The EERC began as a federal coal research laboratory but has been an independent energy research facility for more than 30 years. According to Director Gerald Groenewold, the facility has more than 400 active contracts for research, development, demonstration and commercialization projects worldwide. The center is involved with projects ranging from clean coal technology and carbon sequestration to wind power and biofuels development.
The EERC started a center for biomass and renewable energy 17 years ago, Groenewold said. The EERC has 40 corporate partners working on biomass projects. He sees the center’s role in the industry as identifying and removing technical barriers that limit the industry’s growth. “Heaven knows there are technical barriers,” he said. “We do not advocate for any technology, but we provide credible, technical answers to critical questions.”
Article Continues After Advertisement
The current state of the biomass industry has two faces, according to Groenewold. There are some top-notch ideas that deserve investment and development. There is also a lot of money being invested in questionable ideas by well-meaning people. “We’re here, in part at least, to help people figure out where to put their money,” he explained.
The center is working with its business partners and other funding sources to commercialize projects involving lignocellulosic ethanol, higher alcohols through the Fischer-Tropsch process, advanced tactical biofuels for the military, distributed electrical generation through biomass microgasification facilities, improving biodiesel’s cold-weather performance, integrated urea production at ethanol plants and aviation-grade ethanol.
Growth Potential
Several factors are driving the current interest in biomass, according to Chris Zygarlicke, deputy director for research at the EERC. They include economics, the desire for energy security, global warming concerns, rural economic development, technical needs (such as the need for ethanol as an octane booster in gasoline) and public opinion. These combined make biomass utilization a dynamic industry with a bright future, especially in the Northern Plains region of the United States.
With just a 3 percent share of the U.S. energy market, biomass has plenty of room to grow. “We have a long way to go to make an impact on the consumption of fossil fuels,” Zygarlicke said. In the case of ethanol, current technologies based on fermenting corn can take the industry to about 15 billion gallons by 2015, to expand beyond that figure will require the development of cellulosic ethanol technology, he said.
Key challenges for cellulosic ethanol production are similar to those facing much of the biomass industry, Zygarlicke said. The first challenge is growing large quantities of biomass and economically transporting it to a central processing location. “A typical plant making 30 [million] to 50 million gallons of ethanol a year from cellulose is going to need 2,000 tons of feedstock a day,” Zygarlicke said. “A commercial plant will operate from 250 to 300 days a year. This translates into a lot of corn or a lot of cellulose and a lot of land by the time we get to 2030, and expect to be consuming 60 billion gallons of ethanol.”
According to several studies, the Northern Plains has some of the best potential for developing a biomass industry, Zygarlicke said. “We have economical feedstocks,” he continued. “We have some of the best land for developing switchgrass according the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We have innovative farmers and other people. There’s a lot of technology here, not just at the EERC but at the universities in Minnesota and South Dakota. There’s also experience with renewables. Finally, I think we have to have federal advocates who will promote the policies needed to drive renewable energy and fuels in this region.”
The second challenge is to develop robust organisms that can ferment all the available C5 and C6 sugars in the biomass. Related to that is the need to further reduce the cost of the technologies needed to exploit biomass—such as enzymes. The cost of these enzymes has dropped significantly from $5 a gallon to 25 cents a gallon of cellulosic ethanol, but it needs to become cheaper yet. Finally, thermochemical methods of converting cellulose into useful products and power need to be further researched and developed.
Although there are ways to turn biomass into ethanol, the technology needs to be proven in an economically feasible, commercial-scale facility. That’s where ethanol producers like Abengoa Bioenergy and ICM Inc. enter the picture. Abengoa Bioenergy is driven to apply innovative biorefinery concepts for augmenting the growth of cellulosic ethanol, said Gerson Santos-Leon, research and development director for Abengoa Bioenergy, which is headquartered in St. Louis, Mo. The U.S. DOE awarded the company $76 million to build a hybrid facility that would utilize the synergies between the enzymatic and thermochemical pathways to make energy, power, fuel and feed products. Abengoa plans to produce 15 MMgy of ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass and 85 MMgy from starch. “This is going to be a very significant investment and a very significant milestone for Abengoa,” Santos-Leon said. “Our objective is really to have good technology, to license the technology and to be able to use multiple crops to make biofuels. I think this is really our vision for the future.”
Sidebar Articles
| 1 2 3 4 | Next Page --> | |
| View Entire Article | ||