo;They took away an incentive before we could grow the market,&rdquo; he said, adding that it&rsquo;s like getting handcuffed and then being told to fight. Clearly, Big Oil has drawn a line in the sand and is fighting not to give up any more of the consumer&rsquo;s fuel tank.
Randy Doyal, CEO of Al-Corn Clean Fuel, said that in the many years he has been part of the ethanol industry, it has always fought Big Oil. However, the fight has seemed more frightening recently, and he encouraged the industry to be more active, writing letters and making calls to lawmakers.
The panelists also discussed the human factor in success. Although Mark Marquis, president and general manager of Marquis Energy, said he could list a dozen things that could help put an ethanol plant in the &ldquo;upper class&rdquo; of the industry, on the top is the importance of hiring talented management staff. That can be difficult for a plant that isn&rsquo;t doing well, he said, as employees seek strong companies to work for.
Defenbaugh agreed, adding that staff loyalty is also important. And, although a plant may be able to save money with fewer staff members, he didn&rsquo;t consider it a bad thing if his company had one more person on staff than another plant. &ldquo;The skinny is not always the best,&rdquo; he said.
Doyal said his company has great employees with a passion for learning. By giving staff the freedom to ask questions and try new things, the company has identified things that are not best practices and also many that are excellent ways of doing things.
Marquis talked about not losing sight of the fact that the ethanol industry is a good industry, not a villain. The opposition is speaking with a loud voice, spreading misinformation far and wide. &ldquo;We want to make sure staff at our plant are proud of what we do,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
Defenbaugh stressed the importance of access to adequate capital, comparing capital to a jugular vein. The industry will have its up and downs and adequate capital will keep a company going in those hard times. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want the bank to make all your decisions for you because its goals and your goals aren&rsquo;t always the same,&rdquo; he said.
The speakers also talked about the fact that their companies are open to investing in or purchasing additional ethanol plants. That&rsquo;s particularly important for Al-Corn, Doyal said, as the 45 MMgy plant is older than 90 percent of the rest of the industry and smaller than 75 percent of the rest of the industry. Instead of expanding the size of its facility, the company has diversified by investing in other ethanol plants. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a huge plus for us,&rdquo; he said.
Golden Grain Energy has also worked to form helpful relationships, including an agreement to share management with Homeland Energy Solutions LLC. Although the company prefers to invest inside the fence, it has invested in and sits on the board of three other ethanol production companies. The advantage, he said, is sharing ideas and experiences for mutual progress.&nbsp; &mdash;Holly Jessen

Four ethanol producers spoke about the state of the industry and their plants. From left, Ray Defenbaugh, Big River, Mark Marquis, Marquis Energy, Walt Wendland, Golden Grain, and Randy Doyal, Al-Corn. 

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Ethanol producers share strategies for success in FEW panel

Holding Strong

1. Steve Christiansen is the new CEO and general manager at Granite Falls Energy LLC in western Minnesota. He succeeds Tracey Olson who served in the position since the plant opened in 2005. Christiansen had managed Western Wisconsin Energy since August 2005. The 57 MMgy plant at Boyceville, Wis., was purchased by Big River Resources late last year. Granite Falls Energy is currently installing a loop track that will facilitate the loading of unit trains at the 62 MMgy plant.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. David Weaver has been appointed the new CEO of United Kingdom-based cellulosic ethanol developer TMO Renewables Ltd. Weaver joins TMO with a deep background in the energy sector, holding executive roles in energy companies CMS Energy International, Southern California Edison and British Petroleum (BP) Gas Power and Renewables, where he pioneered BP&rsquo;s renewable energy program and led the development of BP&rsquo;s first renewable energy project and wind farm. He has also led several energy development initiatives in Asia, Australia, Middle East, China and India. 3. ZeaChem Inc. has named Peter Cheesbrough its chief financial officer. He brings more than three decades of experience leading private and publically traded companies in the biotechnology, information technology and mining industries through commercialization, international transactions, venture capital fundraising and IPO execution. &ldquo;Time and again, Peter has shown the ability to lead companies through periods of robust financial growth,&rdquo; said Jim Imbler, ZeaChem president and CEO. &ldquo;With his addition to the team, we are better positioned for long-term growth as we move from demonstration scale to commercial biorefining.&rdquo;
4. The Andersons Inc. has appointed John J. Granato to the newly-created role of chief financial officer, reporting to Mike Anderson, chairman and CEO. Most recently Anderson served as a principal of finance and operations for Global Infrastructure Partners in New York. His 20 years of experience spans diverse industries, both domestically and internationally, including multibillion dollar conglomerates and industrial companies as well as private bank/private equity firms. 5. Bob Casper, president of Poet Ethanol Products, was named chief commercial officer of Poet LLC. In this newly created position, he will oversee the marketing and distribution of all products as well as risk management for Poet. Before joining Poet Ethanol Products, Casper spent 21 years leading several energy-related divisions for Koch Industries. 6. Jennifer&nbsp; Holmgren, CEO of Lanzatech, has joined the board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels Services Foundation. The foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization formed to manage a broad range of operational activities implementing the RSB&rsquo;s global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuels. It will manage the certification process, the use of trademark and oversight of licensing for the RSB Standards Body.
7. Antonio de Padua Rodrigues has been named interim CEO of UNICA, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association, until the conclusion of a selection process for a new CEO to replace Marcos Jank, who has served since 2007. A member of the executive team at UNICA since 1990, Rodrigues has served as the organization&rsquo;s technical director since 2003. Prior to that he held government positions supporting sugarcane development. 8. The Renewable Fuels Association has gained three new board member companies since the first of the year. Aemetis Inc. operates a 55 MMgy facility in Keyes, Calif. Bushmills Ethanol Inc. is a cooperative made up of 415 farmers that produces 65 MMgy in Atwater, Minn. E Energy Adams is a locally owned company consisting of nearly 800 investor owners that produces 50 MMgy in Adams, Neb. With the addition of these three, the RFA board of directors consists of 50 companies. Every producing member of the RFA receives one vote on the board. The RFA is the largest trade association for ethanol producers in the world. 9. Eco-Energy Inc. has signed an ethanol marketing agreement with Quad County Corn Processors, a 35 MMgy ethanol plant in Galva, Iowa. Eco-Energy markets for 15 ethanol plants across North America and is focused on adding value by vertically integrating the supply chain, from producer to consumer. 10. Canadian energy company Husky Energy Inc. commissioned a CO2 capture facility in March at its 130 MMly (35 MMgy) ethanol plant in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. It will capture 250 tons per day of CO2 emissions, which will be utilized to increase heavy oil production. The CO2 is stored in containers, cooled and compressed into a liquid form. It is then transported to fields by truck, where it is injected into reservoirs to increase oil recovery. 11. Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies Inc. has agreed to pay $5.5 million for an expansion of the nonexclusive license agreement first struck with enzyme developer Dyadic International Inc. in 2009. The expanded license agreement gives Abengoa worldwide rights to use Dyadic&rsquo;s C1 platform technology to develop, manufacture and sell enzymes for use in both first- and second-generation biorefining processes to convert biomass into sugars for the production of fuels, chemicals and/or power. In addition to the license fee, Dyadic is entitled to receive royalties and Abengoa will have the right to work with third-party sublicensees to further develop C1 enzymes. 12. KmX Chemical Corp., a privately held Ontario company founded in 2005, will provide Fiberight LLC exclusive rights to its membrane-aided concentration and dehydration technologies for the conversion of municipal solid waste into ethanol. These membrane technologies replace the need for energy-intensive distillation columns and molecular sieves in refining cellulosic ethanol, according to KmX. Through the selectivity of KmX&rsquo;s hydrophobic membranes to ethanol molecules, the small fraction of cellulosic ethanol in the fermented broth of around 6 percent can quickly be concentrated to 50 percent, and then to fuel-grade quality using KmX&rsquo;s hydrophilic membranes. Fiberight is developing a 6 MMgy cellulosic ethanol facility in Blairstown, Iowa. 13. DuPont Industrial Biosciences has chosen Fagen Inc. to build its commercial cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in Nevada, Iowa, adjacent to the existing Lincolnway Energy LLC corn-ethanol plant. Fagen, which has constructed more than 85 ethanol plants (approximately 60 percent of U.S. facilities), also recently entered into a collaboration with Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC, a joint venture between BP and DuPont, for a retrofit project to commercially produce biobutanol.&nbsp; KBR Inc. will execute the front-end engineering, procurement and detailed engineering design work for the Nevada project, which plans to use corn stover to produce 27 MMgy. The company is operating a fully integrated cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant in Vonore, Tenn., in collaboration with the University of Tennessee and Genera Energy, plus ongoing stover supply chain testing with Iowa State University. 14. Cellulosic sugar developer Virdia opened a demonstration facility at its new technology center in Danville, Va., located in the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, established by the state in 2002. A private, venture-capital backed company, Virdia has developed its CASE process to convert a wide range of cellulosic feedstock, including plantation/industrial wood, energy crops and agricultural residues, into highly refined sugars and lignin. The low-temperature process delivers a high yield of sugars from biomass, according to the company, and has a very light environmental footprint due to the near complete recycling of acids and solvents used in manufacturing. In March, the company announced a name change from HCL CleanTech and introduced its new CEO, industrial biotech veteran Philippe Lavielle who replaces Virdia&rsquo;s co-founder, Eran Baniel. Baniel is now acting as Virdia&rsquo;s vice president of business development.
&nbsp;
Share your industry briefs To be included in Business Briefs, send information (including photos and logos if available) to: Business Briefs, Ethanol Producer Magazine, 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks ND 58203. You may also fax information to (701) 746-8385, or email it to sretkaschill@bbiinternational.com. Please include your name and telephone number in all correspondence.

Bob Casper, who has led Poet Ethanol Products since 2000, directs marketing of ethanol and carbon dioxide for the companyâ€™s 27 biorefineries. His role has been expanded to overseeing Poet Risk Management and Poet Nutrition.   

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David Weaver brings 30 years of energy experience to lead U.K.-based TMO Renewables.

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With business developments in the U.S., China and elsewhere, Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of Lanztech, will advise the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels Services Foundation as a member of the board. 

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Business Briefs

A great board meeting can occur thanks to preparation, people and a plan. For ethanol plants, it is fairly typical to have board meetings, but they vary in function and value at each facility.
Our involvement in board meetings over the year has given insight into what makes them successful. The number one benefit of board meetings comes from maintaining open lines of communication among the directors and plant management.
Whether meetings are held monthly or quarterly, they work best when they are consistent and well-planned. Some plants hold a quarterly meeting of an executive committee and a meeting of the entire board during the other months. Regardless of the timing of the board meetings, agendas that are well-thought-out and meetings that are well-facilitated produce the best results in terms of engagement and decision making. Agendas should not be cookie-cutter but rather creative and even challenging.
When building agendas, it is best to survey directors on the kinds of information they want communicated in board meetings. Here are key elements for bringing value to ownership boards:
&bull; Reports. Expectations for reports from the management team should be clear, and typically include plant performance, grain movements and grind, and the status of grain,&nbsp; chemical and enzyme costs.
&bull; Communication. Managers vary in their communication styles, but it is never helpful to withhold information and leave directors guessing or questioning the management of the plant. Boards can cultivate closer communication with managers by clarifying expectations and by being professional and proactive in the way they relate with each other and management.
&bull; Financials. Board meetings would not exist without some review of financial information. It can be a challenge, however, to provide enough insight, yet not too much. It could be valuable to rotate various aspects of financial reporting among different board meetings. At times, going through the financials can be helpful and educational, including line-item analysis such as repair costs or labor costs including all benefits. It can also be helpful to have a much more concise summary&mdash;perhaps a one-page CliffsNotes version of plant performance.
&bull; Consultants. Some boards require in-person reports from consultants. These commonly include assessments of new technology or advancements, but can also include presentations about accounting issues, risk management or debt financing.
&bull; Customer Service. Boards need to be brought up to speed in the area of customer care, including complaints or commendations and customer adjustments.
&bull; Capital Budgeting. Capital investments are monitored and guided by the board and approval is made on a project-by-project basis or above a certain cost threshold.
&bull; Policies and Procedures. This isn&rsquo;t an exhilarating area and doesn&rsquo;t belong regularly on the agenda, but boards need to establish and review company policies and procedures. These include aspects of plant management, as well as the function of the office and staff, controls in office management, etc.
&bull; Strategic Planning. It is especially important that the company is managed in the present according to future thinking, and much of this responsibility lies with the board. This includes growth strategies, diversification opportunities or significant changes in management tactics, including grain procurement, ethanol and distillers marketing or risk management.
Good facilitation, informed decision-making and solid record-keeping are important aspects of board management that make the process valuable. Whether the facilitator is the board chairman, manager or a staff person, the important thing is that they have the support of the board and can pull together an effective agenda, draw out positive discussion from all participants and bring issues to successful resolution. We recommend board members go in to their next meetings prepared and enthusiastic about the process. This makes you and your board more effective and, ultimately, gets the job done.
Author: Donna Funk, CPA Kennedy and Coe LLC (800) 303-3241 funk@kcoe.com

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Get Onboard: Tips to Meeting Success

In the European Union, a considerable portion of ethanol is used as a beverage or as a feedstock for industrial/chemical use. The essential characteristic for beverage use is purity. It is meant for human intake, though moderately. Hence, pure alcohol is very highly taxed: the higher the tax, or excise duty, the less people will drink is the theory.
Europe wouldn&rsquo;t be Europe if this excise duty is not different everywhere. In Bulgaria the duty on 100 liters of pure ethanol is &euro;598 ($126) whereas in Sweden it is almost 10 times as much, &euro;5,474. Sweden also places the highest possible value-added tax on alcohol of 25 percent. The rest of the EU is somewhere between those extremes.
These high taxes make fraud attractive. There are basically two ways to fight this fraud. First, there are high financial bonds on the transport of alcohol that are redeemable once the ethanol reaches its final destination. The other method is by denaturing the alcohol to make it unfit for human consumption (oral intake, that is). Sometimes the denaturing is also done for a specific purpose or end-use as in the case of pharmaceuticals or perfumes.
The total number of denaturants used in all member states is high. The EU database on denaturants tells us that there are 145 denaturants allowed and a total of 159 compositions of denaturing alcohol possible.
The European Commission decided two years ago that there are too many denaturants, and too many do not have the chemical properties to denature the alcohol completely, making it irreversible chemically, in theory. In reality, irreversibility is a price issue. Complete denaturing has the advantage, according to the commission, that the risk of fraud&mdash;changing denatured alcohol back to potable alcohol&mdash;is reduced. As the number of complete denaturing agents is limited&mdash;only 34&mdash;administrative tax procedures can be reduced at the same time. The Eurodenaturant project was born.
The objective of the project is to present a single complete denaturing formulation, plus some formulations for specific end products such as solvents, ink, perfumes or fuel. After laboratory testing, a number of ideal formulas and concentrations of the denaturants were proposed. The ideal, completely denatured alcohol is achieved by adding 3 liters of isopropyl alcohol plus 3 liters methyl ethyl ketone and 1 gram of denatonium benzoate to every 100 liters of alcohol.
What is proposed came as a shock to the industry. Even though we had made clear very early that the denaturing is, and should be, driven by customer requirements, and that this works satisfactorily, the commission proposed something that goes against what industry recommended. It will make the alcohol unnecessarily more expensive, and impossible to use for certain applications. Also, in the case of ethanol for fuel use, a formula is proposed that totally neglects what has been agreed upon for many years in the EU among the oil, car and ethanol industries based on what works best for those sectors.
So, why is such a harmonization project started in the first place? Overzealous officials, most likely. Industry didn&rsquo;t ask for a change of the present practices. Within the EU, we are pumping around billions of liters of alcohol every year. In the 14 years I have been working in this sector, I have never heard about large-scale fraud with alcohol. I am not saying it is not happening, but surely if it were wide-spread and big, it would be known. Complete denaturants will not prevent fraud. The best remedy against ethanol fraud is placing a high financial bond on every batch of ethanol being shipped.
The need for changing the rules is questionable. If denaturing is no longer driven by the needs of the industry, the result will be predictable&mdash;higher cost. Not a good plan in times of economic and financial austerity.
Author: Robert Vierhout Secretary-general, ePURE Vierhout@epure.org

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Europe's Complete Denaturing Obsession

At some point over the past several months, consumer complaints about gasoline purchased at stations in eastern South Dakota led to the discovery that 85-octane gasoline was being sold in those retail stations&mdash;labeled as 87-octane gasoline, and in some cases, 89-octane, E10 gasoline. When the state weights and measures department investigated the complaints, most of the violators responded essentially with a statement of &ldquo;Oops! Sorry!&rdquo; and continued to sell the suboctane fuel by relabeling their pumps with the correct lower octane number. They told weights and measures that they didn&rsquo;t see any reason they couldn&rsquo;t sell 85-octane gas, even though they were outside the area where 85 octane is legally sold under something called &ldquo;de-rating,&rdquo; which allows lower octane fuel at higher elevation.
To provide offenders with the &ldquo;reason they couldn&rsquo;t sell 85-octane gas,&rdquo; the state reviewed its regulations, and found something even more interesting. It turns out that even the higher elevation, western third of South Dakota, where stations have been selling the 85-octane gasoline for decades, is supposed to sell gasoline with a minimum octane of 87. The state weights and measures department responded to that discovery by informing petroleum marketers and oil companies that it would begin to enforce the correct regulations.
So just add 10 percent ethanol to the 85 octane gas, and it will have an octane rating above 87, right? Nope. A few months ago, some of the refineries quit making a straight 85-octane regular unleaded gasoline, and their primary product now is an 82-ish octane base fuel which they then blend with 10 percent ethanol to get an 85 octane E10. Adding 10 percent more ethanol to that E10 would make it E20, which can&rsquo;t be used legally in standard cars (and we know how oil companies feel about replacing gas&mdash;even low-octane stuff&mdash;with more ethanol).&nbsp;
Refiners claim they made the change to offset the cost of the renewable fuels standard, conveniently leaving out the fact that because ethanol costs less than gas, E10 made with the 85-octane straight gas they were previously making would actually save them six to ten cents. The truth is that making 82-octane is more profitable, and doing so gives the refiner control of ethanol blending. The oil companies now consider the straight 85-octane gas they made for more than 40 years a &ldquo;boutique&rdquo; fuel&mdash;and say it would be too costly to make it for legal sale in South Dakota.
There was no contrition or offer to find solutions that would provide consumers in the state of South Dakota with the type of fuel required by law. The oil refiners&rsquo; response was quite different from their very public hand-wringing over the rollout of exhaustively tested E15. They didn&rsquo;t express concerns about automobile and small engine warranties. They didn&rsquo;t ask for more testing. They didn&rsquo;t seem concerned about liability for damage that could happen to engines that were fueled with this noncompliant, untested, illegal fuel. Instead, Rocky Mountain oil companies offered their version of a waiver request: Make 85-octane legal, or we won&rsquo;t supply South Dakota stations.
Yep. Their solution to ongoing violations of the law is to demand the state change the law so that what they are doing becomes legal. Or else. It was further suggested that 85 octane gasoline should be &ldquo;legal,&rdquo; not only in the area it was mistakenly allowed previously, but throughout the state.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what the South Dakota Governor&rsquo;s office has proposed, and even more unfortunately, the practice of selling illegal, suboctane fuel in South Dakota will be allowed to continue while comments are accepted for 90 days. In effect, this &ldquo;Wyoming Oil Embargo&rdquo; has already given Rocky Mountain refiners the ability to sell illegal fuel in all of South Dakota all summer. And when drivers report bad mileage, poor performance and increased repairs from this substandard fuel, ethanol will be incorrectly blamed, just as it has been blamed nationwide as refiners reduce the octane and quality of the fuel they blend with ethanol.
The most disappointing aspect of this situation is that if South Dakota wanted to create its own fuel regulations, it was in a perfect position to counter this oil refiner, manufactured shortage by declaring E15 legal in all vehicles. Refiners&rsquo; response to such a ruling would have been quite interesting&mdash;and probably very instructive.
Author: Ron Lamberty Senior Vice President, American Coalition for Ethanol (605) 334-3381 rlamberty@ethanol.org

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The Wyoming Oil Embargo of 2012

For far too long, America has been dependent on foreign oil. This leaves us at the mercy of the tumultuous Middle East, unsympathetic foreign governments and OPEC. While every president since Richard Nixon has highlighted the importance of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, it always seemed more of a talking point than a true goal. That is, until 2005, with the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). This was the first realistic policy initiative since the oil embargos of the 1970s that shifted America&rsquo;s focus toward domestically produced renewable fuel.
The RFS is the only substantial energy policy the U.S. has enacted in more than 40 years. In 2007, Congress significantly modified the program, updating to the RFS2, increasing volume goals and encouraging aggressive production of renewable fuels.
While we have seen the RFS come under recent attacks, every criticism is based on distorted facts, misinformation and well-funded opposition from oil companies that will not give up their near- market monopoly on fuel without a fight. That is why it is increasingly more important to get the facts straight and continue to build support among policymakers for the RFS.
One cannot dispute the facts that show the RFS is working. It has contributed to a true American success story, producing 14 billion gallons of first-generation biofuels and we are on the cusp of the next generation that will spur more investment in America and add jobs to our ailing economy.
In 2005, the U.S. was importing 60.3 percent of its oil. As ethanol production and usage increased, foreign oil imports dropped to 45 percent in 2011. This alone demonstrates the tremendous impact the RFS has had on our domestic energy policy and the remarkable promise that lies ahead.
The RFS, along with the ethanol industry, has shown it is indeed possible to wean ourselves off our dangerous addiction to foreign oil. Ethanol contributes to enhanced energy security for our nation, while simultaneously providing consumers a choice of a cleaner-burning, less expensive, domestically produced fuel. Currently, ethanol makes up 10 percent of our nation&rsquo;s fuel supply, with the capability to increase that to 15 percent and beyond.
The ethanol industry has also been a major contributor to our nation&rsquo;s economy and job growth. As refineries continue to open across America, jobs are added and areas of the country that were once lacking in opportunity are being revitalized. In 2011 alone, the ethanol industry created and supported more than 500,000 well-paying jobs and contributed approximately $50 billion to the nation&rsquo;s gross domestic product.
Currently, there are more than 200 biorefineries in 29 states providing economic opportunity, consumer choice and reduced dependency on fossil fuels. This is welcome news during difficult economic times, and the ethanol industry is proud to be at the forefront of innovation, pioneering the next generation of renewable fuels and investing right here in America.
Further, the production capability is available to change the direction of our nation&rsquo;s energy policy. In fact, under the RFS2 targets, by 2022, the 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel produced will comprise roughly 27 percent of the nation&rsquo;s projected gasoline demand, eliminating the need for Persian Gulf imports entirely. Even a recent Congressional Budget Study concluded that the only way to reduce dependence on oil is to transition to renewables. The potential for a paradigm shift is here. We must seize it.
As such, Growth Energy has continuously advocated for increased use of ethanol in our nation&rsquo;s fuel supply. The first step is the implementation of an E15 blend in the marketplace. But we must not stop there. We must actively campaign to educate policymakers and the American people of the enumerable benefits that the RFS and the ethanol industry can provide. The resources are here&mdash;flex-fuel vehicles, flex pumps and higher blends of ethanol&mdash;we just need to embrace them.
For the first time in decades, America has the ability to turn the tide and start the process of increasing our energy production. Growth Energy and the ethanol industry are standing at the forefront of this movement, looking to fundamentally change our future.
Author: Tom Buis CEO, Growth Energy (202)545-4000 tbuis@growthenergy.org

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RFS Results in Enumerable Benefits

This spring, while gasoline prices approached the $4-per-gallon mark for the second time in four years, one factor kept the pain at the pump from getting even worse.
Because ethanol makes up 10 percent of the nation&rsquo;s motor fuel supply, it significantly reduces the demand for oil and puts downward pressure on oil prices. Ethanol reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $1.09 per gallon nationally during 2011 and by an average of 29 cents per gallon from 2000 through 2011. By helping to save $39.8 billion annually in excess gasoline costs, the U.S. ethanol industry helped the average American household to pay about $340 less every year to fuel their cars since 2000.
These are among the conclusions of a study released May 15 examining the impact of increased ethanol consumption on wholesale gasoline prices conducted by economists from the University of Wisconsin and Iowa State University for the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development.
While ethanol has held down gasoline prices for more than a decade, it helped motorists save even more money in 2011 for two important reasons:
First, American ethanol production increased from 13.2 billion gallons in 2010 to a record 13.9 billion gallons last year. Second, the average crude oil price increased from $80 per barrel in 2010 to about $95 per barrel in 2011, which increased ethanol&rsquo;s discount to gasoline. In other words, ethanol&rsquo;s impact on gasoline prices becomes more pronounced as oil prices rise and ethanol production increases. As these findings confirm, the growth of the American ethanol industry has been a bright spot in an economy marred by high unemployment and sky-high gasoline prices.
With 209 ethanol biorefineries in 29 states, the industry generates $43 billion in economic activity, supports more than 400,000 jobs, and contributes more than $8 billion in federal, state and local taxes, helping to pay for local public schools and police and fire departments.
As ethanol production increases, the industry promotes the nation&rsquo;s energy security and economic stability. Last year alone, by producing more than 13.9 billion gallons of biofuels, the U.S. ethanol industry reduced the nation&rsquo;s need for imported oil by 485 million barrels&mdash;more than the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia. By reducing reliance on imported oil, ethanol makes it more difficult for petroleum-exporting countries to increase energy costs in the U.S. by restricting production or raising prices.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
The emergence of the domestic ethanol industry as a force in the nation&rsquo;s motor fuel market is beneficial for the basics of the American economy&mdash;jobs and prices.
The more clean-burning, American-made biofuels the industry produces, the more high-paying jobs there will be for American workers and the lower the prices will be for American motorists at the gasoline pumps.
The American ethanol industry isn&rsquo;t only expanding, it is evolving. U.S. companies are devising new technologies that will turn waste products, such as garbage, woodchips, corn stover and even cooking oil, into renewable fuel and other biobased products. Some companies already have commercial-scale facilities under development and construction, from Oregon to Iowa and from Alabama to Massachusetts.
Public policies should encourage the growth of an industry that is good for our country. While the oil companies continue to enjoy federal tax breaks and other advantages totaling between $3.6 billion to $4.5 billion a year, the American biofuels industry believes that tax incentives should be targeted to new technologies, not forever subsidizing mature industries. That is why the American biofuels industry willingly agreed to the expiration of the tax credit for ethanol blenders (the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit) at the end of last year.
Public policies should promote the development of advanced biofuels by encouraging the expanded installation of blender pumps, a greater proliferation of flex-fuel vehicles, and the growth of innovative startup companies. By requiring that 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel, including 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels, be blended into transportation fuel by 2022, the renewable fuel standard helps to attract investment to create and commercialize new ethanol production processes.
With imaginative policies and innovative technologies, American biofuels can continue to cut prices at the pumps and create jobs in our communities.
Author: Bob Dinneen President and CEO, Renewable Fuels Association (202) 289-3835

US Ethanol Industry  Helps Households  Make Ends Meet

When developing biomass feedstock projects, there is one area that challenges the project through completion&mdash;feedstock supply and pricing. In some biomass electricity projects, the feedstock is compared to a fuel such as coal, for which risk is minimized by long-term contracts with large companies.&nbsp; There are multiple sources of coal, and large producers reduce or minimize counterparty risk.&nbsp; The energy in coal, or Btu that can be extracted, is typically within a predictable range. Assuming adequate supply, key factors in sourcing feedstock are energy density and price.&nbsp;
Feedstocks that are produced for fuel tend to have more predictable energy densities, but also have higher pricing and production profiles.&nbsp; Many feedstock projects focus on waste feedstock because they are paid to take it or pay a low cost, and that can drive profitable projects.&nbsp; In financing such a project, there is a higher risk that needs to be addressed, related to production for an alternate purpose, lack of contractual consistency, price escalation for transportation and handling, and price risk, if there is competition for the waste.
 A number of projects designed around feedstock waste streams have not been financed due to waste feedstock risk. Commercial waste for feedstock sourcing carries the inherent risk of no supply if the producing industry changes, as happened with housing market production and its construction waste.&nbsp; To counter that risk, some projects have sought consistent supplies through municipal wastewater and solid waste.&nbsp; While those waste streams require processing to become useful feedstocks, the constant supply of no-cost or low-cost feedstock can be contracted with little risk of the waste-producing industry failing. Further, as the use for the waste becomes more developed, brokers enter the market to capture supply and margin.&nbsp; While most recently discovered feedstocks carry some of that risk, the waste feedstocks can be more volatile in supply and price.
 Biomass feedstock projects can be financed when the risk is approached strategically, with awareness of:
 Multiple Feedstock Sources. Multiple sources of the same type of feedstock and different sources of different feedstocks reduce supply and counterparty risk.&nbsp; Feedstocks tend to have seasonal variances in availability and price that also should be addressed.
 Processing and Output Capacity for Different Blends of Feedstocks. Tests should be performed and data collected on different feedstock blends and the impact, if any, on output capacity. Counterparty Risk. The feedstock sources and providers, including the industry that provides the feedstock.
 Impact of Regulatory Requirements. Regulatory issues concerning the source, handling, and storage of the feedstocks as well as the regulatory requirements that apply to the use of the feedstock. Feedstock Requirements. For acceptable processing, the feedstock must meet the regulatory and processing requirements to produce the output capacity.&nbsp; Standards or requirements should be set that can be measured against the available supply.
 Developers should be prepared for financiers to expect third party review and reports addressing the various risks of feedstocks.&nbsp; The following should be considered:
 Feedstock Supply Agreements. At a minimum, use a form of purchase agreement acceptable to feedstock providers that sets out the feedstock requirements or standards, as well as remedies for not meeting the standards.&nbsp; For example, the presence of hazardous substances will likely cause rejection of the feedstock, but higher moisture may cause a price discount instead of rejection.
 Feedstock Resource Assessment. A third-party assessment describing the availability of the feedstocks will need to be prepared, including competition for the feedstocks and pricing information. Fuel Management Plan. A plan or agreement with a third party will be required, which will describe how the various feedstocks will be procured, handled and stored, and the working capital necessary to maintain a high-quality fuel supply.
 Pricing Collars or Guarantees. Ultimately the best plans may not cover the perceived risks of feedstocks.&nbsp; Project developers should contemplate fixed-price guarantees or price collars (high-low) under which the project can be operated.
 Many financing sources require a higher degree of project risk reduction.&nbsp; Feedstock projects should develop a focused approach to reduce the perceived risks relating to the feedstock, its providers, and long-term pricing.&nbsp; A strategic approach with properly negotiated agreements can cover many perceived risks. Author: Mark Hanson Partner, Stoel Rives LLP (612) 373-8823

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Financing of Feedstock Supply

Covanta appoints Waffenschmidt to advisory council Covanta Energy Corp., owner and operator of numerous waste-to-energy projects, appointed John G. Waffenschmidt, vice president of environmental science and community affairs, to the Product Stewardship Institute Advisory Council. The council advises PSI on reducing the health and environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a consumer product. As the vice president of environmental science and community affairs at Covanta Energy, Waffenschmidt is responsible for building community outreach strategies, reducing waste stream toxicity under Covanta&rsquo;s Clean World Initiative, developing environmental justice policies and working with various academic and NGO organizations. He also serves as a member of the Pennsylvania Environmental Justice Advisory Board and the Regional Plan Association, Long Island chapter.
 SCS is first U.S. ISCC certification body Scientific Certification Systems is the first certification body in the United States to be accredited by the International Sustainability &amp; Carbon Certification system. SCS has been approved to conduct biofuel certifications, as well as ISCC Plus certification for food, animal feed and derivative chemicals produced from any feedstock. ISCC certification qualifies biofuels sold into the European Union for recognition under the Renewable Energy Directive, which sets targets and minimum sustainability requirements for biofuel use throughout the EU. About 1,300 certified companies have already been certified under the ISCC system, making it one of the world's fastest-growing biofuel certifications. To earn certification, a biofuel must have a reduced carbon footprint as compared to the conventional fossil fuel it replaces. Biomass and biofuel production must also meet minimum social, environmental and traceability criteria.
 Turboden to provide ORC generators for two London companies Turboden, manufacturer of biomass fueled Organic Rankine Cycle turbogenerators, was awarded an order for a 1 MW ORC plant for British broadcasting group BSkyB and a 1.8 MW ORC plant for airport owner BAA, both located in London. Turboden has an ORC plant operating in France, as well an order for another 1.4 MW trigenerative ORC plant in Poland that will provide power, heat and cooling for a five-star luxury hotel. 
Barko Hydraulics acquires Norco assets Forestry and material handling company Barko Hydraulics LLC has acquired the assets of Norco Equipment Co. of Oconto Falls, Wis. The acquisition will enable Barko to significantly expand customer options in the forestry, bioenergy, recycling and right-of-way maintenance markets while complementing Barko&rsquo;s existing line of material handlers. Norco currently manufactures products under the Puma Equipment brand headquartered in Oconto Falls, Wis. Puma builds four- and six-wheel forwarders, track harvesters, processing heads, and firewood processors. In addition to Norco&rsquo;s Puma line, the company also offers a full line of wood processing equipment from hand-fed brush chippers, high horsepower whole-tree chippers and grinders under the Dynamic Manufacturing label. 
Martin Engineering introduces new return roller Martin Engineering has introduced a new return roller for its conveyor system technologies. The new design is a trackmounted, pivoting, return-side idler that allows service and replacement from one side of the conveyor. The Evo Return Roller&rsquo;s track-mounted assembly utilizes one-pin quick change functionality to make service fast and easy. As a result, the roll can be replaced by one person in less time, reducing the risk of injuries. Evo Return Rollers help improve safety and prevent injuries by minimizing suspension and heavy lifting, while reducing the time and resources needed for service or replacement. The return roller also features an integrated fine adjustment to completely square the belt. Return rollers can be employed anywhere there is belt sag on the return side of the conveyor, or in situations where there are seizing issues that require frequent roll replacement.

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Hawaii currently supplies about 90 percent of&nbsp; its energy with imported oil at a cost of about $7 billion spent outside the state&rsquo;s economy. This makes Hawaii the most oil-dependent state in the U.S. The state is taking some major initiatives to try to change that.
 That includes S.B. 2785, which has passed the Hawaii House and Senate and is now awaiting the governor&rsquo;s signature. Once signed, the bill will allow for an inter-island undersea cable system that would connect the islands with power and high speed broadband. Right now, Hawaii has six relatively small and separate electric grids, which do not have neighboring grids to draw power from as do mainland utilities. The islands are already connected with many telecom cables, but no power cables. Unfortunately for Hawaiian ratepayers, when the price of oil skyrockets, so do electricity prices.
However, backers of S.B. 2785 believe that connecting the islands would allow the state to use more of its own renewable resources at fixed, predictable prices that won't be tied to the price of foreign oil. Based on similar cables elsewhere, Hawaiian energy officials project the cost to deliver power via an 80- to 100-mile cable to be less than 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at 40 percent capacity. At a higher capacity, it drops below 7 cents per kWh. With low sulfur fuel oil at $135 per barrel, the cost of just the oil burned in oil-fired generators is 24 cents per kWh, according to the Hawaii State Energy Office.
 While investors and private developers would pay for the upfront costs, ratepayers would have to pay generation and transmission costs, but they would no longer have to deal with drastically fluctuating electricity rates.
 There is no question of whether the project will work, as similar projects have been successfully implemented in other locations, including the Baltic Cable that connects Germany and Sweden, which spans 155 miles and has a 500 MW capacity. In order for this whole scenario to effectively play out, however, the state&rsquo;s renewable energy industry needs to grow in a big way, and it seems as though it&rsquo;s on the right track.
 There are currently more than 20 biomass or biofuel projects in planning stages or under development on the islands, and they will use feedstocks such as algae, eucalyptus and municipal solid waste to produce products from biodiesel to renewable gasoline and jet fuel to renewable energy.
 Under development in Pepe'ekeo on the Hamakua Coast of Hawaii, HÅ« Honua Bioenergy has scored a 20-year, 21.5 MW power purchase agreement (PPA) with Hawaii Electric Light Co., and now just needs approval of the PPA by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. The company is converting a former sugar mill into a power plant, and will use locally grown biomass, including eucalyptus, as fuel.
 Another project well on its way to fruition is being carried out by Honeywell&rsquo;s UOP, Envergent Technologies and several other partners. The project will be implemented in two phases, with phase one already complete. At the integrated biorefinery in Kapolei, Hawaiian crops such as macadamia nuts and sugarcane will be sent through a rapid thermal pyrolysis process (RTP) and converted into a liquid biofuel.
 Located at the Tesoro Corp. refinery, the integrated biorefinery will be used to demonstrate viability of the RTP technology, test the fuels produced and evaluate the environmental footprint of the fuels and process technology. Dave Cepla, managing director for Envergent Technologies, says phase one of the project focuses on producing a direct substitution for heavy fuel oil. &ldquo;We will operate that phase for some period of time, and the second phase&mdash;engineering, which is ongoing&mdash;will upgrade the technology, probably beginning during the middle of next year.&rdquo;
 The fuel will then be upgraded into transportation fuels to produce a blend of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, according to Cepla. Regarding feedstock, Cepla says the objective of the project is to produce a wide variety of biomass material native to Hawaii&mdash;grasses, some bagasse, certain trees&mdash;and some that are not indigenous as well. &ldquo;Are resources limited on the island? Certainly,&rdquo; Cepla says. &ldquo;There is only so much land mass. But we&rsquo;re working with commercial developers who are looking toward the future, looking at either acquiring or leasing land on a number of the islands to plant purpose-grown crops in a sustainable fashion. We believe there&rsquo;s enough land mass to be able to sustain a long-term commercial operation on the land.&rdquo;
 Cepla says most of the resources needed for the project requires capabilities not commonly found on the islands, so most are being shipped in. &ldquo;The Hawaiian Islands don&rsquo;t really have a heavy industrial presence, and so most of the skill sets needed from individuals and manufacturing facilities don&rsquo;t exist,&rdquo; he continues.
 Cepla says the project site was chosen for a number of reasons, but mostly because of the partners involved, particularly Tesoro Refining. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve given us land space on which to build the facility, and that was an important element,&rdquo; he says. There are more partners, including the University of Hawaii, and to a great extent the project was driven by those partners and their location.
 Cepla adds that Hawaii is welcoming of projects such as this one. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very dependent on bringing oil in, which is an expensive proposition, so they are heavily invested in trying to find alternatives,&rdquo; he says.
&mdash;Anna Simet

Beginning with Bio-Oil: Phase one of the integrated biorefinery in Kapolei, Hawaii, has been completed.

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Contemplating Connections: Hawaii already has an underwater telecommunication cable system.


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Hawaii strives to stabilize its energy prices with renewables

Aloha Biomass

Synergy Dairy is located in western New York&rsquo;s Wyoming County, one of the leading dairy production regions in the U.S. The 2,000-head farm is now the site of an important milestone for the state&rsquo;s biogas industry.
 It hosts a recently completed 1.4 MW biogas plant, which takes in about 425 tons of waste per day from local food processors, as well as the dairy&rsquo;s cow manure. Not only is the facility the largest on-farm anaerobic digestion (AD) project in the state, it&rsquo;s also New York&rsquo;s first biogas project specifically designed for codigesting animal and food wastes.
 It wasn&rsquo;t a simple feat, and the project almost missed the deadline for $2.8 million in federal energy tax credits, which would have resulted in its demise. Last fall, the power purchaser notified the project's owners that it would be unable to complete hook-up to the power lines until March, delaying startup and disqualifying the project for the tax credits. But with the help of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a strong proponent of renewable energy in the state, the project was able to get back on track and meet the deadline.
 A ribbon cutting ceremony was held in early April, followed by a grand opening in May, and since then, it&rsquo;s been smooth sailing for CH4 Biogas, which owns and operates the facility. With such a significant success story under its belt, the company is ready to offer its experience, services and advice to other farms looking to implement similar projects. Biomass Magazine discussed the project with Lauren Toretta, vice president of CH4 Biogas.
 Biogas projects seem relatively simple at a glance, but often take a great deal of time and effort to implement. What&rsquo;s the most difficult aspect of bringing an on-farm digester project to fruition? 
 Toretta: Financing and legal paperwork are the most difficult aspects. They are the most time-consuming&mdash;lots of moving parts and steps to keep organized and stay on top of, in order to get the financing finalized and the project moving forward.&nbsp;
 How much does a project like this one cost?&nbsp; 
 Toretta: Typically, the range is around $6 to 9 million. Financing and legal costs for our first project were over $1 million. We hope to reduce this on future projects by developing standard agreements.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
 Let&rsquo;s talk feedstock. Aside from manure, where is the food waste coming from, and what kinds of contracts (if any) are in place?
 Toretta: The waste comes from local food processors. It is waste that would otherwise be landfilled or land-applied without treatment. Most of our contracts are short-term, 3 to 5 years.&nbsp; The bulk of our feedstock at Synergy Biogas is manure that is pumped directly from the barns.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 So it&rsquo;s a co-digestion plant.&nbsp; What&rsquo;s different about co-digestion than single feedstock?
 Toretta: The plant is designed to take in and process food-grade organic waste along with manure.&nbsp; The manure is the same from day-to-day in terms of volume and consistency, but the supply and consistency of the food waste is variable. The plant is designed to manage this variability and keep the digestion process (a biological process) running on an even keel. We have front-end receiving tanks to equalize deliveries, as well as grinders and debris traps. We can adjust the relative proportion of manure to food waste fed to the digester from hour to hour.
 What about permitting? What permits did you need, and were they difficult to obtain? 
 Toretta: Typically, there are local zoning permits and environmental permits, and state level air and waste/water permits. The air permits are linked to the engine emissions, which we have good data on through GE Jenbacher. In the case of Synergy, the permits were not hard to obtain. We followed the guidelines, provided documentation, and adhered to the filing and review procedures.&nbsp;
 The project generates 1.4 MW of power.&nbsp; Can you give us any details on your power purchase agreement (PPA)? 
 Toretta: Our plant is a participant in the regional power market administered by the New York Integrated System Operator, which allows us to sell electricity and renewable energy credits to counterparties in New York and New England. We work with a broker, Evolution Markets Inc., to find the best offer.&nbsp; We are currently negotiating a three-year PPA with a New England utility. In the meantime, the local utility National Grid is buying the electricity we generate.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 What makes a location a good candidate for a project of this size and scope?
 Toretta: When we think about an on-farm project, the most important thing is having a good partner. The Synergy dairy is well-managed and progressive. And size matters. We want a farm with at least 1,500 cows and a land base for handling the digested biomass. Next, we look at the availability of food waste in the area and the cost of interconnecting to the power grid. In some rural areas, the cost of interconnection can be prohibitive. Existing infrastructure needs can be a critical limitation to the siting of a plant and for general economic development.
 Has CH4 used a Jenbacher engine in existing projects? It seems they have a very good reputation and track record in the industry. 
 Toretta: For the size engines we&rsquo;re looking at&mdash;1,000 kW/h (kilowatts per hour) to 2000 kW/h&mdash;GE Jenbacher is the market leader in terms of efficiency and reliability. Our partner, Bigadan A/S, builds and operates biogas plants in Europe and is having good success with Jenbacher engines.
 &nbsp; How long, from beginning to end, did the project take to complete? 
 Toretta: From the time we close financing and can order equipment the construction period is less than 12 months. Synergy Biogas took nine months from groundbreaking to commissioning. The schedule is weather-dependent, but our facilities are modular, which makes site installation relatively quick.&nbsp;
Permits, zoning approvals, site design, construction budgets, feedstock agreements, power purchase agreements and loan agreements have to be in place prior to the start of construction. It can take several months of development work to get all these documents and approvals to bring a project to closing.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
 What other projects does CH4 own/operate? Any similar to this one? 
 Toretta: Synergy is our first U.S. facility. Our partner, Danish company Bigadan A/S, has built 45 similar plants around the world, predominantly in Europe. We have several projects in development and plan to start construction on a facility in Ohio in July.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Author: Anna Simet Contributions Editor, Biomass Magazine <a href="mailto:asimet@bbiinternational.com">asimet@bbiinternational.com</a> (701) 751-2756

DELIVER WHEN READY: Frontend receiving tanks are used to provide food waste or manure at an equalized level during the process.

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Along with its partners at Synergy Biogas LLC and GE Energy, CH4 Biogas recently commissioned the largest on-farm anaerobic digestion project in New York state.

Creating  a Biogas Empire

The first-to-market business strategy doesn&rsquo;t reward advanced biofuels or biobased chemical companies because the race to provide drop-in biofuel or renewable chemicals isn&rsquo;t about brand loyalty or opening a facility first, it&rsquo;s about a flawless production process.For Amyris Inc., considered at one time a leader in the race to commercialize renewable chemicals and fuels, that is a good thing. The company revealed earlier this year that it would reign in plans for production at two different facilities because of issues with biofuel production yields. For a company that has already gone public, formed major partnerships and proven that synthetic biology and the use of superbugs could potentially rank near the top of all fuels or chemicals production methods, the announcement was a setback for both stock prices and the assumption that if any company would succeed first, it would be Amyris.
 But don&rsquo;t worry; no giant names such as Microsoft Corp. or Samsung are fighting for brand loyalty in the bioenergy sector by a first-to-market strategy. Just ask Rob Stone, a technology generalist admittedly burdened with an overactive curiosity about everything. Stone, the managing director of equity research for financial services firm Cowen and Co., has been following the clean technology sector since 2005 to provide general investment insight for everything from solar arrays to catalytic hydrocracking methods and the companies that use them. &ldquo;Being first to market and establishing a brand has significance in end markets where it matters to grab consumer mind share,&rdquo; he says, citing iPads or Tablet PCs. But in an enormous, trillion-dollar market like fuels and chemicals, he adds, there is room for multiple players and, in fact, customers want more than one supplier to leverage price.
 In simple terms, for the majority, when we buy gas, we just want the physical product at the lowest price, regardless of the name that goes with it.
 Still, there are benefits of entering the advanced biofuels and biobased chemicals market more quickly than others, Stone points out. Those early entrants will be in a better position to gather additional capital for future expansions and other projects, he says. If the segment of early entrants is profitable, however, some financial backing will go to competitors.
 Technology Over Timing
 LanzaTech knows exactly what Stone means in more ways than one. When Range Fuels&rsquo; plan for an advanced biofuels venture in Soperton, Ga., failed, New Zealand-based LanzaTech pursued the advanced biofuels market using the shuttered biorefinery. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, notes that purchasing the plant made sense because of the existing infrastructure at the facility, as well as the opportunity to tap into the region&rsquo;s available wood basket. Entering the market first, however, holds little relevance to the company&rsquo;s goals, which strive more toward delivering the best possible product through optimal technology. &ldquo;Being first to market will present significant business opportunities,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;However, this is really only the case if your product is able to really deliver. There is no sense rushing through a sub-optimal technology at the expense of being the first.&rdquo;
 In fact, for this industry, both Holmgren and Stone imply that more players in the market is better. &ldquo;We are fortunate to be working in a space where there are multiple players,&rdquo; she says. More approaches and more information, especially from failed ventures, provide companies like LanzaTech with more perspectives that help develop processes further, she added. But failed technologies or businesses are not the same as stalled or slowed ventures, she cautions. Because most companies in the sector are often painted with the same brush, she says, the failure of similar companies can attribute to a fall in confidence in the sector as a whole.
 Stone adds a different point of view, saying that if a technology or company in the sector works, a significant lift occurs in overall valuation for the entire market. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why venture backers and other funders will end up funding a number of companies in the space,&rdquo; he says. Stone believes that that probability makes the advanced biofuels and biobased chemical sector appealing and interesting for investors. &ldquo;There are so many opportunities and the markets are so large and diverse.&rdquo;
 The bioenergy industry does represent a real opportunity, and not just because of the huge financial possibility, or the reality that being first to market doesn&rsquo;t apply. Stone says soon-to-be commercial advanced biofuel producer KiOR Inc. is a good example, with its work on southern yellow pine trees in Mississippi. The company is akin to a vertically integrated oil company that combines production, exploration and refining. Identifying a wood basket is like discovering a well that may never run dry, he says, and the technology of most advanced biofuel firms presents an interesting opportunity that traditional oil and gas companies cannot claim.
 &ldquo;If this stuff (technology like KiOR&rsquo;s) works, unlike an oil well, it will produce level output if not rising output,&rdquo; Stone says, attributing the statement to the fact that a better catalyst for a biofuel process can always be created and the process can be tweaked over the 40-year lifespan most plants will operate. With a traditional oil well, the start of the production process is high based on optimal well pressure, but will be depleted over time. An operation has to use more enhanced recovery techniques to produce the same amount of product because of falling output and higher recovery costs.
 So it seems as though following the leaders and learning from their mistakes might be the best strategy in the advanced biofuels and biochemicals sectors. Author: Luke Geiver Features Editor, Biomass Magazine (701) 738-4944 <a href="mailto:lgeiver@bbiinternational.com">lgeiver@bbiinternational.com</a>

RISE ONLY WHEN READY: For companies like LanzaTech, market entry should come after commercially proven processes, never before.

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TECHNOLOGY TITANS: Not only has Holmgren and LanzaTech planted roots in Georgia, the company has also formed partnerships with the number one and number three steel producers in China.

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MARKET WIZARD: As an equity research manager for a financial services company, Stone has to understand the magic of syngas or solar arrays.

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Being first on the scene is beneficial in many markets, but advanced biofuels may not be one of them. 

Forget First  to Market

In early June, I had the privilege of attending a tour of the Burgess Biomass Power Project in Berlin, N.H., sponsored by Babcock &amp; Wilcox, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor. I am sharing their story as an example of a biomass facility at the center of a revitalizing town&mdash;where the market and the local government have similar needs that are being met by biomass.
 At 75 MW, the project brings almost 500 jobs to a region of New Hampshire that's been hit hard by the economic downturn. This would not have been possible without a long-term contract for the power, negotiated between the developers and the local utility, Public Service of New Hampshire.
 It all began in May 2006, with the closing of a 150-year-old-plus paper mill. For most of the northern New Hampshire town's recent history, the mill had been the center of economic activity and&mdash;despite the mill's shrinking size as the dawn of the Internet decreased demand for paper&mdash;remained the top employer for the town of 10,000 residents, until the day it shut down.
 For several years, the lot that had been home to the historic paper mill remained empty as the town debated what to do with the land, and more importantly, how to restore the jobs that were lost with the mill.
 In 2010, after four years of debate during which the buildings and the former paper mill began to fall into disrepair, a developer purchased the land and buildings to build a biomass plant.
 In addition to putting to use a vacant lot that had once been the center of the community, the new biomass plant would employ former paper mill workers who would do jobs that fall within their expertise. Additionally, the new biomass plant would use the very same boiler that had been implemented by the paper mill.
 The biomass plant project, which has been permitted and is being developed by Cate Street Capital, is currently in the construction phase. The project enjoys lots of support from local government and residents in Berlin. In September 2011, upon Cate Street Capital's closing for project financing, Berlin Mayor Paul Grenier said, "I think this is the beginning of a new economic era for the city of Berlin."
 Berlin&rsquo;s story is just one example of the market and regulatory environments aligning to support a project that will provide much-needed jobs and clean energy. Another is in Washington state, where government recently passed a law that reaffirms the jobs potential and carbon neutrality of biomass, and extends renewable energy status to previously unrecognized, older biomass facilities. And there are many other examples across the country.
 The lesson here is that, with regards to energy, market needs and government needs are not mutually exclusive&mdash;and biomass can often help overcome both the economic and environmental challenges. Author: Bob Cleaves President and CEO, Biomass Power Association <a href="http://www.USABiomass.org">www.USABiomass.org</a> <a href="mailto:bob@biomasspowerassociation.com">bob@biomasspowerassociation.com</a>

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The Role of State Governments in  Supporting Biomass Power

I am continually struck by the number of professionals, and the variety of their responsibilities, that are involved in the development of any biomass-to-energy project. From the first spark of an idea for a project&rsquo;s development through the commissioning phase, the assembled body of professional expertise is staggering. Furthermore, every project that succeeds and begins delivering renewable power, heat or fuels is testimony to the expertise and commitment of every professional involved.
 This month in Biomass Magazine, we examine the professionals who pursue, shape and fulfill the off take agreements, contracts and power purchase agreements (PPAs) that ultimately are the driving force behind this industry. Any sales professional will remind you that &ldquo;nothing happens until somebody sells something,&rdquo; and the energy sector&nbsp; is no exception. Featured this month is a close look at the role contracts play in not only&nbsp; any specific project&rsquo;s development, but also how contracts and PPAs collectively form a foundation of a steady and reliable energy product supply.
 Luke Geiver&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Contract Concepts&rdquo; outlines the role of pellet supply contracts in providing surety to waiting utility customers who cannot tolerate any supply interruption or quality inconsistency.&nbsp; He features insights from contract experts including Henry Pease, a senior biofuel portfolio manager for RWE, who sources nearly 3 million tons of wood pellets annually from all over the globe.
 In Anna Simet&rsquo;s story&nbsp; &ldquo;Power Purchase Plays,&rdquo; she establishes the relationship between a PPA and a project&rsquo;s ability to attract and convince a conservative lending community. The professionals she spoke with remind us that biomass energy competes with other renewables but, as evidenced by her conversations with South Carolina utility Santee Cooper, biomass can and does win its fair share of the market because of its reliable and consistent base-load qualities.
 Finally, I&rsquo;d like to draw your attention to the expanded biomass coverage you can expect in Biomass Magazine. This month&rsquo;s issue focuses on the conversion of biomass into not only renewable kilowatts and Btu, but also liquid fuels and next- generation renewable chemicals. In covering the industry, we&rsquo;ve often found that stories about inputs, conversion technologies and projects couldn&rsquo;t be confined to heat or power but had applicability in fuels and chemicals as well. To tell the whole story, the fuel and chemical components had to be discussed. And so it is with the biomass industry as a whole. To tell the entire biomass story, we have to talk about all of its energy product possibilities. In fact, perhaps the strongest argument for the continued advancement of the biomass-to-energy industry is biomass&rsquo;s ability to be converted into every energy product the U.S. and world consume. No other renewable energy input can boast that, and Biomass Magazine&rsquo;s new editorial scope should be construed as a celebration of biomass&rsquo;s unrivaled output flexibility.

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Contracts as Industry Marching Orders

In columns I have authored during the last two years, I have described the increased challenges facing the advanced biofuels industry.&nbsp; Today, I welcome the opportunity to now share with you the political, legislative and regulatory landscape we face in Washington; the challenges, opportunities and achievements of our industry, and to a greater degree, the renewable energy sector.&nbsp; Usually I like to take a closer look at a particular issue, whether that&rsquo;s tax policy, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, or even the challenges facing the renewable fuel standard (RFS).&nbsp; But this past month in Washington could best be described as an avalanche, on all fronts, against all biofuels.
 Let&rsquo;s start with the recently announced program from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. DOE and the USDA. Folks, this is the first year the government was attempting to prudently invest $510 million federal dollars over the next three years from the Defense Production Act to assist, on a match basis, with the building of new plants to manufacture drop-in renewable fuels for use by America&rsquo;s Armed Forces. The avalanche I mentioned began as the House Armed Services Committee, by a vote of 32 to 29, placed a measure into play that requires the Pentagon&rsquo;s purchase of advanced biofuels to be at parity cost with existing fuels.&nbsp; That action can&rsquo;t be mistaken for anything else but an unreasonable hurdle in the road to further developing and commercializing advanced biofuels.
 The action continued in the House Appropriations Committee, where the majority removed any money for use by the DOE and DOD through the DPA.&nbsp; Though following significant assistance from the White House, their colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to keep full funding of the DOE&rsquo;s component.&nbsp; Now we await the full Senate Appropriations Committee vote on the DOD portion, which as of press time appears to be intact, despite substantial efforts to remove it.
 With all of the legislative maneuvering that potentially could delay our future commercial success, we had some encouraging action as lawmakers agreed on the funding of the energy title in the Senate Agriculture Committee, to the tune of $800 million for BCAP and other elements for biofuels in the Farm Bill.&nbsp; Though a handful of amendments would have&nbsp; discontinued the energy title and the entire RFS, the Senate voted against them and the Farm Bill was passed with our renewables programs unscathed. Now it's a waiting game, as the energy title must survive the House.&nbsp;
 Through all of this there is good news, as a significant number of entities from the airline industry, the environment community, the U.S. Farm Bureau, the military establishment and the biofuels industry, to name just a few, have circled the wagons and worked together like no other point in our history. We can all see the potential leadership position the U.S. has before it; our nation could once again be an industry-changing innovator that the rest of the world would follow. Developing renewable energy alternatives is an inevitable part of our shared global future, and America should help lead the way, not turn its back on it.&nbsp; Time for us all to get to work. Author: Michael McAdams President, Advanced Biofuels Association (202)469-5140 <a href="mailto:michael.mcadams@hklaw.com">michael.mcadams@hklaw.com</a>

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Renewables Fight Underway in Washington

In June, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that two new Biomass Crop Assistance Program project areas will be developed and another existing BCAP project area will be expanded through the help of a $9.6 million funding round.
 In New York, ReEnergy Holding LLC will enroll 3,500 acres in a fast-growing shrub willow that will be used to help the biomass power developer generate more than 100 MW. The biomass company already has three facilities that have committed to purchasing the shrub feedstock. Part of the project will include support from the &ldquo;Come Farm With Us,&rdquo; campaign, a program that targets new and beginning farmers from the St. Regis Mohawk reservation located only 15 miles from one of the committed facilities.&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp; Chemtex International, a division of Gruppo Mossi &amp; Ghisolfi, an advanced biofuels, biobased chemical and renewable energy developer based out of Italy, has been awarded roughly $4 million from the USDA to develop 4,000 acres of miscanthus and switchgrass in North Carolina. The energy crop project areas will be spread throughout 11 counties, and the energy crops will be used, in part, for Project Alpha, a 20 MMgy cellulosic ethanol biorefinery that will also produce onsite biogas for power generation, set for startup in 2014 in Sampson County, N.C. The feedstock planting, mitigation and monitoring will be led by Repreve Renewables LLC, a Georgia-based energy crop developer. Farmers will receive both establishment assistance and five years of annual production support from the BCAP funding, according to the USDA.
 A northeast Arkansas project area already established through BCAP support will expand acreage for giant miscanthus grown throughout three counties to almost 8,000 acres. The project area is sponsored and run by the partnership of MFA Oil and Aloterra Energy LLC called MFA Oil Biomass LLC. The energy crops will be used for fuel pellets for export and in-farm heating and biobased packaging, according to the USDA.
&mdash;Luke Geiver

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Project area funding is awarded in New York, North Carolina and Arkansas

BCAP Back in Action 

Advanced biofuels and biochemical company LS9 Inc. reached a new benchmark with the June 12 opening of its demonstration-scale biorefinery in Okeechobee, Fla. A retrofit of the plant was completed in May, with large-scale production expected to commence during the third quarter of 2012.
 The facility features 1,000- and 35,600-gallon fermenters, which are expected to produce approximately 75,000 gallons of product annually. LS9&rsquo;s technology is capable of producing a wide variety of products, including biodiesel, biobased jet fuel, specialty esters and fatty alcohols. The process has been demonstrated with several feedstocks, including biomass hydrolysate, glycerin, molasses and sweet sorghum syrup. The company has announced that biodiesel will be one of the first products produced at the plant.
 According to LS9, the demonstration-scale plant will be used to enhance production capabilities and generate large commercial samples for testing and product qualification. The company also intends to use the facility to test and optimize new process conditions in the future.
 &ldquo;The opening of our demonstration plant in Florida moves LS9 from a development company towards becoming a fully integrated commercial organization,&rdquo; saysEd Dineen, LS9 president and CEO. The Florida Opportunity Fund&rsquo;s Clean Energy Investment Program invested $4.5 million to help fund the retrofit of the facility. In addition to making the necessary adjustments to implement LS9&rsquo;s production technology, the company notes that retrofit activities also focused on reducing energy consumption through the use of technologies such as variable speed drivers and advanced computer control systems.
&mdash;Erin Voegele

Ribbon Cutting : (L-R) LS9 Vice President of Operations Greg Rood, Florida State Representative Steve Perman, LS9 President and CEO Ed Dineen, Florida Opportunity Fund President Louis Laubscher, and Florida Opportunity Fund Program Manager Jennifer D

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New LS9 Inc. biorefinery in Florida will produce biodiesel first 


Demonstrating Progress 

Something special is happening with a research project focused on two white rot fungi genomes. Led by the U.S. DOE&rsquo;s Joint Genome Institute, a team of international researchers is collaborating on a project to sequence and analyze the fungi strains to understand how enzymes present in the fungi break down plant biomass. It&rsquo;s not the research that is special, however, it&rsquo;s the number of people working on the project, revealing that the continual quest for super enzymes used to break down biomass is not only a strong trend in the field of bioenergy research, it&rsquo;s a popular area of research to be in.
 &ldquo;The fact that we have such a large group of people involved in this project is a clear demonstration that there&rsquo;s certainly interest in enzyme discovery,&rdquo; says Dan Cullen, senior author of the research study and a member of the USDA&rsquo;s Agricultural Forest Service&rsquo;s Forest Products Laboratory. In the study, &ldquo;Comparative genomics of Ceriporiopsis subvermispora and Phanerochaete chrysosporium provide insight into selective ligninolysis,&rdquo; Cullen and his huge team analyzed C. subvermispora and P. chrysosporium, finding large differences in the way each breaks down lignin. According to Cullen, few fungi have the capability to degrade lignin in the first place, and even fewer have the ability to selectively remove lignin at such an efficient rate. &ldquo;C. subvermispora is one exception in its ability to do just that,&rdquo; he said.
 Interest in the lignin degrading fungi didn&rsquo;t start with this research project, however. Kent Kirk, a former researcher at FPL says work with the fungi strain first started at the University of Minnesota, where researchers were working to improve the concept of biopulping, a method of turning woody biomass into pulp for the pulp and paper industry by exposing the woody biomass to the C. subvermispora fungi for two weeks, a process that reduced energy processing costs of the biomass by 30 percent. Although the process was only completed at a 50-ton scale, Kirk says rising energy costs could make biopulping more popular. The work will also help researchers understand the process and the applicable enzymes that can help reduce the costs to process biomass feedstock for bioenergy purposes.
 The research by Cullen&rsquo;s team certainly won&rsquo;t hurt. Angel Martinez, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid may have found the reason why the fungus works well to degrade lignin. According the Martinez, the C. subvermispora fungus has more manganese peroxidases and laccase, enzymes that speed lignin degradation. On top of that, the team also discovered new enzymes not previously recognized in the C. subvermispora strain.
 Although Cullen points out that the cellulose degrading portion of the fungi could be repressed and requires further study, he believes more of the same will continue the progress the team has made in understanding the power of the biopulping fungus C. submvermispora. &ldquo;To really make direct progress on understanding the mechanism of selective lignin degradation,&rdquo; he says, the development of more experimental tools and the use of more genetic analysis are needed.
 That shouldn&rsquo;t be a problem given the role of Igor Grigoriev. Grigoriev leads the JGI Fungal Genomics Program, where he says his team is currently working on 20 similar fungi strain genome analysis projects. &ldquo;This should provide us a better understanding of the diverse and complex mechanisms of lignocellulose degradation in fungi, the influence of these mechanisms on carbon cycling in the forest ecosystem, and ultimately,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;lead to improvements in biopulping.&rdquo;&nbsp;
&mdash;Luke Geiver

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Lignin degradation research is hip, and it could cut costs on biomass processing

Biopulping's Role in Bioenergy 

Sweden&rsquo;s subarctic forest range is setting records. A research team consisting of six Swedish scientists has found that over roughly the past 15 years, forest density and the average tree-line height in the region has increased by 19 percent. In addition, a new survey of shrub, tree and vegetation data on 549 plots in 61 forest clusters originally collected and analyzed in 1997 was performed by the team using in-field testing and remote sensing, revealing that over the past 43 years, &ldquo;tree biomass has doubled.&rdquo;
 According to the team, &ldquo;tree basal area and biomass increased by 19 percent between 1997 and 2010 with the main increase occurring in established birch forest.&rdquo; The results concur with the results of other studies that suggest that there has been a general increase in cover and biomass of trees and shrubs in subarctic and Arctic areas. Those studies were performed in 2001, 2006, 2007, two in 2010 and another in 2011.
 So what does all this mean? According the research team, in spite of increased browsing pressure from a growing reindeer population and the occasional outburst from moths that eat away at birch trees located in the study region, there is simply more tree growth and biomass availability in the region now than before. The group calls the situation a &ldquo;welcome phenomenon,&rdquo; and says that, &ldquo;increased nutrient availability associated with higher soil temperatures and a longer growing season,&rdquo; could continue the expansion of the forest.
 For biomass developers and biomass users in Sweden, the obvious impact of a growing woody biomass resource could mean anything from cheaper feedstock for biomass-based power, or an expansion of more bioenergy use in the region. However, for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a group that also took notice of the study, the work of the Swedish research team might help explain a theme supported by the center. In its quest to provide their version of non-emotionally charged, unbiased information regarding the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the center believes that a warming earth will benefit plants, not cause their extinction. Right or wrong, six Swedish scientists who&rsquo;ve shown a 19 percent increase in biomass density and tree line height that is linked to warmer soil and a longer growing season might help their argument.
&mdash;Luke Geiver

Greater Growth: Biomass-based power stations in Sweden, such as the one pictured here, will benefit from a greater abundance of regional biomass.

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Since 1997, subarctic forests are thicker and taller than ever before	

Sweden's Growing Wood Basket 

Several measures that could impact the biorefining industry have recently been addressed by Congress. One such initiative aims to create a federal production tax credit for biochemicals. The legislation, titled the Qualifying Renewable Chemical Production Tax Credit Act of 2012, or H.R. 4953, would establish a production tax credit of 15 cents per pound of eligible content of renewable chemicals produced during the taxable year. The measure was introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., and has been referred to the House Ways and Means committee.
 Under the bill, the term &ldquo;eligible content&rdquo; is defined to include the biobased percentage of the total mass of organic carbon within a renewable chemical, while a renewable chemical is defined as one produced using biomass that is sold or used in the production of polymers, plastics, or formulated products not used in the production of food, feed or fuel. The tax credit would not apply to chemicals that contain less than 25 percent biobased content, or to biochemical that were produced at rates of 10 million pounds or more during 2000.
 Another measure introduced by Reps. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., and Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., aims to modify the definition of biobased materials to include forest products in the USDA&rsquo;s BioPreferred program. The bill is titled the Forest Products Fairness Act of 2012, or H.R. 5873.
 The BioPreferred program was created by the 2002 Farm Bill and includes two primary initiatives; product labeling and federal procurement. The labeling portion of the program allows products meeting certain biobased content specifications to label their product with a BioPreferred seal, which is designed to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. The federal procurement component gives preference to the purchase of biobased products by government entities.
 Under the current program guidelines, paper, wood and pulp products are not considered qualified biobased materials for either labeling or federal procurement. H.B. 5873 would change those guidelines to make products like pulp, paper, paperboard, pellets, wood products and any recycled products derived from forest materials eligible for the program.
 However, not all congressional actions have been in support of the biobased industry. The U.S. Senate and House recently took action to undermine military efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil by stripping funding for biofuels initiatives in their respective versions of the defense authorization bill. The House version prohibits the U.S. Department of Defense from pursing a public-private initiative for advanced biofuels, and would repeal Section 526 of the 2007 Energy Bill. The Senate Committee on Armed Services included legislative components that limit the military from buying biofuel using fiscal year 2013 funds if the cost is higher than that of petroleum-based fuels in its version of the legislation. In addition, the bill would bar the DOD from entering into a contract plan to design or construct a biofuels refinery or any other facility or infrastructure used to refine biofuels, unless specifically authorized by law. Additional amendments could be offered when the bills are subject to floor debate later this year.
&mdash;Erin Voegele

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Federal lawmakers address biomass, biochemicals and biofuels 

Congressional Action 

While some advanced biofuel projects have struggled to reach construction goals, construction of KiOR Inc.&rsquo;s first commercial-scale plant has proceeded ahead of schedule. In late May, the company announced that its Columbus, Miss.-based plant is 100 percent mechanically complete. The announcement was delivered as part of the company&rsquo;s first quarter 2012 financials. Under the original construction schedule, the plant would have been 90 percent mechanically complete at that time.
 &ldquo;Earlier this year I challenged [KBR Inc.] and our construction management team to find ways to accelerate our construction within our defined budget,&rdquo; says Fred Cannon, KiOR president and CEO. &ldquo;As they have at every turn throughout this history-making project, the Columbus team delivered beyond my expectations in a safe, environmentally conscious and effective manner. I am pleased to report that Columbus is 100 percent mechanically complete and we have commenced our commissioning plan.&rdquo;
 Despite the accelerated construction schedule, Cannon says that the project also appears to be coming in slightly below the anticipated $222 million budget. &ldquo;All of us here at KiOR are understandably proud not only to have delivered what we promised, but to have exceeded even our own internal expectations.&rdquo; Although some speculated that it would take two years to complete the project, the Columbus plant took only 13 months to build.
 According to Cannon, commissioning and startup activities are expected to take between 12 and 16 weeks. He also notes that considering this is a first-of-kind commercial plant, it is possible the schedule could be delayed. However, Cannon stresses that he fully expects the new plant to be producing cellulosic biofuels during the second half of 2012, with full capacity reached within six to 12 months. Once that level of production is reached, Cannon says that KiOR will focus its efforts on optimizing the production process to maximize yields, initially targeting 67 gallons per ton sometime in 2013.
&mdash;Erin Voegele

Expediting Production: KiOR Inc. completed construction of its first plant ahead of schedule. Once operational, the facility will convert biomass into biobased crude oil.

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Accelerated Development

Wood pellet producers and biomass providers searching for a North America-to-Europe export supply contract will eventually find Henry Pease. As the senior biofuel portfolio manager for RWE&rsquo;s Supply &amp; Trading division, Pease leads a biomass trading and procurement group for the giant German utility provider. &ldquo;We source between 2 to 3 million tons of wood pellets (annually) from all over the world,&rdquo; he says, and because of his place in the global biomass market and his continual search for biomass, Pease says his team is familiar with all of the established producers and most of the companies close to startup, whether they operate in Finland or Florida.
 When Pease and his European counterparts talk about biomass trading and procurement, and generally comprehending the wood pellet export/import market, two things become clear: experience is favored, yet change is inevitable. They explained the basics of wood pellet supply contracts, the truths of long-term agreements, and why, even though firms like Pease&rsquo;s prefer to work with established biomass suppliers, the wood pellet supply contracts of the future will be formed with companies that don&rsquo;t yet exist in the marketplace today.
 Pellet Contract Basics
 To start, all biomass and pellet suppliers based in North America need to know that as the biomass fuel heads towards Europe, as Pease explains, &ldquo;the boat doesn&rsquo;t always finish where it said it was going to finish.&rdquo; The final destination of a cargo ship loaded with biomass however, should be of little concern to those who produced the biomass. From Pease&rsquo;s perspective, a pellet producer or biomass supplier should be concerned with two things only: producing, and continuing to drop the price of production. &ldquo;Our role as a trader is to optimize the supply chain,&rdquo; Pease says, &ldquo;to have a portfolio of supplies. Producers do what they do, whether they are a large producer or a small producer, their job is to make pellets as economically as they can.&rdquo;
 For contract agreements, the ability of a producer to do his job is also a main staple of how contracts are formed. &ldquo;A company that already exists and knows what he is doing isn&rsquo;t looking for the same offtake contract as someone that is coming to the market new,&rdquo; he points out. &ldquo;If you need equity or you need debt then you need different things in the offtake.&rdquo; The main point Pease makes about forming a contract however, is that his firm tries to match up what it can offer with what its investors (power plants and end users) need.
 Different buyers can do different things, he explains. Some can offer longer tenure, some can buy more on a tons/year basis, others can manage the freight from the production facility to the port to the end location, and, he adds, where an end user buys the biomass can greatly vary from the physical power station to a specific port or in some cases, even a specific boat.
 After a firm such as Pease&rsquo;s hashes out the needs of a buyer (a two-year contract for 200,000 tons delivered to a Belgium port through monthly shipments, for example), the next step in the process is to match up the ability of the producer with the need of the buyer to form the contract, all based on that dynamic.
 A typical supply agreement links a biomass trader or procurement specialist like Pease, with the biomass producer. In most, if not all cases, a producer will not be working directly with the end user. The typical cargo ship can carry 25,000 to 45,000 tons per load and a pellet provider or woodchip supplier will get paid every time a shipment arrives at port. Although most North American biomass suppliers would prefer a contract supply length of 10 or more years, Pease says the norm is anywhere from two to five years. The average installed capacity of a pellet mill participating in a supply contract can vary widely, (most are above 70,000 tons/year), and although the nature of biomass makes quick shipments or the presence of a large spot market a major portion of the overall supply market, there are enough companies or people currently operating in the market to show why single shipment and short-term contracts (months not years) do exist.
 Simon Christensen, storage, logistics and sales specialist for Copenhagen Merchants, a biomass trading and procurement firm, knows all about short term contract basics. Christensen says his company began operating in the pellet supply markets after a number of smaller mills in the Baltic markets voiced their need to aggregate their volumes in order to meet the needs of buyers with demands too large to be met by a single producer. &ldquo;There is always a market for long-term contracts,&rdquo; he points out, &ldquo;but there is also always a place for spot contracts.&rdquo;
 Christensen&rsquo;s firm trades more than 500,000 tons per year of biomass, half of which are spot- or short-term contracts that are for one- to three-month supply shipment periods. Another large portion of his business is what he considers a long-term contract, a term of roughly one to one and a half years in length. No matter what the length of the contract term is however, Christensen points out that a contract agreement can be initiated from both sides of the value chain and most importantly, &ldquo;the process is never a one off.&rdquo;
 Biomass Trader Truths
 Although Christensen&rsquo;s assertion about the repeatability of the supply contract formation process makes it sound as if every pellet producer entering into an agreement will be operating under a set of unique and potentially problematic circumstances each time product is ready for shipment, don&rsquo;t worry. Christensen, like Pease, can cite numerous examples of how or why contracts are formed. Consider this, Christensen says, sometimes it is the producers who approach first, explaining their desire to sell around a specific price. In other cases, the opposite is true, and a buyer will approach a biomass trader seeking a specific tonnage at a specific price, by of course, a specific date.
 Luckily for pellet producers or biomass suppliers, people like Christensen and Pease have an extensive portfolio of producers to meet the changing demands of larger buyers, which in turn, Christensen points out, makes the appeal of biomass to large European utilities greater due to the constant and readily available supply of biomass that is tracked, secured and ready because of trading and procurement firms. The best part is that with more biomass usage, more will only follow because of the stability of the supply market.
 &ldquo;As a trader we like having products with different specifications with different load ports with vessels that have different sizes,&rdquo; Pease says, &ldquo;because that means different power stations in different countries can have different demands and needs and we can try and match it all together.&rdquo;
 &ldquo;We always have stores in different places,&rdquo; Pease says, &ldquo;We can sort of balance out the needs of small producers,&rdquo; and, according to Christensen, large buyers. Throughout most of the year, a small producer he says, needs to have a low stock on hand and have access to fast cash loads.
 &ldquo;When you are building a pellet plant,&rdquo; Pease explains, &ldquo;you are trying to sell 80 to 90 percent of what you think you are going to produce upfront, so there is not a lot of wiggle room there.&rdquo; Unfortunately, problems arise for either side. Both Pease and Christensen had to deal with the backlash of a massive fire at a massive biomass power plant, Tilbury Power Station, this year that Pease says, &ldquo;severely disrupted the whole supply chain.&rdquo; The job of Pease and Christensen is to manage that, sell product to other end users, store product or in some cases, pay people not to produce. &ldquo;Our job is to sit in the middle of the ripples and try to smooth them out a little bit,&rdquo; Pease says.
 Smoothing out the process only helps the procurement firms shore up the future, according to Christensen, who says that any notion that a procurement firm will not pay out on a contract or fail at some point in the process is a nonsensical assertion, because as the middleman, two sides need to stay happy, not just one. &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t deliver (for the producer or the buyer) I&rsquo;m out of it. I would argue that the main risk is on my side.&rdquo;
 To reduce that risk, both Christensen and Pease have a few thoughts on how to de-risk, or as Pease implies, to de-ripple the supply contract process. First and foremost comes stability by the producer, in both production and quality of the biomass supplied, something they look for in every contract. Then, Pease explains, producers need to think hard about how they operate. &ldquo;A lot of new companies operate with very few people,&rdquo; he points out, a situation that is usually difficult because there are so many aspects to the industry that a handful of people can&rsquo;t typically perform.
 As for payment plans, Pease says they prefer to pay North American producers in U.S. dollars instead of Euros because a pellet production team typically is not going to convert the money because of the amount of money required to do so, or the time. As for biomass supply aggregation models that bring multiple pellet producers or biomass suppliers together to fill a tonnage request of a large buyer, both Pease and Christensen say the model can and will work. &ldquo;It is perfectly feasible,&rdquo; Pease says, &ldquo;there are some issues they need to get past like sustainability and standardizing quality, but they can certainly do it.&rdquo;
 And that is exactly what Christensen hopes will happen. His firm is working with a group in Florida to form an aggregation model, because as he says, &ldquo;We see a big rise in demand, and a big rise in supply,&rdquo; regarding their outlook on the industry.
 Nicole Forsberg, a researcher at Lund University in Sweden studying the opportunities and barriers to growth in the European biomass market, reminds us why pellet producers or biomass suppliers should be bothering to link up with traders and procurers. &ldquo;In the EU,&rdquo; Forsberg says, &ldquo;demand far outweighs the EU&rsquo;s domestic forest supply capabilities, so,&rdquo; and this should be a clear enough reason, &ldquo;import is the only answer, even long-term.&rdquo; One should also keep in mind, she says, that if the imported pellets turn out to be cheaper than the EU&rsquo;s domestic supply, the import demand will be even higher. Currently, she says, imports from North America are mainly headed to the Netherlands, the U.K. or Belgium, due to the big harbors where large amounts can be imported.
 But, even though Forsberg&rsquo;s entire research platform is based on understanding the atmosphere of the export/import of biomass to/from Europe, the best reminder of why contract supply agreements matter comes from the person with the greatest risk, the middleman in this case, people like Christensen who have to appease two parties to make money. &ldquo;I believe if we are good,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;if we follow this market, there will be plenty of opportunities for skilled traders.&rdquo; Author: Luke Geiver Features Editor, Biomass Magazine (701) 738-4944 <a href="mailto:lgeiver@bbiinternational.com">lgeiver@bbiinternational.com</a>

AFTER TILBURY: An explosion at the Tilbury Power Station earlier this year forced biomass suppliers to alter their trading and procurement plans. 


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BIOMASS ON THE BRAIN: Forsberg is researching the opportunities for biomass imports into Europe at the University of Lund.

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GREEN STORAGE: Wood pellet storage silos like this are a staple of all Copenhagen Merchantâ€™s receiving locations. 

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From spot purchases to multi-year deals, producers, buyers and brokers must know their way around supply agreements. 

July 2012

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

The Global Energy Market Welcomes US

FEW: A True Industry Event

Get Onboard: Tips to Meeting Success

Europe's Complete Denaturing Obsession

The Wyoming Oil Embargo of 2012

RFS Results in Enumerable Benefits

US Ethanol Industry Helps Households Make Ends Meet

Financing of Feedstock Supply

The Role of State Governments in Supporting Biomass Power

Contracts as Industry Marching Orders

Renewables Fight Underway in Washington

Featured

Mycotoxins: A Pain in the Ear

Octane: What's in Your Fuel?

Stepping Up to a New Facility

The Battle for the RFS

Dropping Water Use

Creating a Biogas Empire

Forget First to Market

Contract Concepts

Power Purchase Plays

Contributions

Stainless Steels: Cost-effective Materials

Protecting Ethanol Plants from Catastrophic Combustible Dust Explosions

Sweet Sorghum, Other Sugar Crops Show Promise

July 2012.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

The Global Energy Market Welcomes US

FEW: A True Industry Event

Get Onboard: Tips to Meeting Success

Europe's Complete Denaturing Obsession

The Wyoming Oil Embargo of 2012

RFS Results in Enumerable Benefits

US Ethanol Industry Helps Households Make Ends Meet

Financing of Feedstock Supply

The Role of State Governments in Supporting Biomass Power

Contracts as Industry Marching Orders

Renewables Fight Underway in Washington

Featured

Mycotoxins: A Pain in the Ear

Octane: What's in Your Fuel?

Stepping Up to a New Facility

The Battle for the RFS

Dropping Water Use

Creating a Biogas Empire

Forget First to Market

Contract Concepts

Power Purchase Plays

Contributions

Stainless Steels: Cost-effective Materials

Protecting Ethanol Plants from Catastrophic Combustible Dust Explosions

Sweet Sorghum, Other Sugar Crops Show Promise

July 2012