I woke up Sat., Dec. 1, 2012, to a front page headline in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus Leader that made this former South Dakota farm boy mad! The headline read &ldquo;AAA issues warning on E15.&rdquo;&nbsp; I was raised on the farm, and after a short career in teaching, I have been in the motor business for the past 42 years. I founded both the Association for Motor Club Marketing and Travelers Motor Club. Based on my experience, I could not understand what AAA was talking about. I knew off the top of my head that ethanol had reduced road service calls for our corporations because ethanol use had reduced wintertime gas line freeze. As a principle owner of AMCM and Travelers Motor Club, representing over 19 million members, my next move was to contact our claims departments to see how many road service claims we could attribute to ethanol use. An initial road service analysis of past claims could not attribute one single service call to ethanol use. I immediately ordered the monitoring of all road service claims going forward to determine if AAA knew something about E15 that we didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; After two years of monitoring claims, we shared our claim history with the American Coalition for Ethanol and Growth Energy. We reported to both groups that after two years of claims monitoring we could not attribute one claim to ethanol use. Today we can report that during a four-year period, we still cannot report one claim attributed to ethanol use, E15 or any blend, for that matter. Since sharing our real-life claim history with ethanol industry leaders, we have made two trips to Washington, D.C., to convey a very simple message to Congress and the U.S. EPA. Our four-year record of monitoring motor service claims indicates ethanol poses no problem, so when AAA spouts oil industry talking points about E15 damage, we demand that AAA provide its real-life road service claim history. We are confident that AAA&rsquo;s claims mirror ours. Besides sharing our findings with decision makers in our nation&rsquo;s capital, we also have lobbied in favor of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) and sent a letter of support to the mayor and city council of Chicago during their E15 debate. I have also had the opportunity to be interviewed a number of times on the radio to tell our claims history. Long story short, we are doing all we can do to tell the truth about ethanol and encourage AAA to tell its story about E15 claims, rather than repeating the petroleum industry&rsquo;s self-serving talking points. We did not engage in this fight for E15 and the RFS to sell motor club memberships. We just wanted to set the record straight and to support rural America. We believe the ethanol industry has done a great job of adding to our nation&rsquo;s security through oil independence and contributing to a cleaner environment. Add that to the economic benefits of ethanol for farmers and small town America, and it makes it easy for us to stand up and set the record straight. With that being said, we do want to thank the many ethanol industry individuals who have purchased motor club memberships and the ethanol plants that have gifted their shareholders and employees with AMCM memberships. We are going to continue to stand up for ethanol and rural America. We are going to continue to pressure AAA to talk about its claims and not petroleum industry studies. If you or your ethanol plant would like us to address your board of directors meeting, shareholders meeting or a community event to tell our real life motor club claims story, we are available and more than willing to do so. Author: Gene Hammond CEO, Association Motor Club Marketing 605-261-6083 ghammond@travlersmotorclub.com

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Guest columnist for ACE's Grassroots Voice column in the November EPM writes about the AMCM and Travelers Motor Club experiences with ethanol. 

Auto Club Monitoring  Proves Ethanol Blending Safe

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration published its final rule in May on electronic submission of occupational injury and illness data. While it does not change employers&rsquo; existing obligations to collect, maintain and certify injury and illness records, it does require electronic submission of certain records by some employers.&nbsp; Under the new rule, establishments with 250 or more employees subject to OSHA&rsquo;s recordkeeping regulation must electronically submit certain information from the Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300); the Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300A); and the Injury and Illness Incident Report (Form 301). In 2017, the deadline for submitting only form 300A is July 1 and in 2018, the deadline for all three forms is July 1. Starting in 2019, the electronic submission deadline is March 2. Smaller establishments with 20 to 249 employees in certain high-risk industries must electronically submit Form 300A. High-risk industries generally include construction, manufacturing, a wide variety of trucking and transportation industries, warehousing and storage.&nbsp; The list of regulated industries is available on the OSHA website at &ldquo;Recordkeeping: NAICS Codes for Electronic Submission.&rdquo; The submission deadline for form 300A for this category is July 1 in 2017 and 2018 and March 2, beginning in 2019. Establishments with fewer than 20 employees at all times during the year do not have to routinely submit information electronically to OSHA, unless otherwise advised. OSHA requires employers to count full-time, part-time, seasonal and temporary workers for purposes of the new regulation. The electronic reporting process is expected to improve OSHA&rsquo;s ability to analyze workplace injury and illness trends, respond to statistically significant indicators, and engage its compliance and enforcement activities more efficiently. Significantly, OSHA also has indicated its intent to disclose on its website some of the data collected as a means of encouraging employers to improve the level of occupational safety and health in their worksites. OSHA comments it has effective safeguards in place to prevent disclosure of personally identifiable information. The new rule also requires that employers &ldquo;establish a reasonable procedure for employees to report work-related injuries and illnesses promptly and accurately.&rdquo; Procedures cannot deter or discourage reporting and the rule prohibits employers from discharging or discriminating against any employee for reporting a work-related injury or illness. The deadline to inform employees of the new rules is Nov. 1. Employers should confirm they are using the current OSHA-approved posting which can be found at www.osha.gov/Publications/poster.html. Under the new retaliation-free environment rules, employers will want to evaluate several common workplace programs. OSHA believes underreporting is a potential result of programs such as safety incentive awards (monetary or prizes) based upon low incidents of workplace injuries or lost workdays. A recent OSHA pilot program, W-SVEP, covering the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and companies under federal enforcement in Iowa extends the OSHA&rsquo;s Severe Violator Enforcement Program to alleged retaliation complaints found to have merit, including &ldquo;where a company has a rate-based incentive program for work-related injuries.&rdquo; OSHA also views certain rigid reporting requirements as having a chilling effect. OSHA notes &ldquo;Many employers have policies that require the immediate reporting of a work-related injury by the worker and, for some employers, failure to follow this requirement will result in discipline, regardless of the circumstances. In some cases, workers may be unaware that they have suffered an injury, since the pain or symptoms do not manifest until later . . . This is particularly true for musculoskeletal injuries.&rdquo; OSHA recognizes &ldquo;employers have a legitimate interest in maintaining accurate records and ensuring that employees are reporting genuine work-related injuries and illnesses in a reasonably prompt manner. These interests, however, must be balanced with fairness to employees who cannot reasonably discover their injuries or illnesses within a rigid reporting period.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; Also, policies on drug testing should be reviewed. OSHA states blanket post-injury drug testing can be a violation. The new rule does not prohibit employers from drug testing employees; however, the drug testing should be limited to situations where employee drug use is likely to have contributed to the incident and for which the drug test can accurately identify impairment caused by drug use.&nbsp; In July, a lawsuit was filed challenging aspects of the new rule. Nonetheless, at present, there is no question that OSHA&rsquo;s new rule presents several compliance issues as employers consider the new reporting obligations and employee policy impacts. &nbsp; Author: Gregory N. Dale Partner, Faegre Baker Daniels gregory.dale@FaegreBD.com 317-237-1330

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Faegre Baker Daniels columnist writes about Business Matters in the November EPM.

OSHA Revises Reporting Requirements

Our good friend and colleague Dave VanderGriend wrote in this column in April that a little place called Watertown, South Dakota, could be the beginning of a revolution in how we think about ethanol blends.&nbsp; The E30 Challenge initiated by Glacial Lakes Energy tests the boundaries of conventional thinking&mdash;not to mention EPA restrictions&mdash;to encourage the voluntary use of premium gasoline made with 30 percent ethanol blends. With the support of ICM and others, we set out to dispel the myth that 2001 and newer nonflex autos can only operate, at most, on E15. Ultimately, the main purpose of this campaign is to drive change and help consumers recognize the value that higher blends of ethanol offer. We are well-past the beginning, since our launch in the summer of 2015, and a lot has happened to validate our thinking. Automaker BMW announced it was recommending premium for its popular Mini Cooper and its warranties were good for 25 percent ethanol. During that same time, the U.S. DOE continued to quite publicly tout its work that identified high-octane fuels, including ethanol blends in the 25 to 40 percent volume range, as an optimum fuel for meeting future efficiency and greenhouse gas standards. Just last month, Nissan announced the introduction of a variable compression engine that could be a game changer for ethanol as it would adjust to various blends and negate any potential mileage loss. A new High Octane Low Carbon Alliance has been established, led by former Sen. Tom Daschle, a great friend to ethanol and father of the renewable fuel standard. And a former General Motors engineer recently wrote an article in a Washington newspaper stating ethanol is by far the fuel of choice from an engineer's perspective. Momentum is on our side as the value of ethanol for premium fuels is becoming widely recognized.&nbsp; What have we learned from our demonstration in Watertown of an E30 premium fuel in conventional vehicles? For starters, the oil company-led charge that ethanol damages engines is unfounded. After a year of monitoring our Premium E30 use, we have not had a single engine-related issue or complaint. To obtain real-time information, we connected performance data logging devices to about 50 test autos to compare engine performance with E10 and E30. While we are still in the process of collecting and analyzing this data, early indications bode well for Premium E30. We&rsquo;ve learned there is no significant change in miles per gallon and we have documented proof that engines have more torque and more horsepower using Premium E30 fuel. Because ethanol is a cleaner burning fuel, we already knew that it&rsquo;s much better for our environment.&nbsp; So, is E30 the right number? What about the E25-plus blends the Brazilians use, or some other volume? As noted, E25 is the volume specified by Mini Cooper, likely related to the fact that new hoses and pumps are certified up to 25 percent volume. However, current testing protocols used by ethanol supporters in cooperation with pump manufacturers test to the point of failure. We are absolutely convinced a hose or pump that can handle 25 percent can handle 30 percent or more. And while we are delighted to see this move toward a 25 percent volume, going to 30 percent offers significant benefits.&nbsp; The auto industry has repeatedly stated it would be able to achieve significant efficiency and emission gains with a 100 RON octane, which translates to a 93 to 94 AKI at the pump. Using today's ethanol blendstock, 25 percent ethanol falls just short. But adding 20 percent to E10 would reach the 100 RON number and do so without any difficulty, since we would be splash blending. Sure, 25 percent volume is a great step forward and we'll gladly take it. But I encourage us all to not be boxed in by a random UL25 number that was created absent of any science or real world experience. E30 is proven to have the biggest bang for the buck in modern engines and provides the octane autos are asking for. Author: Jim Seurer CEO, Glacial Lakes Energy jseurer@glaciallakesenergy.com

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Guest columnist for the Urban Air Initiative's Clearing the Air column writes about Glacial Lake Energy's E30 challenge in the November EPM.

Value of E30 Proven in Real Time 

With the closings at September&rsquo;s end, five Abengoa first-generation ethanol plants turned the page to a new chapter. Green Plains Inc. acquired three of the plants sold in bankruptcy proceedings, ICM Inc. bought the plant next to its headquarters and KAAPA Ethanol bought the plant 40 miles up the road. Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass LLC, the cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas, is being sold in a separate process handled by Ocean Park Advisers and expected to close later this year. Carl Marks Advisors handled the auction process for the first-gen plants that took place Aug. 22. Chris Wu, partner, was pleased with the process that brought in $357 million. &ldquo;We contacted well over 250 buyers and we had well-over 80 people participating in the process. There was significant strategic interest in all the assets,&rdquo; Wu says. &ldquo;We had a wholesome stalking horse process, which means effectively we&rsquo;re running an auction for the right to be the stalking horse bidder.&rdquo; Green Plains placed successful stalking horse bids on the Madison, Illinois, and Mount Vernon, Indiana, plants of $100 million each; KE Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of KAAPA Ethanol, bid $115 million on the Ravenna, Nebraska, plant. A third, $35 million stalking horse bid by BioUrja Trading LLC on the York, Nebraska, facility was outbid at the auction by Green Plains at $37.375 million. ICM successfully outbid two other parties on the older, idled Colwich, Kansas, plant for $3.15 million. The three 90 MMgy, Vogelbusch-design plants in Ravenna, Madison and Mount Vernon sold for an average price of $1.17 per gallon. The strategic bidders represented a variety of companies interested in the industry, Wu says, as evidenced by the stalking horse bid offered by BioUrja, a midstream ethanol distributor, seeing an opportunity to integrate into the production side. &ldquo;BioUrja wasn&rsquo;t the only one interested,&rdquo; he adds. The successful sale confirms the viability of the corn ethanol industry in the U.S., he says, showing both the confidence from strategic investors and lenders willing to extend credit. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an important watershed.&rdquo; Green Plains Consolidation is a big part of the Green Plains platform. The Abengoa acquisitions bring the company&rsquo;s ethanol footprint to 17 dry mill plants with a combined capacity of 1.5 billion gallons per year. &ldquo;We continue to focus on making strategic investments in high quality assets as we expand our production footprint,&rdquo; says Todd Becker, Green Plains president and CEO. &ldquo;The Madison and Mount Vernon plants will give us access to the Mississippi River, supporting our new export terminal planned in Beaumont, Texas. In addition, we will broaden our product offering globally with industrial alcohol production at the York plant.&rdquo;&nbsp; Diversification is emerging as a new theme for Green Plains. While the York plant is an older plant, the acquisition will mark Green Plains entry into the industrial alcohol market. Two years ago, it acquired a 70,000-head feedlot in southwest Kansas and in October, it announced the acquisition of Fleischmann&rsquo;s Vinegar Co. In addition to supplying all-natural food and beverage ingredients, Fleischmann&rsquo;s portfolio extends into antimicrobials, animal feeds, herbicides and disinfectants. &ldquo;The Fleischmann&rsquo;s Vinegar acquisition will lead to further supply chain opportunities within Green Plains, as its largest production cost is food-grade ethanol,&rdquo; Becker says. The acquisition will expand the company&rsquo;s opportunities into consumer and industrial-based ethanol products.&nbsp; KAAPA Ethanol Logistics are a big part KAAPA Ethanol&rsquo;s interest in the Ravenna facility. A locally owned LLC with just under 500 stockholders in central Nebraska, the acquisition will more than double its ethanol footprint, from 60 MMgy at its home base in Minden to a combined 150 MMgy, giving it access to unit train shipping. KAAPA created KE Holdings LLC to make the acquisition, with the plant becoming KAPPA Ethanol Ravenna LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary. For Ravenna, the acquisition brings a new business model, says KAAPA CEO Chuck Woodside, particularly for grain origination. &ldquo;We typically buy direct from the farmer for our corn. That&rsquo;s a philosophy we&rsquo;ve had since the beginning.&rdquo; And, where Abengoa handled marketing through the central office in St. Louis, KAAPA&rsquo;s acquisition will bring scale to its business partners. &ldquo;RPMG is going be marketing all the ethanol and distillers corn oil, like they do for Minden,&rdquo; Woodside says. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;ll be marketing dried distillers, which we don&rsquo;t make in Minden.&rdquo;&nbsp; Besides benefits from increased scale, Woodside expects that WDGS customers will be pleased to have a backup source when Minden shuts down for maintenance. Woodside expects other synergies as employees at the two facilities begin working together. For one, the ICM-design at Minden has some significant differences from the Vogelbusch-design at Ravenna. &ldquo;Clearly they&rsquo;re continuous fermentation at Ravenna and we are batch.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re pressure distillation and we&rsquo;re vacuum in Minden.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s probably pluses and minuses to both sides.&rdquo; He anticipates making improvements at Ravenna that will be focused on production efficiencies and lowering its carbon intensity. With none of Minden&rsquo;s distillers grains being dried, almost all of its ethanol product goes to California.&nbsp; ICM ICM&rsquo;s acquisition of the Colwich plant is also based on adjacency, in this case, the sharing of a property line on the north end of the small town not far from Wichita, Kansas. &ldquo;The proximity of the location to our headquarters in Colwich was obviously an appeal to us, getting control of that property and the assets there,&rdquo; says Chris Mitchell, ICM president. &ldquo;As we continue to explore different technology options in the renewable fuel space, there are a number of opportunities that we see that could be viable at that location.&rdquo;&nbsp; Built in the mid-1980s, the 25 MMgy plant at Colwich has not run consistently for the past several years. Abengoa owned a sixth first-generation plant in Portales, New Mexico. The Portales plant was not part of final bankruptcy auction, due to a separate lender arrangement with GATX Corp. and the resolution for that asset is still pending. History Abengoa&rsquo;s three older plants at Portales, Colwich and York were the core assets when the Seville, Spain-headquartered company entered the U.S. ethanol industry in 2002. A 2004 article in Ethanol Producer Magazine, &ldquo;Abengoa Bioenergy&rsquo;s &lsquo;High Plains&rsquo; Success,&rdquo; chronicled the company&rsquo;s purchase of three High Plains Corp. facilities. Abengoa&rsquo;s chief operating officer at the time, Tim Newkirk, was quoted as saying the three plants were performing well in a period of tight margins. &ldquo;Our plants are high-efficiency, low-cost, high-yield producers of ethanol.&rdquo; Coming online between 1982 and 1994, the story said York was the newest of the three, starting at 25 MMgy and expanded to 55 Mggy. The Colwich plant was expanded from its initial 8 MMgy to 25 MMgy and Portales from 10 MMgy to 24 MMgy. In 2003, High Plains officially changed its name to Abengoa Bioenergy Corp. and the U.S headquarters were established in the St. Louis, Missouri, suburb of Chesterfield, with Chris Standlee in the lead as executive vice president. When it entered the U.S. ethanol market, Abengoa was already a major corporation with more than 200 companies in 40 countries.&nbsp; The first fuel ethanol producer in Europe, Abengoa&rsquo;s third plant was due online in 2005, bringing the combined capacity to 140 MMgy. The EU had just passed a biofuels directive calling for 5.75 percent biofuel content by 2010. Abengoa&rsquo;s U.S. research arm at the York facility was completing a residual starch conversion pilot plant that was to be utilized by its team researching the conversion of biomass to bioethanol via enzymatic hydrolysis. Interest is high in who will pick up the torch to carry Abengoa's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant at Hugoton, Kansas, to fruition. Author: Susanne Retka Schill Managing Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine sretkaschill@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4922

ICM headquarters in Colwich, Kansas, share a property line with the Abengoa plant, pictured in the background. Abengoa's Ravenna, Nebraska, plant pictured the year it started up in 2007.

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The financial difficulties of Abengoa Bioenergy's parent company in Spain trigger the sale of its ethanol production facilities in the U.S.  In-depth reporting in the November EPM.

High Plains Transition

D3Max, a company cofounded by BBI International, has developed a corn fiber-to-ethanol technology with the potential to increase the output of ethanol plants by 10 percent The technology is groundbreaking due to its potential increase in profitability for ethanol plants, according to Mark Yancey, chief technology officer for D3Max. Twenty years in the making, the process is now poised to become a reality, Yancey says.&nbsp; Unique among the emerging cellulosic technologies, he says, it uses wet cake that has gone through the ethanol plant and has been cooked. &ldquo;This allows us to run our pretreatment at much lower temperatures and avoid the plugging problems seen with some technologies.&rdquo; Corn fiber contains only a small amount of lignin, so it is much easier to convert to fermentable sugars than cellulosic feed stocks such as corn stover, switchgrass and wood, he adds. Another advantage of the D3Max technology is that wet cake is available at ethanol plants and doesn't have to be grown, harvested, stored and transported the way other cellulosic feedstocks do. Yancey believes the D3Max technology has great potential to be successful and make a huge impact on the ethanol industry. &ldquo;If you look at the ethanol industry as a whole, all the corn fiber from dry mills would convert to 1.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol&mdash;that&rsquo;s the potential for this technology, just within the U.S.,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I think what is groundbreaking is the potential increase in the profitability of the ethanol plant. It&rsquo;s much more significant than modifications to dry mills that are happening today. Producers do everything they can to maximize profitability, which is important, but there is no technology that will increase their bottom line as much as D3Max.&rdquo; 2 Decades in the Making D3Max&rsquo; corn-fiber-to-ethanol technology has its roots in research Yancey was involved in 1996 when he was a project manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. When making ethanol out of spent brewers grain, Yancey and the other researchers discovered that it was much easier to convert the distillers grain to fermentable sugars than to convert the other feedstocks being worked with.&nbsp; &ldquo;In fact, NREL senior scientist Jim McMillan stated that spent brewers grain was the best feedstock that NREL had ever tested. That project was a success, but the market for converting spent brewers grain to ethanol is only about 70 million gallons a year, so the Department of Energy did not fund any further work, and that was kind of the end of that,&rdquo; Yancey says. Yancey revisited research into converting spent brewers grain into ethanol a decade later, in 2006, when Joe Coors Jr. asked him if he wanted to renew the 1996 project. By that time, Yancey had left NREL and was leading the project development team at BBI International.&nbsp; BBI gave the green light to the project and the BBI team designed a plant to convert the spent brewers grain at Coors brewery in Golden to ethanol. In 2008, when project developers were poised to begin raising money to build the plant, the bottom dropped out of the economy and the project was put on hold, Yancey says. He began working on the project again in 2010 and during the next several years obtained a patent for conversion of fermentation residual products to ethanol and made strides toward commercializing the technology. Last year, BBI formed D3Max LLC to commercialize the technology.&nbsp; Today D3Max is owned by Yancey, BBI and several private investors. &ldquo;For the past nine months, we&rsquo;ve been raising money to finish the commercialization effort and we&rsquo;re now designing a pilot plant to generate the data we need to design the commercial plant,&rdquo; Yancey says. The D3Max technology targets the corn fiber, composed of cellulose and hemicellulose, present in wet cake, using a three-step process. In the first pretreatment step, the wet cake is heated. &ldquo;We add acid to reduce the pH and we hold it at that temperature and pH for five to 10 minutes. The result of that is some of the carbohydrates are broken down into fermentable sugars,&rdquo; Yancey says.&nbsp; Specifically, the carbohydrates xylan and arabinan are converted to xylose and arabinose sugars, which can be fermented to ethanol. The pretreated wet cake slurry then goes through enzymatic hydrolysis in a large tank for 24 to 30 hours. &ldquo;A mixture of enzymes is added that break down the cellulose to sugars, and then that material goes to fermentation where we add a genetically modified yeast to ferment all of the sugars to ethanol,&rdquo; Yancey says. &ldquo;The rest of the process is essentially the same as a dry mill. We go through a beer well, distillation column and then further purification of the ethanol to produce fuel ethanol.&rdquo; D3Max&rsquo;s goal is to license its technology to at least 50 of the 200 dry mill ethanol plants in the United States and the dozen or so in Canada, Yancey says.&nbsp; All dry mill ethanol plants produce wet cake&mdash;wet distillers grains&mdash;that is typically dried and sold as animal feed. Converting the fiber and residual starch in wet cake would result in a 20 percent decrease in DDGS volume with a concentrated protein content of about 40 percent. Besides the 10 percent increase in ethanol production, the bolt-on technology brings a 0.5 pound-per-bushel increase in corn oil recovery. The additional ethanol production would qualify as cellulosic, generating D3 renewable identification numbers&mdash;RINs that are used by obligated parties to demonstrate compliance with the renewable fuels standard. In early September, D3 RINs were trading at about $1.80 per gallon and corn ethanol was selling about $1.50 per gallon, so the potential revenue for cellulosic ethanol would be about $3.30 per gallon, Yancey says. &ldquo;An advantage of D3Max is that RINs are directly measured from the ethanol produced, and not calculated as they are with some other technologies.&rdquo; Furthermore, there are additional carbon credits available for fuel shipped to California under the state&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Pilot Ahead &ldquo;We&rsquo;re seeing huge demand for this product,&rdquo; Yancey says.&nbsp; Three ethanol plants have expressed interest in hosting the pilot testing, with the final decision to be made yet this fall. Others have indicated they want to be the site of the first commercial plant, he says. Design of the skid-mounted pilot is underway by Ohio-based AdvanceBio Systems LLC and construction will be finished by the end of the year, Yancey says. &ldquo;The first of next year we will commission the pilot and begin testing. Data will be used to narrow the pretreatment time, temperature and pH,&rdquo; Yancey says. Once the initial data is collected for the commercial-scale design, the pilot system can be trucked from plant to plant to demonstrate the D3Max technology. AdvanceBio Systems modified its standard pretreatment reactor, which is made for high-solids biomass such as corn stover, for the D3Max pilot, which is a lower-solids feedstock, says Dale Monceaux, AdvanceBio Systems co-founder. The readily available wet cake definitely is an advantage for ethanol plants who will use D3Max technology, he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got stuff that is in a pile already. You don&rsquo;t have to pay shipping costs. You don&rsquo;t have to pay collection costs. It&rsquo;s just the value of that material, as is, and it&rsquo;s already been mechanically pretreated and it&rsquo;s already been milled in the ethanol process, so there are a lot of benefits that allow for better economics.&rdquo; &ldquo;If all goes as planned, the first D3Max plant will be under construction this time next year,&rdquo; Yancey says. Author: Ann Bailey Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine abailey@biinternational.com 701-738-4976

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REACTOR: The D3Max skid-mounted pilot will employ a pretreatment reactor similar to the AdvanceBio Systems' reactor pictured here at a national laboratory installation.

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New technology poised to improve ethanol plant's bottom line, through conversion of corn fiber in distillers to cellulosic ethanol. In-depth reporting in November EPM. 

Wet Cake Max-imization

In years to come, ethanol producers will be learning a lot about fiber, as many plants diversify from the starch-only, first-generation production process into the next generation of biorefining technology. The first step for many will be doing more with the corn kernel already being processed. Realizing the full potential of cellulosic ethanol, though, requires taking the next step into better understanding the fickle characteristics of the wide range of biomass fiber.&nbsp; Converting corn kernel fiber is seen as the low-hanging fruit by many. Up to now, ethanol dry mills have focused on optimizing the grinding of whole corn in the process. Wet millers and a handful of dry millers, though, have long separated kernel components. Neal Jakel got his start in the wet mill industry before working in fuel ethanol production and now in strategy and technology at Fluid Quip Process Technologies. &ldquo;One of my first projects out of college 25 years ago was trying to convert corn fiber from a wet mill to ethanol. It&rsquo;s not a new concept, it&rsquo;s been around for a long time,&rdquo; Jakel says. &ldquo;[Fiber] is very difficult to separate out into individual C6 or C5 molecules because of the way they&rsquo;re bound together. It&rsquo;s very chemically and energy intensive to make a clean separation, which is the complete opposite of how starch is set up. When you think about it, that fiber is meant to protect the seed, that kernel, so that it&rsquo;s not easily broken down by mold or anything, whereas the starch is readily available to be broken down for energy to feed that new seed when it&rsquo;s planted to grow. That&rsquo;s why the starch is much easier to convert to sugars, but the fiber is not.&rdquo; Kernel Fiber Tapping the potential of corn kernel fiber requires understanding the kernel. The outer hull, the pericarp, is the most predominant source of kernel fiber and the easiest to separate and remove due to its large particle size. The pericarp protects the starch and the germ that contains most of the protein and oil. The big dry millers separate the fiber and bran, Jakel explains, which typically retains a fair amount of starch, producing food items like corn flakes and brewers grits. Wet mills use a different process to maximize the separation of kernel components&mdash;the fiber, protein, starch and oil. &ldquo;Wet mills are intensely focused on getting those four components in as pure form as possible,&rdquo; Jakel says. The kernel is soaked in water and sulfur dioxide or a similar chemical, which softens the outer hull and disrupts the protein matrix surrounding the starch granules. The process allows the whole germ to break free and the protein to be washed from the starch granules. The protein, now called corn gluten meal, is 60 percent protein or better and used in poultry, pet and acquaculture feeds. The oil is separated, refined and goes into the vegetable oil market. The remaining corn gluten feed is 60 percent or more fiber, typically dried and pelletized to increase bulk density to be shipped overseas. The starch is further processed into paper coatings or for hairspray, converted to high-fructose corn sugar or low-cal sweeteners or fermented into ethanol or other products such as dextrin or citric acid. FQPT is adapting the wet mill approach for the fuel ethanol industry, Jakel says, developing bolt-on versions of the proven technologies. Three fiber by-pass systems have been installed at plants so far. &ldquo;We see a huge opportunity, the fiber stream being just one of the many streams that we can separate and do more with in an ethanol plant.&rdquo; While fiber separation has long been done, using it in other processes and not just drying it for feed is relatively new. &ldquo;When processing a pure fiber stream, it has to be very dilute in order to pump it,&rdquo; Jakel says. A 50 to 70 percent fiber stream needs to be around 10 percent solids or less in order to move through a pipe. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt fiber has a great ability to bind with water and to structures. It&rsquo;s a great mechanism to plug up heat exchangers, valves and nozzles, just because of the 3D structure of the fiber&mdash;it&rsquo;s got a lot of edges and points to grab in the process.&rdquo;&nbsp; Handling Issues Overcoming the challenge of handling fiber has been a big part of ICM&rsquo;s research. Like FQPT, ICM is working with front-end separation technologies, but with a different focus, integrating its select milling and fiber separation technologies into traditional dry mill ethanol plants with an eye on the transition to cellulosic ethanol production in what it calls its Gen 1.5 process, converting corn kernel fiber into cellulosic ethanol. The lessons learned in handling kernel fiber are being applied to developing a Gen 2 process for converting feedstocks such as stover, biomass sorghum and switchgrass. One of those lessons is the optimal solids loading. &ldquo;Normal Gen 1 corn mashes are going to run in a 32 to 35 percent solids range. That&rsquo;s still quite a liquid,&rdquo; says Jeremy Javers, director of technology development at ICM&rsquo;s St. Joseph, Missouri, demonstration plant. &ldquo;If you jumped into a tank of corn mash, you&rsquo;d sink. If you jumped into a tank of 35 percent corn fiber solids, you&rsquo;d probably get the middle of your calves wet and your knees would still be dry.&rdquo;&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a big difference between the feedstocks under consideration for cellulosic ethanol processes. &ldquo;By far, corn fiber is the easiest. It&rsquo;s the one we can push the solids higher, and it still acts like a liquid,&rdquo; Javer says.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s another advantage in the handling and cleaning of corn kernels. &ldquo;We have well-established systems like scalpers and sieves and air classification systems that can help take things like rocks and chains, bolts and hitch pins out of the corn that gets brought in. We&rsquo;re very good at getting that cleaned up. Occasionally, something gets through and busts a hole in a slurry screen.&rdquo; The systems for cleaning second-generation feedstocks aren&rsquo;t fully developed yet. &ldquo;When you bring in a bale of corn stover, you get the rocks, the bolts, the twine, the dead animals coming in. And when you&rsquo;re processing 1,000 tons a day, 2,000 bales material a day, it becomes an issue,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to figure out a way to get the stuff out. If you don&rsquo;t, it&rsquo;s not busting a hole in a slurry screen, it&rsquo;s starting a fire or breaking a piece of equipment or causing serious damage to the equipment inside the process&mdash;wearing out bearings, plugging things, breaking things, and on a high-pressure system.&rdquo;&nbsp; Once ground, getting the fiber to flow through the process was the primary challenge to overcome, Javers acknowledges. &ldquo;We spent millions of dollars trying to get that material from the first tank through the first 25 feet of pipe. That&rsquo;s where we spend the majority of development dollars.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the early years of research, the team experimented with multiple iterations of process conditions and equipment configurations. At one point, he says with a laugh, the key performance indicator was not how long the system would run, but how quickly they could take it apart and unplug it for the next iteration.&nbsp; &ldquo;You&rsquo;d spend all day getting ready to start it up, then you&rsquo;d run for an hour and everything would plug up,&rdquo; he says. The system would be dismantled, unplugged, power washed and sometimes even needed chiseling to get the material out. Javers commends the ICM team and the equipment providers who hung in there through multiple modifications in the process. Today, the system starts up smoothly within a couple of hours and runs continuously, he says. Getting the fiber to flow was the biggest challenge, but not the only one. The work with switchgrass illustrates another dimension of fiber conversion, Javers says. &ldquo;The switchgrass fields were no more than 15 miles apart but the levels of water soluble materials were variable. That variation in just water soluble ash and other components could have a serious impact on conversion efficiencies.&rdquo; The researchers focused on ways to equalize the incoming feedstock.&nbsp; &ldquo;One way we did that was through applying washing technology,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Getting certain components out of the process did a few things. Some of them act like bases in the pretreatment system, and we run a dilute acid pretreatment, so the more equalized the feedstock, the more efficient our acid doses were and the more consistent conversion we got field to field. So it&rsquo;s not just about milling and mixing and pumping, it&rsquo;s also about preparation of the feedstock and presenting it to the system and pre-wetting the feedstock.&rdquo; Even the pre-wetting step presents a challenge, he explains, as the lignin content in some feedstocks means the chopped material does not absorb water easily, instead floating on the top of the tank. Javers says ICM now has five fiber separation systems (FST) operating, with a sixth starting up soon. Initially, the fiber is being removed, increasing throughput in the starch process, and then reintroduced at the backend. Discussions are under way to determine which will be the first to add the Gen 1.5 system to convert the fiber into ethanol. The process also will modify and diversify coproducts with high-protein distillers, modified syrup and a potential new fiber stream.&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Every one of these startups of FST have had their unique challenges and opportunities,&rdquo; Javers says.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m really proud of the customer, the team and the company for being able to respond to every one of those challenges and find solutions and have successful startups.&rdquo;&nbsp; ICM and FQPT are just two of many companies, each with its own approach to tapping into the potential of fiber biorefining. Javers echoes a comment heard from many of them. &ldquo;We want to see others succeed. At the end of the day, the vision of success is so great that we can&rsquo;t afford to fail. The value this industry, the bioprocessing industry is going to bring to agriculture is going to be great.&rdquo; Author: Susanne Retka Schill Managing Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine sretkashill@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4922

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CLEAN CHALLENGE: Biomass processing starts with cleaning rock and debris from dry feedstock.     

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If not removed, rock and debris accumulate in the system, pictured on opposite page.  

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Among the challenges successfully overcome in ICM research was corn fiber fouling due to protein content in pretreatment. 

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FIBER HANDLING: Processing fiber presents multiple challenges ICM has successfully worked to overcome. Photo shows wet energy sorghum's tendency to pile up on process conveyors.   

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Realizing its full potential requires a better understanding of fiber's fickle characteristics when used as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock. In-depth reporting in the November EPM.  

Fiber: Feedstock of the Future

Building a robust biomass supply chain for the future will require multiple end users. Innovative companies are utilizing stover with new projects in the Midwest and Canada that have the potential to tap into new markets for livestock feed, power and renewable biochemicals.&nbsp; London, Ontario-based Comet Biorefining Inc. plans to build a commercial-scale cellulosic sugar plant in TransAlta&rsquo;s Bluewater Energy Park in Sarnia, Ontario. It will use its patented process to convert corn stover and wheat straw into high-purity dextrose sugars that can be used by biofuel and bioproducts manufacturers for value-added end products. Besides building, owning and operating its own plants, Comet Biorefining plans to strategically license its technology to select partners worldwide to meet the growing demands for biobased products, the company says. The 60 million pounds-per-year (27,000 tons) dextrose plant is expected to be operational in 2018, says Andrew Richard, founder. The company will buy the corn stover and wheat straw from area producers. &ldquo;In general, this is an excellent region where the plant will be located. There is plentiful feedstock within close distance to the plant. There&rsquo;s a tremendous amount of infrastructure, not just on the TransAlta site, but in Sarnia, in general,&rdquo; Richard says. Construction of the first-of-its-kind plant represents a key step toward large-scale commercialization of its cellulosic sugar business, Richard says. &ldquo;It highlights the important role our technology plays in the value chain, helping to drive the bioeconomy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.&rdquo; &ldquo;This facility for us is our first commercial facility and it is an essential step in our development, in our commercialization path to show significant amounts of dextrose being utilized by our customers,&rdquo; Richard says.&nbsp; &ldquo;We have a very strong relationship with our feedstock partners, local cooperatives that have been formed to supply the plant and so we&rsquo;re pleased with our region and we&rsquo;re pleased with our partners.&rdquo; Earlier this year, Comet announced an offtake agreement with BioAmber to supply dextrose for bio-succinic acid production, giving BioAmber certain exclusive rights in the fields of succinic acid, BDO (1,4-butanediol) and THF (tetrahydrofuran). Enhancing Stover Several hundred miles south, Ag Ventures Alliance in Mason City, Iowa, and Cellulose Sciences International in Madison, Wisconsin, formed Stover Ventures to commercialize its process to turn corn stover into nutritious, palatable dairy and beef cattle feed. Rajai Atalla, a chemist and cellulose researcher who founded Cellulose Sciences International, initially developed a process to pretreat corn stover for ethanol production. Though, he believed&mdash;and still believes&mdash;in the effectiveness of the pretreatment for cellulosic ethanol, he was unable to convince established ethanol companies to adopt the technology. After attending a workshop on start-up companies in which the speaker advised pivoting, if marketing to the original target industry was unsuccessful, Atalla refocused his efforts on using his pretreatment process to convert corn stover into cattle feed. &ldquo;We treated some corn stover and sent it off to one of the animal nutrition laboratories and they were amazed at the dramatically increased digestibility,&rdquo; Atalla says. Cellulose Sciences&rsquo; patented process occurs at room temperature and ambient pressure. &ldquo;We treat it with sodium hydroxide dissolved in a cosolvent of ethanol and water. If you have the right proportions, you are able to open up the structure of the cellulose so it is much more accessible to the enzymes and, at the same time, you&rsquo;re able to extract the inhibitors,&rdquo; Atalla says. &ldquo;If you remove the inhibitors, it is much easier for the cellulases and xylanases to convert the polysaccharides to glucose and xylose,&rdquo; Atalla says, and at an increased rate. In the process, corn stover is shredded to an average size of about one-half inch. The pretreatment process is unique because it avoids thermal degradation of the cellulose, and the conversion to glucose and xylose requires far less time than the four or five days needed for high-temperature, pretreated corn stover. &ldquo;If we&rsquo;re dealing with pure cellulose, the pretreatment is complete in 10 to 15 minutes. If we&rsquo;re dealing with biomass, depending on the biomass, anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes is all it takes. And when we apply the enzymes, we get complete conversion to glucose and xylose, in about 30 to 40 hours. &ldquo;Raj has developed a pretty innovative way to treat forage fiber,&rdquo; says David Combs, dairy scientist in the University of Wisconsin Department of Dairy Science in Madison. The additional step of extracting compounds solubilized by sodium hydroxide to remove them greatly enhances the digestibility of the forage, once it has dried, says Combs, whose work specializes in ruminant nutrition. &ldquo;You take a product that had digestibility of around 40 percent&mdash;60 percent of the fiber that a cows eats, she can&rsquo;t do anything with it and 40 percent she can. With this process you can increase that digestibility to 75 to 80 percent.&rdquo;&nbsp; The increase in the corn stover&rsquo;s digestibility puts the feed on par with another fiber supplement, Combs says. &ldquo;Raj&rsquo;s treatment process on paper looks to be as digestible as soy hulls and it actually can be produced at a lower cost than what soy hulls cost producers.&rdquo; Combs completed several feeding studies in December 2015, generating a lot of interest from other dairy scientists and farmers, he says. Further studies may be done with beef cattle. Substituting pretreated corn stover for corn in a majority of beef cattle&rsquo;s ration could substantially reduce the cost of feeding and also reduce the amount of stover on cropland, Combs says. Cellulose Sciences International is partnering with Ag Venture Alliance to build a demonstration plant that will allow expanded feeding studies. The alliance, a Mason City, Iowa-based cooperative supporting value-added agriculture, has contributed $500,000 to the Cellulose Sciences project. Most of the alliance&rsquo;s 635 farmer members live in corn areas of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa where studies have shown removing some of the stover can increase yields. &ldquo;Farmers, especially ones growing continuous corn, have too much stover left on the fields,&rdquo; says Jude Conway, Ag Ventures executive director. Minnesota&rsquo;s Agricultural Utilization and Research Institute also provided some financial support to Cellulose Sciences&rsquo; project. The project fits perfectly with one of AURI&rsquo;s goals, which is adding value to Minnesota&rsquo;s agricultural commodities, says Al Doering, AURI senior scientist and a farmer. &ldquo;What excited AURI is Cellulose Sciences offered a new technology. It didn&rsquo;t require high pressure to process the stover and the results they saw in the increase in energy value after the treatment, especially when used as a feedstock for ruminants, were incredible,&rdquo; Doering says.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a pretty amazing technology. Feeding corn stover or corn stalks to livestock is nothing new, what&rsquo;s so incredible is the increase in energy availability out of those corn stalks. That&rsquo;s really where the value comes.&rdquo; Ag Ventures Alliance plans to hold informational meetings and raise money this winter and break ground on a demonstration plant next spring. The cooperative has selected a site for the plant and is working with an engineering firm, Conway says.&nbsp; Low-Carbon Fuel A third effort to utilize corn stover is targeting the carbon reduction benefits from using the stover as a biomass fuel source for power plants. Last winter, California-based Trestle Energy LLC received a favorable carbon intensity (CI) rating from the California Air Resources Board for its pathway that would shave 18 points off an ethanol plant&rsquo;s CI rating, according to the CARB staff summary. The company has received favorable CI ratings under the British Columbia Low Carbon Fuel Standard and has a pathway pending with the U.S. EPA. James Rhodes, co-founder and president of Trestle Energy says the approach creates a new coproduct credit from using corn stover for electric generation, either at an ethanol plant with biomass boilers, or at a partnering utility cofiring biomass with coal. The process allows both sides of the supply chain to reap emissions reduction benefits, Rhodes says. &ldquo;By making pellets a coproduct of ethanol, the financial benefits of low-carbon fuels can make biomass power a cost-effective option for coal plants to use in meeting their own compliance requirements.&rdquo; Data for the life-cycle analysis of the pathway was collected in a demonstration project conducted in 2012 and 2013 with Iowa-based Golden Grain Energy and Cedar Falls Utilities, with the help of Larksen LLC, which works with utilities for biomass supplies. The utility, Rhodes explained, has been evaluating the possible use of biomass in one of its coal-fired boilers for several years. The life-cycle analysis used for the CARB CI score took into consideration the additional use of farm equipment for stover removal, additional inputs to offset nutrients removed and feedstock transportation, among other factors. The biggest CI reduction was the result of avoided emissions from using the crop residues. Coproduct credits are common in life-cycle analyses, Rhodes says. A common coproduct credit in biodiesel CI pathways, for example, comes from the feed produced at the soybean mill. Another example would be California crude oil that is produced with enhanced oil recovery using steam. The production of that steam includes an electricity coproduct that is credited to the fuel. Rhodes pointed out applying the coproduct credit would make Midwestern corn ethanol competitive with Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, where the coproduct credit for generating electricity from bagasse is a big part of the fuel&rsquo;s low carbon intensity score. Rhodes is optimistic about the next step. &ldquo;We have a whole series of test burning opportunities that could launch for 2017 harvest,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Since we received the approval, we&rsquo;ve been speaking with utilities, mainly in the western half of the Midwest, looking at opportunities to commercialize.&rdquo; Author: Ann Bailey Associate Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine abailey@biinternational.com 701-738-4976

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PIVOT TO FEED: Cellulose Sciences International founder Rajai Atalla gained traction for his biomass pretreatment process when nutritionists found remarkable  improvement in feed digestibility.    

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FIBER PLUS: Cellulose Sciences International's process improves the digestibility of corn stover, shown above untreated on the left and treated. 

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Innovation in stover utilization targets feed, sugars and coproduct credits, building markets beyond cellulosic ethanol use. In-depth reporting in the November EPM.  

New Pathways for Stover

In Iowa, corn stover bales sit unprotected in vast piles, exposed to sun and rain, until they are picked off the pile and carried by a forklift to a bale receiving machine. They are then shredded, milled, and passed immediately into pretreatment for conversion into cellulosic ethanol. In Minnesota, urban wood waste is shredded, stored in piles in a woodyard, loaded onto trucks and delivered to a downtown heat-and-power facility for feeding into a boiler.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These approaches, characterized by few, if any, additional efforts to better prepare the feedstock for conversion, are common throughout the biomass-to-energy industry. According to researchers at the nation&rsquo;s national laboratories, this low-tech approach must evolve if the biomass-to-energy industry is going to significantly increase its contributions to the nation&rsquo;s power, heat and fuel portfolios. This approach, where biomass handling, sizing and drying all occur at the conversion facility, is referred to as a direct couple, and researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, among others, are urging the industry to move away from a practice they say carries too much operational risk. &ldquo;A conventional system that you see the guys building today are mostly passive systems, with very little active control in them at all, including active moisture management,&rdquo; says Richard Hess, director of the Idaho National Laboratory Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program. &ldquo;The grinder is directly coupled to the pretreater. If the grinder plugs and shuts down, it shuts the whole plant down.&rdquo; In other industries that handle vast quantities of solid materials, Hess notes, it is rare that preprocessing and conversion are coupled to the degree that they currently are at many biomass-to-energy facilities. &ldquo;If you look at the Budweiser plant out here, its receiving station is five miles away, and all their malt formulations are done there,&rdquo; Hess says. &ldquo;Once that is done, a train car rolls out and drops it all in the malt plant. It&rsquo;s completely decoupled.&rdquo; Hess recognizes that biorefineries, heat plants and biomass power plants are all capable of particle-size reduction, but he and others are calling for more measures, preferably happening at some distance&nbsp; from the conversion facility. &ldquo;Taking a corn stover bale, grinding it up and changing it from an 8-pound-per-cubic-foot rat&rsquo;s nest to a 2-pound-per-cubic foot rat&rsquo;s nest that still won&rsquo;t flow is not an acceptable level of decoupling,&rdquo; says Hess.&nbsp; &ldquo;This material still won&rsquo;t work in the next process.&rdquo; Commercial Relevance Hess&rsquo;s assertions are an extension of an approach that the U.S. DOE has been championing for years. Most recently, the concept received more attention and articulation in the 2016 Billion-Ton Report released by the DOE in July. In chapter 6 of the report, &ldquo;To the Biorefinery: Delivered Forestland and Agricultural Resources,&rdquo; the authors call for increased innovation along the biomass feedstock supply chain, noting that current feedstock systems have &ldquo;few to no active control strategies.&rdquo; The report calls for feedstock streams that transform &ldquo;raw feedstocks that are aerobically unstable and highly variable into a high-density, flowable format that can be traded as a commodity.&rdquo;&nbsp; For Hess and his colleagues at the DOE, the solution is to create a series of regional biomass depots where raw biomass streams of many kinds can be received, sized and upgraded for downstream conversion. The resulting material, often referred to as an intermediate, will be a conversion-ready material that can flow seamlessly through the material handling equipment at biorefineries, biomass power facilities or district heating installations. &ldquo;The biomass depot is really a business model to implement a concept, but the fundamental concept is we&rsquo;re moving from a passive feedstock supply system to an active one,&rdquo; Hess explains. &ldquo;What is active in that feedstock supply system is very feedstock- and regionally specific. We can list many things from moisture, all the way down to quality control, blending or leaching.&rdquo; Hess says that the processes the depots would be capable of performing would vary by region, owing to the varied biomass streams available throughout the country. The active controls required to prepare corn stover for conversion into cellulosic ethanol will likely vary greatly from the steps necessary to make forest residues ready for a power plant cofiring biomass.&nbsp; &ldquo;The point is, the materials leaving a biomass depot will be conversion-ready,&rdquo; he stresses. Value-Added Upgrading For Hess, the vision of a biomass depot goes beyond merely getting biomass streams into a conversion-ready product that will flow easily into and around conversion facilities. The promise of a biomass depot, Hess notes, is really beginning to drive some increased value into biomass by increasing the ease of its later conversion. &ldquo;We need to get beyond beating on things with hammers and start looking at different types of preprocessing treatments,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Kinetic energy is really the lowest, poorest way to tear stuff apart. If you start coming in and putting a little heat here and a little bit of pressure there, your finesse and ability to take things apart into a better and more uniform product is much improved.&rdquo; Hess says that value-added upgrading, like the biomass depot concept, will vary based on the feedstock and the ultimate downstream uses of the material. &ldquo;Mild torrefaction approaches that don&rsquo;t go all the way to torrefaction, but more closely resemble coffee roasting, can do significant things to reduce the grinding energy, for instance,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If you can start to apply those processes on a fractional basis, then you can apply those treatments to the different issues and you can get a much better product.&rdquo; The continued evolution of the biomass industry hinges on the evolution of our ability to better preprocess the feedstock streams it intends to convert. &ldquo;Right now, we&rsquo;re just using a hammer to take apart a complex composite,&rdquo; Hess adds. &ldquo;When you do that, your quality control over the deconstruction of that product, and the particle-size distribution, is just very broad and very random. That creates a lot of challenges when you start talking about heat transfer and the processes that the biomass will undergo in the various conversion reactors these streams will end up in.&rdquo; Author: Tim Portz Executive Editor, Ethanol Producer Magazine tportz@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4969

BEYOND KINETICS: Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory are working to better understand pretreatment processes that will add value to biomass streams by upgrading them in a manner that makes their later conversion more efficient.   

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National laboratories argue for a paradigm shift in the industry's approach to biomass handling and preparation for cellulosic ethanol biorefineries and other biomass applications. In-depth reporting in the November EPM.   

The Odd Decouple

The USDA recently named Cletus P. Kurtzman to the Agricultural Research Service Science Hall of Fame. Kurtzman, a research microbiologist at the ARS Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit in Peoria, Illinois, helped pioneer molecular techniques to identify yeast microorganisms. These discoveries enable scientists to accurately predict the biological properties of yeasts. This knowledge led to innovations in converting crop biomass into fuel, in producing biodegradable ingredients for detergents and in food safety, crop production and human and animal health advancements. Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. has selected Praj Industries Ltd. as its technology partner for the development of second-generation ethanol plants. Indian Oil is currently expected to develop three such facilities in India. In addition to providing the technology and designs for the projects, Praj is also expected to supply machinery to the projects and assist in operations and maintenance.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Vincent Chornet, CEO of Enerkem Inc., has been named in the 2017 Clean16 awards by Delta Management Group and the Clean50 organization. Canada&rsquo;s Clean50 Awards recognize 50 individuals from 16 different categories, including clean tech, who have done the most to advance the cause of sustainability and clean capitalism in Canada over the past two years. Renmatix recently announced a $14 million investment, led by Bill Gates and joined by Total. The investment in commercializing Renmatix&rsquo;s Plantrose process will help drive toward the first wave of Renmatix licensees building Plantrose-enabled biorefineries in diverse global markets like Canada, India, Malaysia, the U.S. and elsewhere. In parallel, that activity will facilitate further market development in downstream bioproduct applications. The American Coalition for Ethanol launched a new online tool for gasoline and ethanol retailers in September. The website is an interactive version of ACE&rsquo;s recently released E15 &amp; Flex Fuel Retailer Roadmap and features an interactive calculator that retailers can use to compare current sales and revenue to results achieved by their peers currently offering higher blends of ethanol.&nbsp; Gevo Inc. has announced it has entered into a heads of agreement with Deutsche Lufthansa to supply Gevo&rsquo;s alcohol-to-jet fuel (ATJ) from its first commercial hydrocarbons facility, intended to be built in Luverne, Minnesota.&nbsp; The terms of the agreement contemplate Lufthansa purchasing up to 8 million gallons per year of ATJ from Gevo, or up to 40 million gallons over the five-year life of the off-take agreement. The heads of agreement is nonbinding and is subject to completion of a binding off-take agreement and other definitive documentation between Gevo and Lufthansa, expected to be completed in the next few months. The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials has announced its re-recognition by the European Commission. The decision was published by the commission on Aug. 9 in the Official Journal of the European Union and is valid for five years. The EU Commission recognizes the &ldquo;Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials EU RED&rdquo; for demonstrating compliance with the sustainability criteria under Directives 98/70/EC and 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the council.&nbsp;&nbsp; Diesel Dogs Fuel Service has become the first fuel distributor in Minnesota to offer pre-blended E15. The St. Paul-based distributor delivered its first gallons of pre-blended E15 in August to its municipal and corporate fleet customers in the Twin Cities metro area. It will soon offer preblended E15 to retail customers as well. Propel Fuels has announced the launch of the Propel ProShop, an online store for customers to purchase apparel and accessories. In addition to the ProShop, Propel has launched its Hi-Octane Society (Flex Fuel E85) and Diesel Pro (Renewable Diesel HPR) aficionado clubs, providing unique social forums for customers to share photos, videos and experiences about their use of high-performance, low-carbon fuels. Enerkem Inc. has obtained certification from the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification system for the biomethanol production of its Enerkem Alberta Biofuels full-scale facility in Edmonton, Canada. This biorefinery becomes the first ISCC certified plant in the world to convert municipal solid waste into biomethanol.&nbsp; A biomethanol-to-ethanol conversion module is expected to be added to the facility in the second half of 2016. St1 Nordic Oy&rsquo;s Norwegian subsidiary, Smart Fuel AS, has signed a letter of intent with Viken Skog SA and its subsidiary Treklyngen Holding AS to construct a Cellunolix ethanol plant in Norway. St1 aims to construct the facility in the industrial area of Follum in H&oslash;nefoss, making maximum use of the existing industrial infrastructure and equipment from the former paper-mill area. The planned production capacity of the plant is 50 million liters (13.21 million gallons) of advanced cellulosic bioethanol for transportation, using local forest industry residues as feedstock. The project is expected to reach the investment decision stage in 2018, with plant operations beginning in 2021.

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Business Briefs

Government commitment to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fighting climate change is at an all-time high.Then why has Canadian biofuel production been dropping?&nbsp; There is no other way to reach emission targets without taking greenhouse gases out of the transportation sector sooner, rather than later. Biofuels are the best pathway to achieve this, paving the way to a growing array of biobased products. This is why we at Renewable Industries Canada (RICanada) are hosting the first Renewable Industries Forum. Canada&rsquo;s premier renewable and bioeconomy event, the forum will bring together government, industry and academic experts, as well as students, to address challenges and opportunities of the renewable and biobased sectors. The forum&rsquo;s program builds on our past decade of annual conferences. It is more dynamic, progressive and policy-orientated. Rather than a conference that mainly delivers information to its audience, the forum is designed to engage participants in critical and lively discussions that will lead to measurable action on transitioning to a thriving low-carbon economy. The only national voice for Canada&rsquo;s renewable fuels and bio-based products industries, RICanada&rsquo;s 32-year history has built and maintained relationships with the most passionate, knowledgeable and influential members in the innovative world of renewable fuels, biobased products and clean technology. The Renewable Industries Forum will bring these groups together to discuss growing from biofuels to the bioeconomy and beyond. Students are also encouraged to participate to ask critical questions and to add refreshing ideas on how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment while boosting the economy. Focusing on advanced biofuels and policy programs will support greater research, development and commercialization of renewable and biobased industrial products. We will also discuss marketing the green economy. This is of utmost importance. Our messages won&rsquo;t be heard if we don&rsquo;t unite and utilize our collective voice. Misinformation surrounding renewable fuels and biobased products continues to circulate, and we face stiff competition from other sectors as governments look for ways to reduce GHG emissions.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t think of a better time for the Renewable Industries Forum to take place. Canada&rsquo;s ethanol producers have shown that growing beyond biofuels is not only possible, it&rsquo;s essential. By coming together, the renewable fuels and biobased products sectors will take action that will continue to grow the bioeconomy, help governments reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and benefit all Canadians for years to come.&nbsp; Visit www.ricanada.org for more information and to register for the Renewable Industries Forum. Author: Andrea Kent President, Renewable Industries Canada 613-594-5528 a.kent@ricanada.org

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The Global Scene columnist in the November EPM describes Renewable Industries Canada's plans for an interactive forum to foster measurable actions for the transition to a biobased economy.  

Coming Together for a Thriving Low-Carbon Economy

The nation&rsquo;s most popular motor sport, NASCAR, adopted Sunoco Green E15 in 2011 as its official race fuel. Every vehicle in the sport has been running on the fuel ever since, including the Camping World Truck Series, the XFINITY Series and the Sprint Cup Series. This, month American Ethanol will have powered NASCAR for 10 million miles of competitive racing. It&rsquo;s obvious that 10 million miles is an enormous distance driven, but what does that number really mean? Ten million miles means that E15 has withstood the rigors of the most demanding competitive motorsports environment in the world and passed each test with flying colors. NASCAR is above all else, a proving ground. It is a proving ground for drivers, mechanics, pit crews and, of course, fuel. If a driver is off his or her game, or someone in the pit crew makes a mistake, it will be painfully obvious out on the track. Similarly, if a fuel is not doing its job, it has nowhere to hide in NASCAR. The good news is, E15 has nothing to hide. It is a high-octane fuel that also helps cool the engine to help it operate at full throttle without overheating. E15 displaces toxic carcinogens known to cause cancer and smog, and by teaching consumers that it burns cleaner and cooler, so it&rsquo;s better for their cars&rsquo; engines and for our air, they will come to understand why ethanol is so important to Americans. The fact that E15 provides an octane boost with a more environmentally friendly emissions profile, all while saving consumers money at the pump, is truly a win-win-win.&nbsp; We know that E15 is one of the most tested fuels in history. The U.S. DOE tested E15 in 86 vehicles for 6 million miles and didn&rsquo;t find a single issue related to emissions or engine performance. Meanwhile, drivers have traveled over 300 million miles using E15. It&rsquo;s becoming more widely available, too. In addition to the E15 that is already available in more than half of the United States, through Prime the Pump, we have secured roughly 800 retail sites for E15/E85 with 10 of the largest retail chains in the nation: Sheetz, Thorntons, Kum &amp; Go, RaceTrac, Cenex, Minnoco, Protec, Family Express, MAPCO and Murphy USA. Consumer access and education are absolutely essential to making higher ethanol blends of American ethanol the new normal at the pump. So, what does 10 million miles ultimately mean to the consumer? It means that E15 is a fuel they can trust. E15 has been put to the test for 10 million miles on the track and 300 million off the track. Those 10 million miles on the track mean that the best drivers, mechanics and pit crews in the world make their living and win championships on American ethanol. The 10-million-mile mark is an incredible milestone for American Ethanol and our industry, and each day and every individual mile on that journey is another reminder that E15 is the fuel of the present and the future. Author: Emily Skor CEO, Growth Energy 202-545-4000 eskor@growthenergy.org

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Growth Energy's Drive column in the November EPM: The 10-million-mile mark is an incredible milestone for American Ethanol and our industry, and every mile on that journey is a reminder that E15 is the fuel of the present and the future.

The Road to 10 Million Miles

Stop me if you&rsquo;ve heard this one. Ethanol is singularly responsible for the dead zone in the Gulf or the destruction of bee pollinator habitats or is destroying wetlands across America or is a dirtier fuel than gasoline. Those are just some of the lies making the rounds on Capitol Hill these days. None of them are true, of course, but they are the fodder our critics seize upon to fuel the campaign against us. At one point this year, I actually read that the renewable fuel standard (RFS) and ethanol were harming the food industry by driving down prices. Yes, after years of being blamed for driving up the price of food, we&rsquo;re now also responsible for their lost profits as food prices fall. Unbelievable. As we near the close of the 114th Congress, I thought I would share some of the more outrageous fallacies used by ethanol&rsquo;s critics on Capitol Hill to sow the seeds of doubt and undermine support for the RFS. Falsehood No. 1&mdash;Ethanol will ruin boats. Early in this Congress, the American Petroleum Institute launched a campaign to warn consumers about the RFS. One TV ad featured a family of boaters storming into the Capitol, dripping wet from having been stranded by a failed engine in the Potomac River, asking Congress to repeal the RFS because it was damaging their boat&rsquo;s engine. The oil group also released a series of drawings, ridiculing boaters who filled up using ethanol blends. API has trotted out this campaign numerous times since then, and each and every time, the Renewable Fuels Association has hit back with facts. An RFA ad campaign notes that for nearly 30 years, 10 percent ethanol has been used in all types of marine engines and the fuel blend is approved for use by all major marine engine manufacturers, including Honda, Mercury Marine, Kawasaki and Johnson Evinrude. As a bonus, ethanol&rsquo;s higher octane ratings increase engine performance, while being the lowest-cost, cleanest-burning fuel on the planet. Falsehood No. 2&mdash;Ethanol&rsquo;s carbon footprint is worse than petroleum&rsquo;s. This falsehood recently picked up steam after the release of a study funded by API and conducted by University of Michigan Energy Institute researchers, including longtime biofuels critic John DeCicco. The study&rsquo;s methodology only examined carbon emissions at the tailpipe without accounting for the origins of the carbon embedded in the fuel. Thus, the study showed no CO2 benefit from ethanol. As RFA explained, here&rsquo;s the difference: In the case of ethanol, the CO2 released at the tailpipe was recently in the atmosphere and is simply returning to that origin&mdash;the use of biomass for energy recycles atmospheric carbon as part of a relatively rapid process. By contrast, the use of fossil fuels adds to atmospheric CO2 by emitting carbon that was previously sequestered deep underground for millions of years. When coal, oil, natural gas or other fossil fuels are burned, new carbon is introduced into the atmosphere. It is this new carbon that is contributing to climate change. Falsehood No. 3: The blend wall&mdash;The U.S. gasoline market cannot absorb more than 9.7 percent ethanol. In May, biofuel critics Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, Peter Welch, D-Vt., Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. and Jim Costa, D-Calif., introduced H.R. 5180, which would cap ethanol blends in the U.S. transportation pool to no more than 9.7 percent by volume. It&rsquo;s a rather odd and precise number without any logic, other than it&rsquo;s the percentage the oil companies want.&nbsp; Again, the RFA hit back, noting in ads that ethanol already exceeds 10 percent of the fuel mix in at least 22 states, including California, Minnesota and South Dakota, where consumers have access to higher blends such as E15 and E85. Higher ethanol blends have seen rapid growth in recent years due to steady industry investment in an effort to provide more choice at the pump. By adopting Big Oil&rsquo;s biofuel limits, the bill would not just halt ethanol&rsquo;s growth in providing a more affordable, high-octane source of fuel to consumers, it would stem that progress. Biofuel critics will continue to distort the truth to fit their own narrative, but you can bet the ethanol industry will hit back with the truth each and every time. Author: Bob Dinneen President and CEO, Renewable Fuels Association 202-289-3835

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The Renewable Fuels Association's View from the Hill column in the November EPM: Biofuel critics will continue to distort the truth to fit their own narrative, but you can bet the ethanol industry will hit back with the truth each and every time.  

Lies and Big Oil Fiction 

Just before press time, the U.S. EPA released a pile of suggestions intended to enhance the renewable fuel standard. Among the voluminous, 375-page offering is a proposed regulatory revision that would allow biofuels producers to process feedstock at one facility and convert the resulting material into fuels at another using existing pathways. That specific proposal lends support to a big idea covered in this month&rsquo;s lead-off feature, &ldquo;The Odd Decouple,&rdquo; on page 24. Authored by Executive Editor Tim Portz, the story shares researcher notions about disconnecting the early steps of biomass processing from subsequent downstream conversions&mdash;just like the EPA wants to sanction. The idea is that biofuels and bioenergy plants would benefit from insulating themselves from the difficult, risky job of breaking down the material under the same roof where it&rsquo;s made into fuel, power or heat. Decentralizing and outsourcing biomass prep work sounds futuristic, but it&rsquo;s an idea with technical merit and, now, federal endorsement. Corn stover, maybe the world&rsquo;s most prominent cellulosic ethanol feedstock, is a great candidate for distributed preprocessing. Yet, today, it&rsquo;s the sugars derived from stover that are the likely near-term derivatives of process decoupling. In &ldquo;New Pathways for Stover,&rdquo; on page 28, Associate Editor Ann Bailey reports on alternative uses for the abundant residues of corn, including one company&rsquo;s plan to convert stover and wheat straw into salable, high-end sugars.&nbsp;&nbsp; In &ldquo;Fiber: Feedstock of the Future,&rdquo; on page 34, we compare the pursuit of corn-fiber-to-ethanol conversion with the broader challenge of taming biomass fiber of all manner. Managing Editor Susanne Retka Schill relays the accomplishments of two seasoned front-end separation technology providers, and explains the challenge of making fiber flow through an ethanol plant&rsquo;s numerous conduits without stoppage. Our cover story, &ldquo;Wet Cake Max-imization,&rdquo; on page 40, acquaints readers with Mark Yancey and D3Max, another company pursuing corn-fiber-to-ethanol, albeit from back-end wet cake that&rsquo;s already been cooked. As Bailey reports, D3Max is at a pivotal point in its development, with a pilot plant under construction, multiple producers interested in hosting the unit, and commercial design work underway.&nbsp;
In our anchor spot, on page 44, Retka Schill follows up on the sale of five Abengoa Bioenergy first-gen ethanol plants. In all, three buyers paid a collective $357 million for the facilities in September. The sale of Abengoa&rsquo;s stranded cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas&mdash;never fully operational&mdash;is expected to close later this year, basically ending the Spain-based corporation&rsquo;s respectable, brave tenure in North American ethanol. Author: Tom Bryan President &amp; Editor in Chief tbryan@bbiinternational.com

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A review of the line up of in-depth reporting in the November print issue of Ethanol Producer Magazine.

Biomass  Breakaways

Herb Seeger has a zeal for barbecue wood pellets. When he discusses what the product has meant for Great Lakes Renewable Energy, it&rsquo;s easy to understand why. Seeger was the spark that led to Biomass Magazine committing an entire issue to the role that coproducts play within the biomass energy sector. Seeger&rsquo;s enthusiasm was compelling, but ultimately, it was the make-or-break nature of his and GLRE&rsquo;s story, combined with historically low energy prices, that ultimately hooked our team. To accompany the page-14 story I wrote about GLRE, &ldquo;Cooking Up Higher Margins,&rdquo; we conducted a survey of pellet producers to better understand how many were engaged in the manufacture of coproducts, and what it meant to their operations. The survey revealed that GLRE is not unique because it manufactures coproducts, but that its success might not be as widely enjoyed by its industry peers. For Seeger, coproducts offer everything that pellets for home heating markets do not&mdash;a global marketplace, higher margins, year-round demand, and insulation from fluctuations in temperature and the prices of competing commodities. The glaring omission, of course, is volume. During our interview, Seeger admitted that serving the barbecue market required a completely different production and marketing paradigm that other producers may not be ready to fully embrace. Still, the dramatic difference these alternative markets make for GLRE render it impossible to ignore what robust market development activities these categories might be able to do for the pellet industry. Associate Editor Katie Fletcher&rsquo;s page-24 feature, &ldquo;Green Garbage to Black Gold,&rdquo; explores how the biogas segment is hoping that the development and deployment of a digestate standard will simultaneously bolster marketplace confidence and regulatory acceptance of this important coproduct. Fletcher spoke with Clarke Pauley, vice president of the organics and biogas division at CR&amp;R, who summed it up this way: &ldquo;We see the success of anaerobic digestion of organic wastes directly tied to the ability to generate usable soil products on the back end.&rdquo; Directly tied, he said. Not important, and not a contributing factor, but directly tied. With energy prices where they are, it is certainly hard to argue. Beyond that, one of biomass&rsquo;s greatest values is its zero-waste story. In that way, a digestate standard and efforts to aggressively grow the digestate market should serve as an ongoing reminder of the efficiency of the technology. This issue is rounded out with stories on biochar and heat exchangers and their role in buttressing the economics of the producers savvy enough to engage in their production or use. Energy revenues alone are not enough right now. The open question is whether or not coproduct markets can grow enough to make the kind of difference they&rsquo;ve made for Seeger. Author: Tim Portz Vice President of Content&nbsp; &amp; Executive Editor tportz@bbiinternational.com

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Energy revenues alone are not enough right now.The open question is whether or not coproduct markets can grow enough to make a difference.

A Shot in the Arm

CR&amp;R Environmental Services&rsquo; massive Perris, California, anaerobic digestion (AD) project is being built out in four phases, each processing about 83,000 tons of mixed green and food waste annually into 1 million diesel gallon equivalents of renewable natural gas (RNG). While this project was built to upgrade biogas to RNG, it also recognizes the value associated with each phase&rsquo;s inherent production of some 35,000 tons per year of a compostlike soil product and 10 million gallons of liquid soil amendment. &ldquo;We see the success of anaerobic digestion of organic wastes directly tied to the ability to generate usable soil products on the back end,&rdquo; says Clarke Pauley, vice president of the organics and biogas division with CR&amp;R. These soil products are derived from digestate&mdash;the nutrient-rich, solid fibrous material fraction and liquid portion left over from the AD process. Digestate is no longer the same as the input organic material to the digester, nor is it a final fertilizer or compost, but through digestion, the organic material gains desirable qualities that allow CR&amp;R to offer a closed-loop recycling solution. &ldquo;Nothing is wasted and nearly all inputs are either converted into energy or a usable product,&rdquo; Pauley says. Unlike CR&amp;R, many early biogas systems were developed simply to reduce odor or the volume of waste being dealt with. The benefits of renewable energy generation have now been widely recognized, but what producers can do with their digestate coproduct to get an economic return has been overlooked. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s changed lately,&rdquo; says Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council. Five years ago, it was easier to develop a biogas system because the revenue from the sale of energy, whether in the form of gas or electricity, was more economically attractive. Weak or lacking renewable energy programs in many states adds to the difficulty of digester project success on energy sales alone, according to Brian Langolf, director of biogas systems and research development at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. &ldquo;Creating value-added end products from digestate can be an additional revenue source for a project,&rdquo; he says. Although CR&amp;R&rsquo;s soil product sales will be dependent on a number of interrelated factors&mdash;supply, demand, processing cost and product quality&mdash;Pauley acknowledges that they&rsquo;ve put a great deal of effort into this part of their AD business model. &ldquo;Organic residual sales will be a big boost to our bottom line; by how much remains to determined,&rdquo; he says. Until now, digestate from the processing of nonsewage derived organics (such as household organic waste) has been largely unregulated and ill-defined. As a result, selling this product has proved challenging for producers who have encountered both market and regulatory barriers. Headed by the American Biogas Council, the biogas industry recognized the need to fill gaps in the marketability of digestate and digestate-derived products, and with extensive outreach to industry entities, including the EPA, created the ABC Digestate Standard Testing and Certification Program. This voluntary, industry-led program sets forth testing methods and a quality management system for characterizing digestate-derived products, which will provide some standardization and product quality targets that operators can subscribe to. As an environmental lawyer helping draft the standards, Amy Kessler, cofounder of Turning Earth LLC, sees it as an &ldquo;unprecedented opportunity for an industry to get together and say this is a reasonable amount of regulation and oversight.&rdquo; Numerous meetings, conference calls and workshops were held over the two-year period during which a coproducts working group developed the bulk of the program. When developing the program, Kessler says, one model they&rsquo;ve looked to is the U.S. Composting Council&rsquo;s. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve recognized that in order for compost to become a household name and a recognized mainstream commodity, there needed to be some standards around it&mdash;some accountability and understanding of what&rsquo;s in it, what makes a good compost and how you might use it,&rdquo; she says. Kessler&rsquo;s interest stems from her company Turning Earth, an organics recycling company that is developing a facility in Connecticut to produce biogas as well as compost for a variety of soil products. &ldquo;Compost is very familiar for folks, and we want to achieve that for digestate as well,&rdquo; she says. This program also builds upon digestate standards programs in other countries&mdash;like the U.K.&rsquo;s digestate quality protocol&mdash;and integrates relevant portions of existing U.S. EPA regulations&mdash;like Part 503, 40CFR biosolids rule under the Clean Water Act. &ldquo;Right now, if you produce digestate from biosolids, you don&rsquo;t need our program necessarily because EPA Part 503 tells you exactly what should and should not be in your digestate,&rdquo; Serfass says. This program is to &ldquo;fill the gap of the nonbiosolids digestate, because there is nothing out there to help improve customer assurance for buying digestate that doesn&rsquo;t have biosolids in it,&rdquo; he adds. For digestate subject to specific regulations per EPA Part 503, like digestate derived from waste activated sludge and other sewage products, the producers must still comply with those regulations, but can also participate in ABC&rsquo;s program to bring additional value to their digestate. &ldquo;The objective is to create an inclusive program that any digestate producer can participate in,&rdquo; Serfass says. This program is not replacing Part 503 or any other applicable local, state or federal regulations that producers must comply with outside this voluntary program. The testing conducted through the program measures the beneficial physical and chemical changes resulting from digestion, and defines the physical and agronomic properties of the digestate products. These results will be issued on a summary digestate technical datasheet by certified labs participating in the program. &ldquo;It is like a nutrition label&mdash;here is what&rsquo;s all in the digestate,&rdquo; says Kim Busse, laboratory manager with the Environmental Research and Innovation Center at UW Oshkosh. Serfass adds that like a nutritional label, it doesn&rsquo;t necessarily tell you how much sugar you should have, but keeps it open for the customer&rsquo;s interpretation while providing some general recommendations. Standardizing digestate allows for the composition and beneficial use of the product to be accurately and appropriately represented by biogas project owners, and understood and accepted by regulators and offtakers. &ldquo;Our main goal is to assure digestate customers that they are purchasing digestate products that are within nationally established safe pathogen and heavy metals limits,&rdquo; Pauley says. Beyond that, testing for a variety of parameters of stability and chemical composition will be required. Tests include: feedstocks, moisture content, pathogens, macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium), micronutrients, pH, soluble salts, total solids, volatile solids, organic matter content, physical particle size, metals, visible contamination, stability (volatile fatty acids or CO2 respiration), and maturity. According to Busse, the amount of required testing is really dependent on the digestate&rsquo;s end use. The testing protocol breaks down digestate into three broad end-use classifications: alternative daily cover or landfill or refused-derived fuel, restricted land application, and generally unrestricted bulk sales or land application. Busse&rsquo;s UW Oshkosh lab is one of a handful that are already planning to become certified under ABC&rsquo;s Digestate Lab Certification Program. Once certified, these labs will test digestate using the prescribed standardized methods. UW Oshkosh already performs digestate tests for a number of clients, and Busse assumes most digesters are probably being tested at some level, but standardization will ensure everyone is &ldquo;doing the same testing so that we can compare it to different kinds of digesters across this country,&rdquo; she says. Labs must meet certain parameters in order to become certified in the program, including paying an annual fee and taking a proficiency test each year. Labs are also required to follow a set of approved quality assurance standards and will occasionally be verified by a third party. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want it to be difficult to qualify as a lab,&rdquo; Busse says. &ldquo;We want it to be inviting, but we also want standardization, so we need some standards to uphold.&rdquo; The working group is still fine-tuning some of the requirements for labs to become certified and determining how much testing is necessary, a balancing act between achieving good, accurate test results and making participation economical. According to Pauley, the working group is currently developing the financial model for the program. &ldquo;The key is to make sure that the investment in participation is worth it for all participants,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We anticipate a flat fee for company registration, a one-time enrollment fee, plus an annual maintenance fee.&rdquo; Pauley reiterates that they&rsquo;re striving to make the program economical for all participating members, but &ldquo;the bottom line is that participants will need to see the value of their certification to make the digestate certification program work.&rdquo; Digestate producers who are interested in participating will fill out an application with ABC, and once qualified, will receive access to all of the program details, such as tests needed, how the participant should use the program, which laboratories it can work with and how often testing needs to occur. Instructions and training on proper sample collection will be provided as well, to ensure that test results are representative of production over a given period of time, and adjusted based on size and complexity of the facility. Both the participating producer and ABC will be issued test results. Referred to as a &ldquo;nutritional label,&rdquo; this datasheet will not only contain many important parameters users will be interested in, but also explain why the characteristics are important for digestate end users. Program participants will be able to use these certified results in the marketing and sale of their products, on product packaging and their websites, etc., as well as for regulatory submissions. Certified producers can use the ABC logo on these documents. Pauley says CR&amp;R plans to have a &ldquo;diverse marketing plan with a variety of users from agriculture to municipalities for use in their landscapes and parks.&rdquo; The coproducts working group is also trying to find balance between making the results transparent and allowing the producers autonomy to conduct their own business. &ldquo;We [ABC] will be in possession of the results, but we&rsquo;re going to want the digestate producer to be the one interacting with customers,&rdquo; Serfass says. &ldquo;It all revolves around customer assurance and helping people to realize the full potential, the full value of digestate.&rdquo; Author: Katie Fletcher Associate Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4920 kfletcher@bbiinternational.com

BYPRODUCT UPGRADE: The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh composts its urban anaerobic dry digester (BD1) digestate material, produced from one of the university's three digesters, and sells it as a soil amendment under the brand Titan Gold.  

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The roll out of a digestate standards program will help assure customers of the value this often-overlooked coproduct of anaerobic digestion possesses. 

Green Garbage to Black Gold

Earlier this summer, reports emerged that California&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard was at risk of major reform, or even elimination. The RNG Coalition responded, in solidarity with like-minded clean energy, renewable fuels, organized labor and environmental advocates. By the conclusion of California&rsquo;s 2015-&lsquo;16 legislative session at the end of August, amid a flurry of uncertainty and opposition, the state legislature passed SB 32. The bill effectively extends the LCFS and cap-and-trade compliance programs beyond 2020 to 2030. "The LCFS as a compliance program and market driver is here to stay and renewable natural gas will continue to be one of its major success stories,&rdquo; said Johannes Escudero, RNG Coalition CEO and executive director. &ldquo;We commend Gov. Brown, Sen. Pavley, Assemblymember E. Garcia, and the California legislature for their leadership to assure clean air, green jobs, and low carbon fuel options throughout California for decades to come.&rdquo; Ten years ago (to the day, as I write this), California passed Assembly Bill 32, landmark legislation requiring the state to reduce its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The law promulgated the state&rsquo;s current LCFS and cap-and-trade programs. The LCFS program and credit market have effectively driven production, deployment, and utilization of renewable natural gas (RNG) and other biomass and waste-derived clean fuels in the transportation sector. This is especially true for compressed and liquefied forms of RNG, the lowest carbon intensity transportation fuel available. In 2015, 50 percent of all natural gas vehicle fuel used in California was RNG. The value of LCFS credits began dropping this summer, amid speculation that the program&rsquo;s future was in jeopardy. After peaking at a weekly average above $122 per metric ton in early June, LCFS credit prices dipped to an August average of just $75, according to activity reported to the state&rsquo;s Air Resources Board. &ldquo;Above all, the RNG Coalition focused on protecting and promoting RNG in California. We knew that the best thing we could do for the industry was restore LCFS market stability and secure that stability long-term,&rdquo; said David Cox, operations director and general counsel for the RNG Coalition. Throughout July and August, the RNG Coalition rallied members and industry stakeholders, and coalesced and worked with other clean fuel groups, organized labor, and environmental advocates to defend the LCFS and extend the climate programs beyond 2020 to 2030.&nbsp; On August 24, California&rsquo;s legislature passed SB 32 (Pavley). The bill builds upon AB 32 and requires the state to reduce its carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. &ldquo;We are better organized than we&rsquo;ve ever been, and the results speak for themselves,&rdquo; said RNG Coalition Chairman Evan Williams, who attended the bill signing on behalf of the RNG Coalition upon invitation from the governor&rsquo;s office. Creating LCFS market certainty beyond 2020 and passing SB 32 was a priority for the RNG Coalition, the trade association that provides public policy advocacy and education for the RNG industry in North America. RNG Coalition members produced or otherwise serviced 100 percent of the RNG participating in the LCFS program in 2015. &ldquo;Without the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas, we would not have gotten SB 32/AB 197,&rdquo; said Martha Aceves-Guzman, deputy legislative secretary for Gov. Jerry Brown. &ldquo;It was excellent to finally have folks we can strategize with on how to work with members (of the Legislature). Next year will be equally critical.&rdquo; AB 197 (E. Garcia) was double-joined with SB 32 and also passed, creating additional oversight by the ARB legislature to prevent promulgation of regulations that fail to properly balance the needs of the environment with the economy. SB 32 would not have passed without AB 197. &ldquo;Thank you for your work on the passage of AB 197 and SB 32. This has been a historical accomplishment,&rdquo; said Carlos Gonzales, policy director for Assemblymember E. Garcia. &ldquo;Your leadership and guidance during the last couple weeks of session made AB 197 and SB 32 possible.&rdquo; As a fitting conclusion, on Oct. 5, representatives from the RNG Coalition attended a celebration of AB 32&rsquo;s extension by SB 32 and AB 197. &ldquo;On behalf of the RNG industry, suppliers of ultraclean RNG transportation fuel, we recognize Gov. Brown and California&rsquo;s lawmakers for their dedication to a healthy and robust market for RNG,&rdquo; Cox added. &ldquo;Passage of these bills quickly restored stability to LCFS credit prices, and has cemented Gov. Brown&rsquo;s, Sen. Pavley's, and Assemblymember E. Garcia&rsquo;s legacies as forward-thinking policy leaders.&rdquo; Assemblymember E. Garcia has been invited to speak&mdash;and attendees may have the opportunity to meet one of California&rsquo;s rising legislative stars&mdash;at the RNG industry&rsquo;s annual RNG Fuel, Heat, Power &amp; Policy Conference Dec. 5-7, at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California. Author: Marcus D. Gillette Director of Public &amp; Government Affairs, Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas 916.588.3033 marcus@rngcoalition.com

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By the conclusion of California's 2015-“16 legislative session at the end of August, amid a flurry of uncertainty and opposition, the state legislature passed SB 32, which extends the LCFS and cap-and-trade compliance programs beyond  2020 to 2030.

RNG in California: Leadership, Market Certainty 

Heat exchangers play a vital role in the operational efficiency and effectiveness at every processing facility in which heat is essential, whether it is an oil refinery or a biomass power plant. As energy efficiency importance grows, the role of heat exchangers will become even greater, their technologies more advanced.&nbsp; The idea is simple, but the system designs and inner workings of heat exchange are magnificently brilliant. Heat is generated for and in various industrial processes, and were it not for heat exchangers, massive amounts of thermal energy would be wasted. For instance, boilers combust fuels such as biomass to generate heat to produce steam for powering a turbine in producing electricity. Once that steam does its job, it still has a lot of thermal energy, some of which can be transferred via a vapor-to-liquid shell-and-tube heat exchanger to raise the boiler feedwater temperature. This serves multiple purposes, including cooling down the steam to avoid thermal shock on the boiler&rsquo;s steam drum, and reducing the heat load needed to raise the temperature of the boiler feedwater. This is one of many heat exchanger applications at Koda Energy, a biomass combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plant in Shakopee, Minnesota, says Stacy Cook, general manager. Koda Energy, a partnership between Rahr Malting Co. and Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, began commercial operations in 2009 and produces 500 megawatt-hours of electricity and 2,500 Btu of thermal energy daily from agriculture waste and wood chips. The plant has only the world&rsquo;s second power boiler to use wall-mounted burners to combust biomass in suspension, meaning airborne burning of biomass. About 25 percent of Koda Energy&rsquo;s total electrical output is provided to Rahr Malting, slightly more than 50 percent is sold to Xcel Energy (i.e., the grid), and the remainder sustains operations at the CHP plant. And 100 percent of its thermal output is provided to Rahr Malting. The electricity and energy is used to malt barley for beer at the largest site producer of malted barley in the world. Common sources of waste heat in industry, according to Kevin McGinnis, sales director for heavy industries and mining at Kelvion&mdash;the successor to Germany-based GEA Heat Exchangers Group&mdash;include turbines, dryers, kilns, incinerators, boilers and flue gas from heaters or burners, to name a few. &ldquo;In general, waste heat can be captured with various types of heat exchangers and used for various applications,&rdquo; McGinnis says, &ldquo;including combustion air preheating; heating a facility, plant, building or home; boiler feedwater preheating; heating a process fluid for another application; or even for the ORC process.&rdquo; ORC stands for organic Rankine cycle, the thermodynamic cycle using water as a working fluid that provides 85 percent of the world&rsquo;s electricity production, according to Turboden. Numerous heat exchanger companies exist, many specializing in particular types. Kelvion offers its customers one of the world&rsquo;s largest product portfolios in the field of heat exchangers, McGinnis says. &ldquo;It includes individual solutions for practically all conceivable applications and complex environmental conditions, including plate, shell-and-tube, finned-tube and refrigeration heat exchangers, and modular cooling tower systems.&rdquo; Another big name in heat exchange is Alfa Laval. Wes Crozier, product manager, has been with the Sweden-based company for nearly 30 years in various roles. &ldquo;In the area of heat transfer, we have gasketed plate heat exchangers for liquid-to-liquid and vapor-to-liquid, air coolers for air-to-liquid, fully welded heat exchangers for high pressures and temperatures, a specialty spiral heat exchanger for extreme fouling services, as well as more niche products,&rdquo; Crozier says. Netherlands-based HeatMatrix developed what Paul van Dillen, director of global sales and marketing, calls a new generation air-preheater that enables heat recovery from corrosive or fouling gas streams from biomass boilers, refinery furnaces, heaters, ovens or dryers. &ldquo;This innovative heat exchanger consists of lightweight, corrosion resistant polymer modules, which can be applied at high temperatures and is ideally suited for waste heat recovery from flue gases that are corrosive or have fouling in it,&rdquo; van Dillen says. HeatMatrix only designs and supplies air-to-air heat exchangers, often used to preheat air from waste heat flue gas streams. At Koda Energy, another shell-and-tube heat exchanger, called a surface condenser, condenses steam flow on the turbine exhaust, Cook says. &ldquo;The exhaust enters the condenser and puts a vacuum on the exhaust to allow the turbine to run more efficiently,&rdquo; he says. In addition, a boiler economizer uses combustion gases leaving the boiler to further elevate the feedwater temperature before entering the steam drum on the boiler. &ldquo;In general, the economizer adds 10 percent efficiency,&rdquo; Cook says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re taking every opportunity to capture heat.&rdquo; Kelvion manufactures a welded plate heat exchanger that can be used as a small vacuum condenser or traditional fin/fan technology to serve as an air-cooled condenser. &ldquo;With our global footprint, we manufacture steam surface condensers and feedwater heaters, both of which are used in the steam cycle,&rdquo; McGinnis says. &ldquo;With waste heat generating steam for a steam turbine, Kelvion has all the exchangers in the steam process.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; Alfa Laval&rsquo;s Niagara Wet Surface Air Cooler can also be used to condense the vacuum exhaust steam from the turbine. &ldquo;The ability to efficiently condense the turbine exhaust steam at low absolute pressures allows for more power generation,&rdquo; Crozier says. &ldquo;This is accomplished by a single approach to the ambient wet bulb temperature for cooling.&rdquo; The prime heat mover at Koda is a very large plate-and-frame heat exchanger. This uses propylene glycol as thermal fluid to transfer heat via piping to Rahr Malting. Then, a similar but smaller unit takes even more leftover Btu from condensate from the steamed glycol heater to gain another 3 percent efficiency. &ldquo;This was sized to capture the available Btu that were being wasted,&rdquo; Cook says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re capturing those and putting them back into glycol and useful sales.&rdquo; Crozier says plate heat exchangers can have a heat transfer coefficient up to four times greater than shell and tube. This, along with its construction, means the footprint can be just 20 percent needed for a shell and tube. &ldquo;The size advantage is achieved through embossing plates with carefully designed patterns, many of which are patented,&rdquo; Crozier says. &ldquo;This embossing creates channels for the fluids to ensure maximum turbulence. This results in maximum efficiency in transferring heat from one medium to the other. In addition, many of our designs are fully counter current, which allow temperature crosses where the outlet temperature of the hot side can be cooler than the outlet temperature of the cold side&mdash;very difficult to do with other types of heat exchangers.&rdquo; Higher temperatures and pressures are being achieved in compact plate heat exchangers, McGinnis says, through new welding technology Kelvion uses, offering alternate designs to traditional shell-and-tube solutions. &ldquo;Efficiency gains are realized through more effective channel geometries with built-in enhancements,&rdquo; McGinnis says. Additional plate-and-frame heat exchangers are utilized at Koda for cooling applications, mostly for equipment health. Pumps handle high-temperature liquids, and a portion of these liquids is used in a mechanical shaft seal, so heat is shed to the cooling tower before reaching the pumps so as to not burn up the seals. Another application is to cool the turbine lube oil using circulating water from the cooling tower. &ldquo;This keeps the turbine lube oil at an acceptable temperature,&rdquo; Cook says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re running 900-pound steam through the turbine and we need to keep the shaft lubed. If the oil heats up to 900 degrees, it will decompose.&rdquo; McGinnis says Kelvion has a specialty for cooling the rotating equipment associated with waste heat to energy, manufacturing a range of extended surface shell and tubes and compact plate heat exchangers. Koda also employs a liquid-to-air, radiant air heater using glycol heat to preheat combustion air to avoid acid dew-point corrosion. &ldquo;If the air temperature drops too low prior to the tubular air heater, it will condense out acid gases on the flue gas side,&rdquo; Cook says. The plant also uses an air-to-air heat exchanger, called a tubular air heater, which captures waste heat in flue gas. Van Dillen says the heat transfer properties of HeatMatrix&rsquo;s air-to-air polymer technology, used to capture flue gas heat, is very good in comparison to other, more conventional technologies because of its compactness, thin tube wall, strong honeycomb structure, and 100 percent counter flow. Kelvion&rsquo;s finned-tube heat exchanger options for air-to-air or air-to-liquid applications include two major types&mdash;compact/plate fin coils and spiral-finned tubes&mdash;but also finned elliptical tubes. &ldquo;A specific difference we offer on our spiral fins is our patented &lsquo;groovy&rsquo; fin for our spiral-finned tubes,&rdquo; McGinnis says. &ldquo;The &lsquo;groovy&rsquo; fin enhances heat transfer by turbulating the air more than a regular spiral fin can, which results in better heat transfer and a smaller coil size, making it ideal for replacement coils or in situations where a smaller footprint is needed.&rdquo; Just like the medium flowing through heat exchangers, technology advancements in the field continue to move the needle. Van Dillen says he believes HeatMatrix&rsquo;s polymer bundle technology will be a game changer in the industry. While the company currently only manufactures air-to-air exchangers, he says air-to-liquid polymer designs are now under development. &ldquo;This will be the next focus for HeatMatrix in this field,&rdquo; van Dillen says. Alfa Laval&rsquo;s latest patented design, the CurveFlow, is for asymmetrical ports and features a new fluid distribution pattern that Crozier says lowers pressure drop, or increases efficiency with the same pressure drop. &ldquo;We have also introduced a new method to secure gaskets to plates without glue being required,&rdquo; he says. The company continues to develop new patterns used on various plates to increase efficiency vs. pressure drop, reduction of material thickness while maintaining pressure capabilities, applying new construction materials for plates and gaskets, as well as special unit types for specific applications. &ldquo;Unlike the traditional shell-and-tube &lsquo;one design type fits all,&rsquo; the Alfa Laval frames have been drastically improved,&rdquo; Crozier says, &ldquo;with better ways to open and close the units, studded ports that are in-place rather than nozzles, and bearing boxes that reduce resistance during tightening of bolts.&rdquo; McGinnis says in finned-tube technology, Kelvion continues to produce advancements in dry-air cooling in both fin- and tube-side augmentation, fan efficiency increases, and reduced noise footprint. &ldquo;The future of dry-air-cooled heat exchange is small, incremental improvements that benefit everyone involved,&rdquo; McGinnis says. &ldquo;The future of heat exchange is using greater thermal efficiencies through more efficient use of pressure drop, flow distribution, and effective use of proper channel hydraulic diameters based upon application suitability.&rdquo; Author: Ron Kotrba Senior Editor, Biomass Magazine 218-745-8347 rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

VERSATILE UTILITY: Kelvion, formerly GEA Heat Exchangers Group, manufactures welded plate heat exchangers that can be used as small vacuum condensers or traditional fin/fan technology to serve as air-cooled condensers.   

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Capturing and reusing waste heat in biomass plants is 
paramount to efficient, effective operations.  

The Ins and Outs of Heat Exchangers

Herb Seeger, president of Great Lakes Renewable Energy Inc., recently went to an auction at a distressed wood pellet facility. Recalling meeting the owner of the facility, Seeger says, &ldquo;My mood isn't the same as his mood.&rdquo; For Seeger and his team at GLRE, business is strong. In fact, Seeger is shipping wood pellets in containers to countries all over the world, including Japan and Taiwan. On the heels of a soft market for heating pellets, Seeger&rsquo;s business is healthy, predominantly because he&rsquo;s aggressively targeting markets beyond home heating users. After a particularly warm winter in the upper Midwest in 2010, Seeger convinced his ownership group to recast its facility as a diversified pellet producer, and began aggressively building expertise and customers in the barbecue and absorbent markets. Without this change in operating philosophy, Seeger doubts that GLRE would be operating today. A recent Biomass Magazine survey, partial results of which are shown on page 15, suggests that while Seeger may be an early adopter of the idea of market diversification, he and GLRE are certainly not alone. Exactly two-thirds of survey respondents reported that they are engaged in the manufacture and sale of wood fiber products for uses other than home heating. While the majority of the industry is engaged in the manufacture of these coproducts, survey results indicate that the success and importance of those efforts vary from producer to producer. Seeger&rsquo;s experience suggests that having success outside of home heating markets requires new thinking in fiber procurement, production, marketing and distribution. For producers who get it right, coproducts can improve cash flow, increase profit margins and reduce the seasonality of the wood pellet business, all issues that have plagued even the savviest of producers for years. &ldquo;What we learned when we had a warm winter in 2010 was that you can&rsquo;t survive on a product that has a six-month market unless you have the ability to store pellets while you make them,&rdquo; Seeger says. &ldquo;And you have the working capital to make that happen.&rdquo; GLRE&rsquo;s first foray into barbecue pellets wasn&rsquo;t a story of instant success. Seeger says that the facility struggled with pellets that were too long, too hard and had too many fines. But the biggest hurdle was feedstock procurement. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve spent six years figuring out how to buy the wood species needed to produce 22 different Lumberjack barbecue pellet recipes that we sell,&rdquo; Seeger says. This means procuring wood in a species specific manner, often in quantities that loggers are reluctant to spend the time isolating and setting aside. It has taken time, but Seeger says he feels like GLRE has finally turned a corner, and its sourcing program is the foundation of their coproduct strategy. &ldquo;The first nut to crack was to let them [loggers] know there was a need out there,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then we have to provide a price that makes it worth their while to do the necessary work to bring us the material.&rdquo; Any other producer hoping to produce wood pellets for the specialty barbecue market must overcome this same fiber procurement challenge if they hope to preserve the promise of higher margins that led them to that market in the first place. Survey responses suggest that for most producers, significantly higher margins continue to elude them. Of the producers engaged in coproduct production, just 10 percent describe those products as significantly more profitable than heating pellets. That same percentage reported that margins on those products are slightly less profitable than their home heating product; 40 percent reported the products were slightly more profitable, and 33 percent report about the same level of profitability. This isn&rsquo;t surprising to Seeger. &ldquo;Most producers aren&rsquo;t comfortable filling orders of 1 to 2 tons,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too much overhead. Most folks are not set up to do it. We&rsquo;ve spent six years developing these systems and we&rsquo;re trying to stay ahead of everyone else.&rdquo; While Seeger&rsquo;s competitors may not be achieving the financial success that he and his team have, the survey clearly indicates that producers recognize the potential offered by coproducts to their operations. Nearly 90 percent of respondents engaged in coproduct manufacturing say they are important to their operations, and half of those report that the share of their business dedicated to those products as growing.&nbsp; Of survey respondents, 51 percent reported committing less than 5 percent of their annual production time to the manufacture of nonheating products. In this regard, GLRE is well ahead of the curve. Just 40 percent of GLRE&rsquo;s volumes are heating pellets. &ldquo;I want that 40 percent number to go down,&rdquo; he says. Seeger notes that he isn&rsquo;t running at full capacity and has room within his air permit to run his dryer much more. He says that because of the higher margins he enjoys from his barbecue and absorbent products, his monthly run time requirements to break even on the facility is nearly halved. &ldquo;We have, with a purpose, looked to make heating pellets something that we fill in with now,&rdquo; he says. Perhaps by accident, GLRE deployed a press suite well-suited for the day-to-day, and sometimes hour-to-hour, product changes the plant has to make to fill orders and satisfy customers. GLRE puts three 3-ton-per-hour Munch presses to work, and often changes from one barbecue pellet recipe to another without shutting any of the presses down. &ldquo;Between the 22 recipes we make for our Lumberjack line and the recipes we make under private labeling contracts, I sometimes make 30 different pellet formulations in a two-and-a-half day span,&rdquo; Seeger says. &ldquo;A 10- or 12-ton-per-hour single pellet mill wouldn&rsquo;t work for us.&rdquo; The growth in absorbent, animal bedding and barbecue markets has made it necessary for GLRE to move warehousing and distribution to a dedicated facility. All of the facility&rsquo;s orders that are less than a truckload are filled out of that warehouse, allowing for more complex pick-and-pack, mixed shipments to be received and fulfilled in a more efficient manner. As the 2016-&lsquo;17 heating season approaches, North American producers making pellets predominantly for home heating are holding their breath and crossing fingers. For some, another warm winter might be more than their operation can financially withstand. For others, this past winter, or the winter of 2010-'11, were enough to move them to explore other markets. Now, the question is, will they be able to leverage those opportunities into the higher margins and operational surety that Seeger and the GLRE team have? &ldquo;We were looking to change our business model,&rdquo; Seeger says. &ldquo;The original business model presented to the bank eight years ago doesn&rsquo;t look anything like what we are doing today. And if we wouldn&rsquo;t have done it, we wouldn&rsquo;t be here.&rdquo; In these market conditions, he adds, a producer can&rsquo;t live on heating pellets alone. &ldquo;Not a little mill like this. Look at the auctions. I feel very fortunate that we did what we did, when we did it and that we&rsquo;ve become a good company here in northern Wisconsin.&rdquo; Author: Tim Portz Executive Editor, Biomass Magazine tportz@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4969

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As another heating season approaches, low heat market margins have pellet producers looking toward other end uses for greater market stability and increased profits.

Cooking Up Higher Margins

All electric generation should be cogeneration. That may seem like an extreme statement, but in a world where energy usage, environmental impact, and costs are increasingly important, and the movement toward renewable energy resources is accelerating, we cannot throw away &ldquo;waste energy,&rdquo; (waste heat in this case) so profligately. The annual 2015 U.S. energy usage flow chart from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory estimates that of 97.5 quadrillion British thermal units of energy used for transportation, heating and electricity, almost 60 percent was &ldquo;rejected energy.&rdquo; Policymakers at both the state and federal levels are beginning to recognize this. Combined heat and power (CHP) can utilize all kinds of fuels, and, because it makes better use of existing resources, it allows for building and community resiliency, and can garner bipartisan support in ways that other initiatives within the energy efficiency and sustainable energy space do not.&nbsp; The Pew Charitable Trusts, for example, have long championed CHP within the policy sphere. Supporters like Pew fought for a CHP renewable energy investment tax credit that is set to expire at the end of 2016. There are a number of issues with the treatment of biomass in the existing credit. Its arbitrary requirement of a minimum 20 percent electrical efficiency excludes biomass systems that have an 80 percent overall efficiency&mdash;higher than the most efficient natural gas CHP plants, which peak out at 75 percent overall efficiency&mdash;simply because&nbsp; some of those systems have an electrical efficiency less than 20 percent. Biomass CHP advocates have an obligation to address these types of barriers in future state and federal actions, or they risk being left out once again. Unfortunately, action has stalled on the POWER Act, which would extend a 30 percent energy tax credit for CHP through 2018. At the state level, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has incentivized CHP through a program that offers up to $2.5 million for installing CHP systems. However, the organization&rsquo;s regulation-heavy approach to biomass technologies, a source of debate in the biomass industry, leaves biomass at risk of being excluded from the program&rsquo;s full benefits. BTEC has taken a lead in promoting biomass CHP. The organization&rsquo;s CHP Working Group is preparing to release a factsheet and whitepaper on the topic. BTEC also recognizes that the buzz around CHP often focuses on natural gas, which does not address carbon emissions or the issue of local heating. Biomass CHP, by contract, addresses both problems. We have encouraged industry and universities to work together on projects that drive the technology forward. Author: Ben Bell-Walker Technical Program Manager Ben.bell-walker@biomassthermal.org Aaron Aber Project Assistant aaron.aber@biomassthermal.org

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BTEC has taken a lead in promoting biomass CHP. The organization's CHP Working Group is preparing to release a factsheet and whitepaper on the topic.

CHP from Biomass: The Next Generation

&ldquo;Clowns to the left of me, jokers on the right; here I am, stuck in the middle with you.&rdquo; (Stealers Wheel, 1972) Biomass Magazine has previously reported the visit of Maine&rsquo;s Biomass Study Commission to major biomass generating sites in Maine (Bob Cleaves, Biomass Power Association, October column.) One objective of the commission will be to propose legislation enabling such sites to sell electricity not only to the grid, but also to sell directly to adjacent customers. In one unique instance, ReEnergy is able to supply neighboring Stratton Lumber. In another case, however, ReEnergy has been unable to sell directly to fellow occupants in the Ashland industrial park, including Northeast Pellets. These firms are now confronted with a major electric rate hike at the hands of their regional grid supplier. Current Maine law, adhering to the &ldquo;regulated monopoly&rdquo; principle governing many utilities, generally forbids a small energy generator to sell other than to the grid. The utility firms serving Maine are paying close attention to the work of the Biomass Study Commission, and without doubt, are already thinking ahead to the post-election membership of the legislature&rsquo;s Energy and Public Utilities Committee. The Biomass Study Commission consists largely of supporters of Maine&rsquo;s forestry industry. The legislative committee deciding upon the commission&rsquo;s recommendations will, to put it mildly, have a very different composition. The foremost objective of our Maine Pellet Fuels Association is creating a thermal class in Maine&rsquo;s Renewable Portfolio Standard. Renewable &ldquo;standards&rdquo; created about 10 years ago&mdash;at the same time that many states sought to decrease reliance on fossil fuels&mdash;carved out special incentives for electricity generated by tidal, solar, wind, and hydro power.&nbsp; No provision was made for renewable generation of heat. In the past three years, New Hampshire, followed by Massachusetts, added biomass heat to its incentivized portfolios, creating a potentially large growth market for our pellet and wood chip producers and heating equipment firms. The Biomass Study Commission recognizes the potential here. In fact, this proposal is listed as Issue I-A on the commission&rsquo;s current work sheet. As is the case with creating the biomass electric microgrids described above, however, the commission&rsquo;s recommendations on biomass thermal incentives will need legislative enactment. And here&rsquo;s where the going probably gets tough. In 2013, on the heels of New Hampshire&rsquo;s passage of renewable energy credits for thermal biomass, our association worked with a logger/state senator from the northern tip of Maine to introduce a bill patterned on New Hampshire&rsquo;s new law. BTEC leader Charlie Niebling was accorded considerable attention by our legislature&rsquo;s Energy and Utilities Committee as he explained the New Hampshire bill. The complexity of the subject became daunting, however. And our bill sponsor, Sen. Troy Jackson, became the target of our governor&rsquo;s most egregious rant of the (last) year. (Political footnote: Sen. Jackson has since run for Congress in 2014, lost in the Democratic primary, been named Democratic National Committeeman from Maine, been an outspoken &ldquo;Bernie&rdquo; leader, is now likely to regain his former state Senate seat, and could emerge in 2017 as president of the Maine Senate.) With complexity being the obstacle to passage of our thermal biomass bill, we agreed to reduce the legislation to a simple requirement that Maine&rsquo;s Public Utilities Commission study the subject. Our governor, however, vetoed even this measure at a time&mdash;now long gone&mdash;that his vetoes were being sustained. The outcome of the Biomass Study Commission&rsquo;s work depends on politics.&nbsp; Northern Forest Center, a very savvy nonprofit working in support of the rural economies of the northern tier of the Northeast, coauthored and generated a long list of community and industry supporters of our letter in support of thermal biomass credits. The commission must report to the Maine Legislature by Dec. 5. By that date, it is likely that Democrats will be in the majority in our state Senate as well in in the House. The cochair of the Biomass Study Commission may well be elected to one of these Senate seats. But will our governor, who has refused to allow officials of his administration to participate in the commission&rsquo;s work, veto any legislation incorporating the commission&rsquo;s recommendations, no matter how important to our state&rsquo;s rural economy? Stay tuned, fingers crossed. Author: Bill Bell Executive Director, Maine Pellet Fuels Association feedalliance@gwi.net Tel.207-752-1392

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The outcome of Maine's Biomass Study Commission's work depends on politics. 

Upcoming Biomass  Politics

Greg Stangl is a power guy. Self-proclaimed and readily apparent to others, that title has been earned by the CEO of Phoenix Energy after a decade-plus of developing and building small-scale biomass electricity projects. While there may be hundreds of companies working in the smaller-scale bioenergy project space, Stangl has something that most of them don&rsquo;t: biochar. And, he knows how to use it. Perhaps more accurately, he knows its worth. But that&rsquo;s not to say he always did. &ldquo;We used to give our biochar away at two cents per pound, when we built our first facility in Europe,&rdquo; Stangl says. &ldquo;Our plans then were all about electricity&mdash;we sold that biochar to people using coal furnaces.&rdquo; Partnered up with GE Energy for numerous projects in various stages of development, including a 2-MW plant in North Fork, California, that will break ground in early November, it wasn&rsquo;t until Phoenix Energy began working in the U.S. that a much different market began knocking on the company&rsquo;s door to purchase biochar. &ldquo;Farmers started contacting us for it,&rdquo; Stangl says. &ldquo;Now, if someone buys a bulk truckload, we charge 79 cents per pound, and people pay it. It&rsquo;s an expensive product, but if you have high-value specialty crops with a high capex investment and it has to provide to you for 20 years, it&rsquo;s well worth the investment.&rdquo; Based in California, where a once-thriving biomass power industry has plummeted the past few years, Phoenix Energy&rsquo;s business model would look substantially different if it weren&rsquo;t for the sale of biochar, Stangl says. And by different, he means unfeasible. &ldquo;Imagine if you took 40 percent of our revenue away. If prices stay where they are in California, we will likely make more money from biochar than power in the next several years&mdash;it&rsquo;s insane.&rdquo; That reality creates an interesting dynamic when it comes to plant financing. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t get a bank loan because we have a biochar machine&mdash;we got a loan because I walked in with a power purchase agreement from a Triple A-rated, publically owned utility,&rdquo; Stangl says. &ldquo;The banks don&rsquo;t know about biochar, they don&rsquo;t want to hear about it, and there aren&rsquo;t forward contracts for it. We did sell our first forward contract this year, but that&rsquo;s just one. It doesn&rsquo;t suddenly make biochar financeable.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; But how much biochar can a small-scale plant actually produce? For Phoenix Energy&rsquo;s 2-MW plants, it&rsquo;s about 10 percent of the fuel intake. &ldquo;Around 300 pounds per hour, per megawatt, of softwood,&rdquo; Stangl says, adding that there&rsquo;s roughly 44 yards of biochar in a standard truckload. Weight varies by the feedstock used&mdash;a truckload holds 22 supersacks of biochar; when it&rsquo;s made from hardwood it weighs in around 900 pounds, and when made from softwood, around 550 pounds. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve built a plant based on peach pits&mdash;that stuff is very heavy, a supersack weighs more like 1,300 pounds, it&rsquo;s much denser,&rdquo; Stangl says. While well aware of biochar&rsquo;s capabilities and potential&mdash;evidenced or proven in thousands of research papers, field trials and real-world application by a growing market&mdash;Stangl admits he isn&rsquo;t an expert on biochar best practices or application rates in the soil as a fertilizer, storm water remediate, odor controller, carbon sequestration tool, and the list goes on. But what he does know is that the farmers and others who are repeat-purchasing in bulk continue to benefit from its &ldquo;amazing properties.&rdquo; And, the word is spreading. &ldquo;For example, someone has come back to us and said, &lsquo;My neighbors trees died when there was a zero water allocation, but mine survived, because I put biochar in when I planted them two years ago,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Words like that get around, and then suddenly it&rsquo;s hard to keep up with demand, which leads to a challenge. It doesn&rsquo;t pay to make the stuff if you don&rsquo;t know it&rsquo;s leaving in a timely fashion. Pellet guys, for example, might have two years&rsquo; worth of pellets in bags out back. But with our small-sized plants, we can&rsquo;t afford to sit on inventory.&rdquo; And biochar may be just the right fit a certain pellet plants, such as Confluence Energy in Kremmling, Colorado, which alongside several different wood pellet lines, manufacturers biochar, kitty litter, animal bedding, absorbents and other products. If conditions are right, offering up a byproduct like biochar could benefit some mills that have struggled to stay afloat during recent soft winters. Pellet Plant Coproduct Biochar entrepreneur Jonah Levine, development manager at Confluence Energy and cofounder of Biochar Solutions Inc., has seen the industry rapidly progress over the past eight years, and shift from a heavy emphasis on the concept of using biochar to gain carbon credits toward use as a soil insulator, stabilizer or fertilizer, uses that have quickly gained traction. &ldquo;From 2009 to &rsquo;13, the industry was growing by about three times annually,&rdquo; Levine says. &ldquo;It tapered off a bit, but still grows about one and a half times each year, which is still an incredible rate.&rdquo; At Confluence Energy, which installed a system several years after its initial startup, wood residue is carbonized through a vertical, pyrolytic tube, after which it is sent through a horizontal tube and augured out of the active or hot zone. &ldquo;At the very edge of the hot zone, it&rsquo;s hit with hot steam, then with ambient water,&rdquo; Levine explains. &ldquo;The water quenches the material, and then that material is moved pneumatically through another tube, and into a packaging system that includes screens and size-adjustment capabilities, and then it&rsquo;s sent into bulk totes. Once it&rsquo;s in bulk totes, it goes into storage for a two-week holding period, and then at the end of the hold, before it goes to the market, we test with either or both a temperature measurement or carbon monoxide test, which is a good combustion test for safety.&rdquo; Not only does biochar diversify a pellet plant&rsquo;s offering, but heat produced as a result of its production can be captured and reused at the mill. A pellet mill like Confluence Energy might use around 1 MW thermal per hour, and process around 200 tons of wood pellets in a 24-hour period. &ldquo;During the same time, we can coproduce biochar, as well as about 1 MW of heat energy that fuel switches from the other MW thermal going into the plant,&rdquo;&nbsp; Levine says. &ldquo;So that biochar is producing a consistent head load.&rdquo; And, existing assets are another benefit to add to the list. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re getting char, coproducing, which is good, and you&rsquo;re getting heat value, which is really good, and at the same time, your administration and staff is the same, your forklift driver is the same, and the trucks loading and unloading are the same,&rdquo; Levine says, adding that the existing packaging system allows the company to sell its product to Big Box retailers including Home Depot, Lowes, and Tractor Supply. &ldquo;All of these shared assets change the economics. It fits into the framework&mdash;integrated production should be the future of the space. By putting char inside of integrated pellet manufacturing, or a coproduction of electricity and char, you start to look like a legitimate producer in the biomass industry. In my opinion, biochar only isn&rsquo;t the most cost-effective approach toward an industry.&rdquo; And those working in the space since biochar began to gain momentum just under a decade ago have grown productive capabilities and brought down the cost per unit of material, Levine notes. &ldquo;In 2009, we were producing [biochar] for 10 times the cost shipped in a barrel that was dry and dusty and couldn&rsquo;t be handled&mdash;the cost of a barrel used was $32.50,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Now, the cost of a bulk tote is $12, and you can get four barrels&rsquo; material in it. This is just an example of the simple but critical changes the market has to go through to become an industry.&rdquo; What&rsquo;s the going price of biochar? That varies with each producer, and it also varies by the quality of char and intended end-use. &ldquo;The market range is between $500 per yard, being the high end, and $100 per yard. But the question is, what is the char doing, where is it going, how is it created in preparation for that use? An example of high end is activated carbon pricing, which can be anywhere from $1 and $5 per pound. The low end is $100 per yard, and there might be a wide range of ash present, of fixed carbon, and it&rsquo;s sold via bulk truck delivery.&rdquo; One example of high-end, or upgraded, engineered biocarbon, is Google Ventures-backed Cool Planet Energy Systems, which currently has a production facility in California, and a Louisiana site it plans to build an additional plant on, potentially in 2017.&nbsp; Dubbed &ldquo;Cool Terra,&rdquo; it is a carbon-sequestering soil amendment that is engineered to enhance soil health by nurturing microbial life in the soil, and enhancing its water and nutrient-holding capacity, according to Jim Loar, Cool Planet president and CEO. The model is set up differently than most biochar producers today&mdash;Cool Planet actually buys biochar in its raw state and puts it through an additional, patented process, but Wes Bolsen, head of global business development, says there is a market for this kind of high-quality, upgraded biochar. And the company has partnered with ag distributor giant JR Simplot to get the product into the market and in front of customers, the kind of agreement that Bolsen says will be key in growing the industry. &ldquo;The distribution channel has the critical aspect driving this market, and that&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re bringing,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We put consistency behind it&mdash;customers will know what they&rsquo;re getting when they buy engineered biocarbon. Through distributor channels, we can reach out to thousands of growers. Individual power plants have some growers who buy it [directly], but that&rsquo;s not an industry.&rdquo; So what does the U.S. and global industry look like today? According to Tom Miles, owner of T. R. Miles Technical Consultants Inc. and board member of both the International Biochar Initiative and the U.S. Biochar Initiative, trade groups focused on exploring cost-effective ways of converting biomass into biochar and ways of using it, right now&mdash;in most cases&mdash;an energy component is needed. Though production in the U.S. is on the rise, on a global level, China dominates in both production and use. Domestic, Global Markets &ldquo;In the U.S., producers are small from an industrial point of view, but there&rsquo;s a wide spectrum, anything from making it in a coffee can and using it strategically as a carrier for biopesticides and biofertilizers&mdash;you don&rsquo;t need much, a little bit goes a very long way&mdash;to 10-ton truckloads of biochar going into horticultural activities,&rdquo; Miles says. &ldquo;Much of it is small, commercial producers making less than a dry ton per hour, but they aren&rsquo;t necessarily small companies&mdash;wood pellet producers making a variety of products, companies combining biochar with nutrients and deformulated products, and some small power plants turning wood gas into electricity as byproducts. Biochar has the potential to help make these very small, 3- or 5-MW or less biomass plants feasible. China uses a reported 500,000 tons of biochar a year, Miles says, and the industry there is growing at such a rate that the IBI is opening an Asian branch. &ldquo;In the case of China, it&rsquo;s being used it to remediate soils that have been damaged by pollution from their coal-burning power plants,&rdquo; Miles says. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve also been making granulated biochar products used in mainstream agriculture, a point that we haven&rsquo;t gotten to in any significant quantity yet in the U.S.&rdquo; In fact, the U.S. only producer and uses a fraction of what China does, says Miles, who estimates production in the country likely being no more than 20,000 tons per year. But, surprisingly, the number of companies involved in making biochar or technologies is upward of 300, he says, and many that are making it are capable of producing much more. &ldquo;The challenge here is an energy market in which nobody will pay you enough for electricity or heat to use biomass, and we know there is excess biomass in places like California and the Northeast, where [paid biomass power] prices are very low. So the&nbsp; challenge is how do we do this, how do we integrate this smaller wood products companies and see the benefit of making biochar and using the offgas from its production in their existing boilers as a form of fuel?&rdquo; For companies like Terrachar, which is targeting roughly 40,000-ton biomass plants for the installation of biochar technologies of companies such as Karr Group, those high-value electrical markets such as in California and New Hampshire are an area of focus. &ldquo;Cogeneration does very well with this process,&rdquo; explains Terrachar&rsquo;s Phil Blom. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re using propane or natural gas for heating, that&rsquo;s an expense we can help cut back on.&rdquo; But smaller companies are often capital constrained, and need to see the benefit of an installation that won&rsquo;t cost a few million dollars. And the only thing that will fix that is maturation of the market. &ldquo;Everyone&rsquo;s kind of waiting for the market to develop, but somebody&rsquo;s got to develop the market,&rdquo; Miles says. &ldquo;We need more participation from the organics recycling businesses, and more participation from the agronomics side, the soils people, more people need to discover how biochar can be used in particular situations to be able to gain value&hellip;people have been really good at developing the technology to make the black stuff, but they have very little experience in the marketplace and direct market applications. We also have to work with dairy and other animal waste folks to find out best use of chars made from animal waste.&rdquo; Miles reiterates that&rsquo;s not to say the market hasn&rsquo;t made great strides. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ve learned over the past 10 years is that there are a lot of different qualities of chars that we can use in different ways in agriculture, forestry itself, and storm water and soil remediation&mdash;we&rsquo;ve found a lot uses for the material, and the challenge now is sort of balancing that with where the char come from, what its properties and best uses, and what a company can afford to make.&rdquo; The other thing the industry has accomplished is an official definition accepted by the American Association of Plant Food Control Officials, which controls labeling and regulation of fertilizers and soil amendments for the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. That took about three years to accomplish. &ldquo;Now, everybody in every state and province has a reference point,&rdquo; Miles says. Biochar has gone from &lsquo;What&rsquo;s biochar?&rsquo; to a buzz, and this year it&rsquo;s, &lsquo;What quality of biochar do you have available and how much?&rsquo;&rdquo; For Stangl and Phoenix Energy, the quality of biochar it produces is likely to remain as it has, but the quantity has potential to septuple over the next two years at its plants in development. &ldquo;I do worry about demand&mdash;we should really be raising our prices because it is all leaving,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; At conferences, others are talking about biochar research and application rates&hellip;but farmers are already buying this by the truckload, and they have been for years. People are out there using it now.&rdquo; But growing the market at the rate of plant development could be challenging, Stangl says, as the company is working to respond to California&rsquo;s push toward small-scale, forestry- and ag-based plants. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to grow [the market] fast enough to keep up with the expanded capacity out there, and that&rsquo;s why I see the opportunity to go beyond ag and into other markets like activated carbon&mdash;it&rsquo;s a $2 billion industry and we bring it all over from Asia in the form of coconut shell. The city of Los Angeles buys over 800,000 pounds of activated coconut shell at about 99 cents a pound, so that we can build houses right next to the wastewater treatment plant and nobody smells anything. Why can&rsquo;t our municipalities buy it from our own citizens who are using California forest and ag residues?&rdquo; For Phoenix Energy, it all comes down to being a biomass plant developer with very valuable byproduct, Stangl adds. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not soils guys&mdash;we&rsquo;re an energy plus biochar company, and it doesn&rsquo;t work one or the other. I&rsquo;m not ashamed to admit, we wouldn&rsquo;t be doing what we are doing today if biochar were not valuable.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Managing Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4961 asimet@bbiinternational.com

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Production and sale of biochar at biomass-using plants can result in significant financial gains, but the industry is still working at building its myriad of potential markets. 

Bioenergy Byproduct to Soil Savior

Over the past six months, the political landscape in the United Kingdom has changed significantly. Following the results of the EU referendum, where 52 percent voted to leave the European Union, we have seen the prime minister resign, a change in direction of the new Conservative government, the new Department for Exiting the EU take the first steps to negotiate the U.K. leaving, and a departmental shuffle has meant that the Department of Energy &amp; Climate Change has been absorbed by the new Department for Business, Energy, &amp; Industrial Strategy. There remains a lot of uncertainty over what Brexit&mdash;Britain exiting the European Union&mdash;means, as the government is holding its cards very close to its chest. It even seems likely that the British population won't know the terms of the divorce settlement from the EU until after the negotiations have ended. In these uncertain times, some political commitments are still standing strong: The long-term decarbonizations of the U.K. energy supply and wider economy. Days after the referendum, the government confirmed the fifth carbon budget, and parliament has subsequently formally approved the targets, which commit the U.K. to cutting emissions by 57 percent against 1990 levels by 2032. This is a huge step, which boosts investor confidence by setting out a legal commitment to decarbonization and the overall political direction. When DECC was cut, many green organizations protested, as it could be seen as deprioritizing climate change and leaving it on a lone civil servant's desk in an obscure basement office within the business department. However, the new department has been filled with environmentally friendly ministers who have historically been supportive of renewables, led by Secretary of State Greg Clark MP, previously the opposition energy and climate change spokesperson, and author of reports on climate change, sustainability and environment. Other ministers include Nick Hurd MP, who is part of a Conservative environmental group, led solar in Africa projects as development minister, and chaired a parliamentary environmental group; and Baroness Neville-Rolfe, who previously worked at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and was a director at the U.K.&rsquo;s biggest supermarket, Tesco. It is still early, however, and we have yet to see new policies from the new BEIS team. In the coming months, we will start to understand the department's priorities and how they wish to deal with energy and decarbonization. In the U.K., biomass has never had an easy time, with strong opposition from NGOs, who have been campaigning vigorously against any bioenergy. There is still some mistrust of the use of wood residues for the production of energy, despite rigorous external scrutiny of greenhouse gas savings and forest practices. There is still no support under the Contract for Difference subsidy scheme for dedicated biomass power, and a cap remains on biomass power under the Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme, but there is support for biomass combined heat and power. We saw the previous Conservative government propose lower support for biomass heat and refocus away from smaller systems toward larger, industrial biomass heat plants, but the outcome of the government's consultation will be published later this year. The previous Conservative government questioned the availability of sustainable biomass, which restricted policy proposals, but as new ministers have entered the departments, we have been engaging with them to inform and help them see the potential of biomass. Despite it still being a Conservative government, we have a new prime minister and almost the entire ministerial team has been replaced or reshuffled. It is therefore an excellent opportunity to take a more positive stance toward biomass energy generation. Not since World War II has the U.K. seen such tumultuous political times, with changes to how we deal with our neighboring countries, legislative procedures, trade relations, and immigration, to name a few. But some things haven't changed: The U.K. is still strongly committed to decarbonizing its energy system and economy. New ministers are seen as green conservatives, and the newly created department could bring decarbonization even further. As we work and engage with the new ministers and political leadership, we could potentially also see a change in attitude toward the great potential of biomass energy, which could lower the cost of decarbonization, bring flexible, baseload energy, and benefit our undermanaged forests. The U.K. is on a new path. Author: Frank Aaskov Policy Analyst, Renewable Energy Association faaskov@r-e-a.net 020-7925-3570

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Over the past six months, the political landscape in the United Kingdom has changed significantly.

The United Kingdom's New Path

As I sit down to write this column, I first want to ask that you to go vote! No matter who you support, make sure you take advantage of that special opportunity to cast a ballot in the upcoming election. In the event you have the opportunity to speak to candidates at any level, tell them you work for the biofuels and products industry. The USDA recently reported that the U.S. bio-based products industry, which includes renewable fuels, contributed $393 billion and more than 4.2 million jobs to the American economy in 2014. &nbsp; Those are pretty impressive numbers, and we have plenty more in store for the future, as long as federal policy continues to support and broaden the existing framework to bring these products to market. This year has continued to see a great deal of development in the bioproducts area. The diversity of these products is wide and deep. On the fuels side, with the challenges of low oil prices, we have still seen continued growth in both the ethanol and biodiesel sectors. In fact, the recently proposed renewable volume obligation rule for setting the mandates in 2017 raised the amount for ethanol to 14.8 billion gallons, and biomass-based diesel fuels to 2.1 billion gallons. That means the biodiesel pool is now twice the original statutory mandate, which Congress foresaw in 2007. This is quite an accomplishment in just a short period of time. &nbsp; Yet, still there is a lot that can be done on the federal policy side to continue to grow this sector of the American economy. In early October, the U.S. EPA released a new set of proposed rules entitled Enhancement and Growth Support Rule for revisions to the renewable fuel standard (RFS).&nbsp; The rule is 374 pages long and seeks to address a number of complicated issues that have been under consideration and discussed for several years. First among them for the advanced biofuels sector is the section that addressed bio-intermediates. In the past, EPA has been reluctant to allow a facility, which produced a renewable oil, (e.g. Pyrolysis, algae, others) to ship the renewably created feedstock to a second, not colocated facility, and upgrade it to a renewable-based fuel (e.g. biodiesel, diesel, gasoline) and be qualified to receive a renewable identification number (RIN) under the RFS program. This rule seeks to move in the direction of creating a demonstration period in which to establish the procedure and allow such a RIN to be granted moving forward. The concern has been the ability to avoid the double counting of RINS from plant A and plant B. This will go a long way to encouraging commercialization of a number of companies&rsquo; plants, which can make these renewable oils from feedstocks such as wood or algae. &nbsp; The rule additionally, seeks to expedite the ability to utilize short-rotation trees as potential feedstock, broadening the current applicability of the &ldquo;woody biomass&rdquo; definitions currently followed under the EPA-approved pathways. The rule also allows utilizing renewable fuels for the purpose of space cooling, in addition to the already approved space heating provisions under the regulations. Another area that has caused heart burn for many was the exclusion of coprocessed fuels in refineries that are not able to count toward the cellulosic diesel or the biomass-based diesel fuels. In the proposal, EPA states, &ldquo;The EPA is proposing a new pathway that would allow fuels to qualify as cellulosic biofuel and generate cellulosic (D-3) RINS, as cellulosic biofuels that are not prohibited from being derived from biomass crop-processed with petroleum.&rdquo; &nbsp; As for what is left to do after Congress returns on Nov. 15, tax credits are number one on the list. With all of the existing biofuels tax credit expiring on Dec. 31, Congress must extend them if we are to continue to have support in 2017. This year is more questionable than the last time the Congress passed the extenders in 2015, as they have already reduced the number of extenders by making a number of them permanent. In addition, the House leadership has been reluctant to revisit the extenders outside the conversation of an overall tax reform bill. Nevertheless, all of the biofuels groups have called on Congress to extend the current credits upon their return and prior to adjournment. &nbsp; In my conversation with EPA, they continue to believe they are on track for finalizing the RVO rule prior to the Nov. 30 deadline. Given all the politics in the election, I will bet this falls after the election, but prior to the Nov. 30 deadline. Despite a great number of comments, I would not anticipate major changes from the current rule. &nbsp; As you can see, there is much to do moving forward without respect to the election.&nbsp; So stay engaged, vote, and I look forward to writing my next column after we know the results. Author: Michael McAdams President, Advanced Biofuel Association michael.mcadams@hklaw.com www.advancedbiofuelsassociation.com

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As for what is left to do after Congress returns on Nov. 15, extending existing biofuel tax credits are number one on the list. 

What's Next for Advanced Biofuels?

USDA names researcher to hall of fame The USDA recently named Cletus P. Kurtzman to the Agricultural Research Service Science Hall of Fame. Kurtzman, a research microbiologist at the ARS Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit in Peoria, Illinois, helped pioneer molecular techniques to identify yeast microorganisms. These discoveries enable scientists to accurately predict the biological properties of yeasts. This knowledge led to innovations in converting crop biomass into fuel, in producing biodegradable ingredients for detergents, and in food safety, crop production, and human and animal health advancements. Solegear awarded patent Solegear Bioplastic Technologies Inc. has been granted US Patent 9,416,255, titled &ldquo;Compositions Comprising Polylactic Acid, Bentonite, and Gum Arabic.&rdquo; The patent broadly covers the synthesis of biobased additives along with polylactic acid to deliver a number of key performance characteristics required for rigid packaging and durable goods applications.&nbsp; Snow Timber Pellets qualified into PFI Standards Program The Pellet Fuels Institute recently announced the qualification of Snow Timber Pellets of Hurley, Wisconsin, into the PFI Standards Program. The PFI Standards Program is a third-party accreditation program providing specifications for residential and commercial-grade pellet fuel, now representing 14 pellet manufacturing companies with a combined 28 facilities. Virent establishes strategic consortium Virent recently announced that it has established a strategic consortium with Tesoro, Toray, Johnson Matthey and The Coca-Cola Co. focused on completing the development and scale-up of its BioForming technology to produce low-carbon biobased fuels and bio-paraxylene. The consortium members will work together to finalize technical developments and commercial arrangements, with the objective of delivering a commercial facility to produce cost-effective, biobased fuels and bio-paraxylene. CBD to supply fuel conveying system to Lynemouth Clyde Bergemann (CBD) has been chosen to deliver the pneumatic conveying system to the Lynemouth biomass conversion. CBD has been supporting the conversion project with customers Sir Robert Alpine and end-user Lynemouth Power Ltd. since late 2011. The system utilizes state-of-the-art Clyde Bergemann Screw Injector and loss-in-weight technology, and conveys the wood pellets from each of the three new day silos to the inlet of the fuel mills.

November 2016

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Auto Club Monitoring Proves Ethanol Blending Safe

OSHA Revises Reporting Requirements

Value of E30 Proven in Real Time

Coming Together for a Thriving Low-Carbon Economy

The Road to 10 Million Miles

Lies and Big Oil Fiction

Biomass Breakaways

A Shot in the Arm

RNG in California: Leadership, Market Certainty

CHP from Biomass: The Next Generation

Upcoming Biomass Politics

The United Kingdom's New Path

What's Next for Advanced Biofuels?

Featured

High Plains Transition

Wet Cake Max-imization

Fiber: Feedstock of the Future

New Pathways for Stover

The Odd Decouple

The Ins and Outs of Heat Exchangers

Cooking Up Higher Margins

Bioenergy Byproduct to Soil Savior

Departments

Green Garbage to Black Gold

November 2016.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

Auto Club Monitoring Proves Ethanol Blending Safe

OSHA Revises Reporting Requirements

Value of E30 Proven in Real Time

Coming Together for a Thriving Low-Carbon Economy

The Road to 10 Million Miles

Lies and Big Oil Fiction

Biomass Breakaways

A Shot in the Arm

RNG in California: Leadership, Market Certainty

CHP from Biomass: The Next Generation

Upcoming Biomass Politics

The United Kingdom's New Path

What's Next for Advanced Biofuels?

Featured

High Plains Transition

Wet Cake Max-imization

Fiber: Feedstock of the Future

New Pathways for Stover

The Odd Decouple

The Ins and Outs of Heat Exchangers

Cooking Up Higher Margins

Bioenergy Byproduct to Soil Savior

Departments

Green Garbage to Black Gold

November 2016