Biomass Power & Thermal - March 2011

INSIDE: SOLVING BIOMASS HARVEST, TRANSPORT, STORAGE ISSUES

March 2011

www.biomassmagazine.com

Ace Aggregators PowerStock Relies on its Agricultural Roots to Conquer Biomass Supply Chain ChallengesPage 24

Plus:Why Pelletizing Crop

Residues Makes Sense Page 30

Also:How Crop Residues

Increase Methane Production in AD Systems

Page 36

Why China is a Hotbed for Bioenergy Development

Page 42

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INSIDE: SOLVING BIOMASS HARVEST, TRANSPORT, STORAGE ISSUES

March 2011

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Pellet PowerBiomass Briquettes: Turning Waste Into Energy4

Plus:New Hampshire expands

pellet heat incentivePage 30

Also:ISU ponders permanent

biomass cofi ring after test burn

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Federal export initiative targets wood pellets and chips

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MARCH 2011 | BIOMASS POWER & THERMAL 3

INSIDE¦MARCH 2011 | VOLUME 5 | ISSUE 3

FEATURES

CONTRIBUTIONS

DEPARTMENTS

04 EDITOR’S NOTESolving the Crop Residue ConundrumBy Rona Johnson

06 INDUSTRY EVENTS

08 POWER PLATFORMA National Clean Energy Standard By Bob Cleaves

10 THERMAL DYNAMICSThe DOE Biomass Program: A New Focus? By Charlie Niebling and John Karakash

12 ENERGY REVIEWPowering an Engine Generator with a Biomass Gasifi er By Phil Hutton

13 LEGAL PERSPECTIVELearn What Regulations Apply to Your ProjectBy John Eustermann

14 BUSINESS BRIEFS

16 EVENT COVERAGE

20 FIRED UP

52 MARKETPLACE

53 ADVERTISER INDEX

SUPPLY Supply Chain Champs PowerStock is using its vast experience handling ag residue and forage to develop supply chain logistics for the bioenergy industry.By Anna Austin

DENSIFICATION Pellet Ingenuity Making pellets from crop residues is challenging but well worth the effort when considering feedstock abundance, cost and the manpower to harvest it.By Lisa Gibson

ANAEROBIC DIGESTION Codigesting Crop Residues Using crop residues in anaerobic digestion systems can boost methane production and thereby increase feedstock availability.By Anna Austin

INTERNATIONAL China’s Crop Residue Capacity Biomass developers fi nd China to be a hotbed for activity due to its ample supply of crop residues and the need for clean centralized power facilities.By Lisa Gibson

FEEDSTOCK Crop Residues: Issues Relating to Collection, Transportation and StorageTo ensure a reliable, long-term feedstock supply, developers looking to use crop residues must develop close, cooperative-like relationships with farmers. By Kate Bechen

MISCANTHUS Field Day Explores Energy Crop Production Miscanthus fi eld day features information about the planting, harvesting and utilization of the perennial crop for bioenergy production. By Cheree Franco

24

48

50

30

36

42

36

ON THE COVER: PowerStock senior managers Steve Van Mouwerik (left to right), CEO; Harrison Pettit, vice president; Bill Levy, president; and Rod Phelan, vice president harvest operations, all have experience in the agriculture industry.PHOTO: FOTONOVELLA.NET

4 BIOMASS POWER & THERMAL | MARCH 2011

Solving the Crop Residue ConundrumThe bad news is that the infrastructure for utilizing crop residues for bioenergy production has a ways to go

before it can be cost effective for large commercial-scale plants. The good news is that there are a lot of smart, experienced people working on this and I’m confi dent they will succeed.

Before this can happen though―and I’ve said this a million times―farmers must be convinced that this is a profi table use of their time and energy. It’s diffi cult right now to make the case because farm income is high and they aren’t really looking for ways to enhance their income. But this could change in a heartbeat as farming success largely depends on the weather, federal farm policy and input costs (fuel, fertilizer, seed, etc.). Although we can’t predict the weather, we can presume that the new Congress will likely make cuts to all federal programs including the Farm Bill, which expires in 2012, and input costs aren’t likely to drop anytime soon.

This means that the biomass industry must be prepared for the time when farmers are actively seeking ways to supplement their income, and is why this month’s magazine is dedicated to the collection, transport, storage and densifi cation of crop residues.

According to a USDA study, “Biomass from Crop Residues Cost and Supply Estimates,” crop residues have the potential to displace 12.5 percent of petroleum imports or 5 percent of electricity consumption in today’s markets. The study found that the total biomass supply in the high-density crop production areas of the country ranges from 297 billion to 313 billion pounds, depending on the price level. The researchers also surmised that this fi gure could grow to 500 billion pounds in the next two decades based on trends from the past two decades of increased crop yields and declining livestock demand for forage.

The study also concluded that crop residues are probably the lowest cost form of biomass supply. “Throughout the Corn Belt, residue costs have a narrow price range, from $16 to $18 per ton, even after mak-ing allowances for delivery to a large plant,” according to the study. “The range of costs is wider in the Great Plains due to diverse growing conditions, conservation requirements, and forage demands. The eastern section of the spring wheat area has extensive residue supplies at moderate costs. Also, the eastern section of the winter Wheat Belt has a cost advantage when feed grain residues, wheat straw, and residues diverted from feed are combined.”

Of course, the researchers took into account the impact of crop residue removal on soil fertility and the farmer’s bottom line. They deduced that reduced tillage and partial residue harvest may maintain soil quality and increase producer profi ts. Several researchers at colleges and universities across the U.S. have done studies on this and have made recommendations based on the conditions in the areas where the crops are produced. I would suggest if you are looking for that type of information that you reach out to your local institutions of higher learning.

The USDA study has a lot of information that I couldn’t possibly fi t in this column, so if you are looking for more details, go to www.usda.gov/oce/reports/energy/AER819.pdf.

Bob Cleaves, head of the Biomass Power Association, writes in his Power Platform col-umn about the role of biomass in President Obama’s national goal of 80 percent “clean en-ergy” by 2035, advocating for a broad defi nition of clean energy in order to garner bipartisan support.

In the Energy Review column Phil Hutton, research manager at the Energy & Environmen-tal Research Center, summarized the center’s ex-perience with internal combustion engines in its effort to develop distributed biomass gasifi ca-tion systems for a variety of applications.

RONA [email protected]

BOB CLEAVES PHIL HUTTON

¦EDITOR’S NOTE

For more news, information and perspective, visit www.biomassmagazine.com

Contributing Writers


EDITORIALEDITOR

Rona Johnson [email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITORSAnna Austin [email protected] Gibson [email protected]

COPY EDITOR Jan Tellmann [email protected]

ARTART DIRECTOR

Jaci Satterlund [email protected]

GRAPHIC DESIGNERElizabeth Burslie [email protected]

PUBLISHING & SALESCHAIRMAN

Mike Bryan [email protected]

CEOJoe Bryan [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENTTom Bryan [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENT, SALES & MARKETINGMatthew Spoor [email protected]

EXECUTIVE ACCOUNT MANAGERHoward Brockhouse [email protected]

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Jeremy Hanson [email protected]

ACCOUNT MANAGERSMarty Steen [email protected]

Chip Shereck [email protected] Brown [email protected]

Andrea Anderson [email protected] Austin [email protected]

CIRCULATION MANAGER Jessica Beaudry [email protected]

SUBSCRIBER ACQUISITION MANAGER Jason Smith [email protected]

ADVERTISING COORDINATORMarla DeFoe [email protected]

SENIOR MARKETING MANAGERJohn Nelson [email protected]

Subscriptions Biomass Power & Thermal is free of charge to everyone with the exception of a shipping and handling charge of $49.95 for any country outside of the United States, Canada and Mexico. To subscribe, visit www.BiomassMagazine.com or you can send your mailing address and payment (checks made out to BBI International) to Biomass Power & Thermal Subscriptions, 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203. You can also fax a subscription form to (701) 746-5367. Back Issues & Reprints Select back issues are available for $3.95 each, plus shipping. Article reprints are also available for a fee. For more information, contact us at (701) 746-8385 or [email protected]. Advertising Biomass Power & Thermal provides a specifi c topic delivered to a highly targeted audience. We are committed to editorial excellence and high-quality print production. To fi nd out more about Biomass Power & Thermal advertising opportunities, please contact us at (701) 746-8385 or [email protected]. Letters to the Editor We welcome letters to the editor. Send to Biomass Power & Thermal Letters to the Editor, 308 2nd Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203 or e-mail to [email protected]. Please include your name, address and phone number. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or space.

Please recycle this magazine and removeinserts or samples before recycling COPYRIGHT © 2011 by BBI International


Join the discussion about the role of biomass in federal energy policy

With President Obama’s goal that America produce 80 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 still fresh in everyone’s minds, how the biomass industry can help meet that

challenge will be a hot topic at the 2011 International Biomass Conference & Expo May 2-5 at the America’s Center in St. Louis.

To keep the industry up to date about what’s happening on Capitol Hill, event organizers have developed a plenary session of biomass industry advocates who lobby for biomass interests in Washington.

“We are bringing back the legislative panel where executives from various biomass associations come together to discuss what has transpired in the past year,” says Tim Portz, BBI International’s program director. “It’s been a big year for the industry, what with the development of the boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule and the release of the fi nal Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule and the U.S. EPA giving its blessing for some vehicles to fuel with E15.”

Although this plenary session will have some of the same participants as last year, the format will be a little different. “We are going to allow people to submit questions for the panel online, right on our agenda,” Portz says. “If there is a ques-tion that someone wants to ask a particular person or the group they can submit that question online.”

The questions will be reviewed by an internal team at BBI International and will then be shared with the panelists so they have time to prepare visual aids or background information. “I think this is going to be interesting,” Portz says. “I hope our audience fi nds it interesting and I hope for some good participation and some questions online.”

Conference organizers are also making the show’s agenda more accom-modating for attendees. “We’ve made good on our commitment to have the show accessible from two different directions,” Portz says. Attendees who only want to listen to panels that address a certain feedstock will have that option, as they have in past years. “This year we will also have an energy production focus approach to the agenda. We’re preparing agendas for a thermal focus, a power focus, a biorefi ning focus and a project development focus. This takes the work away from our attendees, so if they just want to be in biorefi ning-related panels all day they can grab that agenda.

This fourth annual conference will be coproduced by Biomass Power & Thermal and Biorefi ning Magazine. For more information or to sponsor, exhibit or register, go to www.biomassconference.com.

International Biomass Conference & ExpoMay 2-5, 2011America’s CenterSt. Louis, MissouriThe largest, fastest growing biomass event was attended in 2010 by 1,700 industry professionals from 49 states and 25 nations representing nearly every geographical region and sector of the world’s biomass utilization industries―power, thermal energy, fuels and chemicals. Plan to join more than 2,500 attendees, 120 speakers and 400-plus exhibitors for the premier international biomass event of the year.(701) 746-8385www.biomassconference.com

International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & ExpoJune 27-30, 2011Indiana Convention CenterIndianapolis, IndianaThe FEW is the largest, longest-running ethanol conference in the world, and is renowned for its superb programming which focuses on commercial-scale ethanol production―both grain and cellulosic―operational effi ciencies, plant management, energy use, and near-term research and development. (701) 746-8385www.fuelethanolworkshop.com

International Biorefi ning Conference & Trade ShowSeptember 14-16, 2011Hilton Americas – HoustonHouston, TexasOrganized by BBI International and produced by Biorefi n-ing Magazine, the International Biorefi ning Conference & Trade Show brings together agricultural, forestry, waste and petrochemical professionals to explore the value-added op-portunities awaiting them and their organizations within the quickly maturing biorefi ning industry. Speaker abstracts are now being accepted online.(701) 746-8385www.biorefi ningconference.com

¦INDUSTRY EVENTS

Northeast Biomass Conference & Trade ShowOctober 11-13, 2011Westin Place HotelPittsburgh, PennsylvaniaWith an exclusive focus on biomass utilization in the Northeast―from Maryland to Maine―the Northeast Biomass Conference & Trade Show is a dynamic regional offshoot of Biorefi ning Magazine and Biomass Power & Thermal magazine’s Interna-tional Biomass Conference & Expo, the largest event of its kind in the world. The 2nd annual conference will connect current and future producers of biomass-derived electricity, industrial heat and power and advanced biofuels, with waste generators, aggrega-tors, growers, municipal leaders, utilities, technology providers, equipment manufacturers, investors and policymakers.(701) 746-8385www.biomassconference.com/northeast

05/02


The 112th Congress is hardly in gear, and already pundits in Washington are speculating about the future of a national energy policy. The debate was height-ened with the president’s State of the Union speech, which called for a national goal of 80 percent “clean energy” by 2035. So what exactly is clean energy and what role will biomass play in the legislative debate?

First, let’s talk about clean as opposed to renew-able. In the last Congress, Biomass Power Association joined with solar, wind, waste to energy and other renewable trade associations to advocate for a strong renewable energy standard. As we all know, the House passed an aggressive standard, along with cap-and-trade legislation, which failed to get traction in the Senate. Indeed, many new members of Congress ran on an anti-cap-and-trade platform. Signifi cantly, this legislation disqualifi ed any nonrenewable energy such as nuclear or coal with carbon capture and sequestra-tion, thus alienating political support from coal states and the Southeast. In addition, those opposing a fed-eral renewable energy standard claimed that the initia-tive would end up costing consumers at a time when the economy could ill afford higher energy costs.

What has changed? Well, the November elections, for starters, created a new political landscape that must be negotiated. No matter who occupies the role of Speaker of the House, promoting alternative energy sources is a bipartisan issue that enjoys widespread support across the political spectrum. Surely, cap and traders and those who support a rigid defi nition of renewable have lost the political debate for the time

being. David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs at the Sierra Club, perhaps said it best: “As an environmental group we don’t have the luxury of being one-dimensional about what is clean energy or not.” (This sounds strangely similar to what we have been saying all along when it comes to a broad and common sense defi nition of biomass. But I digress.)

So, we suspect that if a national energy policy is to receive Congressional support, it must be broad, and the defi nition of clean must incorporate a wide array of sources. That means all the traditional renew-ables including biomass, but also nonrenewable and low- or no-carbon sources such as nuclear.

As advocates of biomass, we intend to support a national energy policy, and assure that the policy fully embraces our form of energy while promoting other clean sources. At the same time, we want to make sure the policy is meaningful and will serve as a catalyst for growth, which means taking a hard look at what is considered clean and to make sure that valuable state programs are not eliminated.

The defi nition of clean energy should remain broad; there is plenty of space for many different types of energy. As a nation, we need an energy policy that moves forward, and promotes energy indepen-dence cost-effectively and cleanly.

Author: Bob CleavesPresident and CEO, Biomass Power Association

www.USABiomass.org

A National Clean Energy Standard

¦POWER PLATFORM

BY BOB CLEAVES

Deadline: April 4th, 2011

Biomass Power & Thermal’s Spring 2011 U.S. Biomass Power Map will identify proposed, under construction and opera-tional dedicated power plants―1 MW or greater―utilizing, or proposing to utilize, solid biomass fuel (wood processing and forestry residues, C&D, MSW, ag residues and dedicated energy crops). More than 100 facilities will be conveniently color coded (by status) for quick reference.

Listings will include: Facility Name City State Size (MW) Feedstock(s) Conversion Technology

Biomass Power & Thermal’sSpring 2011 Map

Plus, the map will identify facilities that are co-firing biomass with coal and those that are employing CHP.

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U.S. DOE Biomass Program offi cials tell us candidly that policy directives limit their activities to liquid transportation fuels development and electricity generation or combined heat and power. They claim not to be authorized to offer more than verbal support for advancement of other biomass energy technologies, regardless of the potential for energy self-reliance, cost reduction, local employment, climate change mitigation or wildfi re danger reduction.

The agency’s limited focus neglects other op-portunities, notably the commercialization of the low-hanging fruit of sustainable and local biomass energy: advanced combustion of biomass materials for heat, service hot water and direct cooling for build-ings and process heat for industry. This potential was described and highlighted in the article “Wood Energy in America” published March 2009 as the Policy Forum in Science. It would be valuable for the DOE to explain why biomass thermal is unsupported since no other renewable energy technology offers the short-term recovery of invested capital or long-term benefi ts including jobs and reduced dependence on imported fossil energy.

The DOE’s research and development focus is critical here. Recent research shows a need to over-come barriers of perception and systems integration to gain mainstream acceptance of the professionals who specify heating and cooling equipment1. The concept has support from energy design professionals; 78 percent of respondents to a recent survey said they would like more information on using wood energy to heat and cool commercial class buildings. Most were energy engineers—and members of the Association of Energy Engineers or the American Society of Agricul-tural and Biological Engineers.

Agency support is needed to both help the bio-mass thermal energy industry respond and adapt to concerns identifi ed by the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) design engineer respondents.

The logical placement for building heat and cooling applications for biomass is within the DOE’s Energy Effi ciency and Renewable Energy commercial buildings section alongside solar thermal, conserva-tion and effi ciency improvement. DOE offi cials stated specifi cally: To reach DOE target energy consumption and carbon emissions limits in renovated building stock

by 2030, the U.S. will need more than just solar thermal, wind electric, photovoltaic, insulation and HVAC con-trols upgrades. Wood and agricultural residues combus-tion can help solve this problem and save money. But when asked about biomass applications, these offi cials had no answers because they were unaware that the technology had applicability to the sector.

Both wood and agricultural residues are, by defi ni-tion, carbon-neutral, stored forms of solar energy. Although some refi nements are needed in combustion process, controls and operating practices, that is all the more reason for DOE research and development sup-port in importing and licensing demonstrated technolo-gies or adapting them as needed by site in this country.

What can wood energy advocates do to help themselves?

• Do not say “I’m in biomass.” Be clear when tell-ing people what you do. If you effi ciently convert wood fuels into clean heat for buildings and process, use that as your tag line.

• Join associations working to benefi t your indus-try, such as BTEC, through which elected offi cials, regulators and reporters get a unifi ed picture of what you need to grow and the value to them if you are suc-cessful.

• Work with energy design professionals by joining associations where you can meet, infl uence and learn from the energy design professionals trusted by devel-opers and owners to specify heat and cooling equip-ment for buildings.

The Heating the Northeast with Renewable Biomass Conference in April (www.heatne.com) will provide opportunities to discuss and begin moving ahead on these and other issues. Consider attending and urging participation by your elected offi cials and their staffs. They depend on you for information they do not get from the DOE. Perhaps we can help change that.

1Karakash and Richter, 2010. Report of Key Findings: Architects and Energy Professionals—The Missing Link in Wood Energy

Authors: Charlie NieblingChairman, Biomass Thermal Energy Council

John KarakashFounder, Resource Professionals Group

www.biomassthermal.org

The DOE Biomass Program: A New Focus?

THERMAL DYNAMICS¦

BY CHARLIE NIEBLING AND JOHN KARAKASH

Niebling


The Energy & Environmental Research Center is developing distributed biomass gasifi cation systems for a variety of applications, the most common of which is electricity production. The EERC has investigated system designs that employ internal combustion engines, high-temperature fuel cells and microturbines.

This article summarizes our experience with in-ternal combustion engines. Future articles will discuss our experience with high-temperature fuel cells and microturbines.

The system designs originated during World War II, when the shortage of petroleum fuel in Europe sparked a wave of innovation on ways to use locally available biomass, primarily chunk wood, to fuel in-ternal combustion engines for transportation. Those designs are still being employed to power internal combustion gensets.

Biomass is gasifi ed in a downdraft gasifi er, which is then wet-scrubbed to condense tars and reduce syngas temperature for the internal combustion en-gine. A series of fi lters is used to reduce particulates before the engine generator. A downdraft gasifi er is often employed because it produces the lowest amount of tars of all the gasifi er types.

This system is simple and has worked to produce power from syngas for more than 50 years. However, even after a half-century of development, key techno-economic barriers have yet to be resolved that would make it commercially viable.

The fi rst is environmental. While downdraft gasifi ers produce the lowest amount of tars of all the gasifi er types, they still produce tars. These have to be scrubbed out or they eventually plug the piping. The problem is that scrubbing the tars does not get rid

of them. It produces a tarry effl uent, much like oily water, that must be disposed of. Oftentimes, this can be a deal breaker for a small commercial entity hoping to convert its waste wood into power.

Another issue is that the syngas has high nitrogen dilution when air is used for the gasifi cation process. This reduces the energy content to approximately 110 Btu per standard cubic feet (scf). Most modern engine generators are rated for 300–1,000 Btu per scf. Trying to operate the engine generator on 110 Btu per scf derates the engine by more than 75 percent. This means a 100-kilowatt (kW) engine generator will produce only approximately 25 kW when run on syngas alone. It also signifi cantly reduces the reliability of the system.

Any drop in syngas quality shuts down the gener-ator, requiring manual restart. This requires an opera-tor to constantly watch the system, which signifi cantly increases the operating costs of a distributed-power system. One method to overcome this latter barrier is to cofi re the engine generator with petroleum fuel. When this is done, both engine reliability and power increase. However, the economics must now account for the cost of petroleum fuel, and the overall system is not as “green” as it would have been with just biomass alone.

While these barriers are signifi cant, the EERC is working with Cummins Power to develop an engine generator designed to operate on low-Btu syngas. If this project is successful, one of the largest barriers for this type of system in 50 years will be overcome.

Author: Phil HuttonResearch Manager, Energy & Environmental Research Center

(701) [email protected]

Powering an Engine Generator with a Biomass Gasifier

¦ENERGY REVIEW

BY PHIL HUTTON


Today's push to bring biomass energy projects on line and changes in environmental regulations have created some uncertainty for parties seeking to secure waste/fuel supply agreements.

For example, the U.S. EPA's newly proposed defi -nition of “solid waste” may reveal issues that may war-rant consideration by the project developer (see 75 FR 31,844, Proposed June 4).

Concurrently with the boiler MACT proposal, the EPA proposed a new defi nition of solid waste. The defi nition is key to distinguishing between “industrial commercial and institutional boilers and process heat-ers” and “commercial and industrial solid waste incin-erators” because the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate as an incinerator “any facility which combusts any solid waste.” The relevant defi nition of solid waste is in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and covers “any discarded material.”

Though initially drafted to limit against “sham” fu-els, wherein the combustion or use of certain materials as an ingredient or component of a power facility's fuel supply is nothing more than waste disposal. In response, the EPA created new limitations on biomass materials that can be used as fuel. Understanding how this rule distinguishes between "traditional fuel," "legitimate fuel" and solid waste is critical to distinguishing between biomass that can be used as a fuel in an industrial boil-er (subject to MACT) and biomass considered a solid waste (subject to Incinerator New Source Performance Standard and MACT). Solid waste cannot be used in commercial or industrial boilers, including power plant boilers.

This reconfi gured defi nition of solid waste can impact a project's fuel/waste supply agreements and material-handling activities.

In brief, traditional fuels are not considered solid waste, and include not only fossil fuels, but also "clean cellulosic biomass." The EPA provides a list of clean cellulosic biomass materials that qualify as a traditional fuel, described as materials that have not been altered, such that they contain contaminants at concentrations normally associated with virgin biomass materials.

EPA’s proposal seeks to clarify whether solid waste includes certain nonhazardous “secondary materials”—materials that are not the primary product of a manu-facturing or commercial process that may be discarded but later reused as fuel or ingredients in another process. EPA’s proposed rule would exclude secondary materi-als from the defi nition of solid waste if they are com-busted by the generator, used as ingredients in another manufacturing process or processed into a fuel or an ingredient. Sources must also meet “legitimacy criteria,” confi rming that use of the material is not a sham for disposal, or submit a petition to EPA for a nonwaste determination.

“Legitimate fuel" is nonhazardous secondary mate-rials that are not the primary product of a manufactur-ing or commercial process that may be discarded but later reused as fuel or ingredients in another process. Such secondary materials are not considered solid waste and are excluded if they are either combusted by the generator, used as ingredients in another manufacturing process, or processed into a fuel or an ingredient. Ad-ditional legitimacy criteria must be met to confi rm that use of the material is not a sham for disposal.

If determined to be solid waste, the material is subject to handling and reporting requirements promul-gated by the RCRA. Further, such materials can only be combusted in regulated solid waste incinerators. Using solid waste improperly as a fuel may result in a fi ne or an order to cease production.

The above determinations are not easily made, and a full analysis of the applicable decision tree is be-yond the scope of this article. An analysis should be performed, however, so that allocating the underlying risks associated with acquiring off-site materials and set-ting forth appropriate representations and warranties in one's fuel/waste supply agreement is managed accord-ingly.

Author: John EustermannPartner, Stoel Rives LLP


Learn What Regulations Apply to Your Project

LEGAL PERSPECTIVE¦

BY JOHN EUSTERMANN


Vermeer enters whole-tree chipper marketVermeer Corp. has introduced the WC2300 whole-tree chipper designed spe-cifi cally to produce chips for the growing biomass industry. The WC2300 features many proven technologies developed by Vermeer. The heart of the WC2300 is its innovative in-feed system that includes variable-speed, dual in-feed conveyor chains, a conveyor head pulley with integral grip bars and an aggressive large-diameter in-feed roller with crush capability. These design elements provide effi cient feeding of diffi cult material types, reducing the number of times an operator has to handle the material. In addition, the in-feed con-veyor chains are individually tensioned to accommodate unequal chain wear, allowing the operator to replace a single chain at a time.

ADI Group creates new position Hollis Cole, CEO of ADI Group Inc.,

announced the addition of Joséf Leão to the ADI team. ADI Group created the new position of manager of biogas appli-cations for ADI Systems Inc., one of the ADI Group of companies. This position allows ADI to place greater emphasis on worldwide opportunities of utilizing bio-gas, a viable source of green energy. Leão comes to ADI with more than 30 years experience in engineering, logistics and op-erations plus strong academic and profes-

sional credentials. Fluent in six languages, his background in biogas utilization and green energy systems complements the technical abilities of existing ADI staff.

Metso to supply biomass plant in Estonia

Metso will supply Oü Helme Energia with a biomass power plant for combined-heat-and-power production in the town-ship of Helme, Estonia. The power plant will be delivered by the Metso-Wärtsilä joint venture MW Power. The value of the order is more than €15 million ($20.7 million). Scheduled for start-up the third quarter of 2012, the plant will utilize bubbling fl uidized bed technology using a combination of spruce bark, chipped log-ging residue and wood chips or milled peat as the main fuels. The plant will produce 15 megawatts (MW) of heat and 6.4 MW of electricity, which will partly be utilized in the customer’s own pellet factory and the rest will be distributed into the national grid. Oü Helme Energia is a subsidiary of AS Graanul Invest, which is a private capital-based company dealing with bioen-ergy and renewable energy production.

Natgun and Dyk merge and form DN Tanks

Natgun Corp., Wakefi eld, Mass., and Dyk Inc., El Cajon, Calif., jointly an-nounced the merger of their companies and the formation of their new parent company DN Tanks Inc. Both companies specialize in the design and construction of prestressed concrete storage tanks used for potable water, wastewater, chilled water and other liquids. The merger of the two companies, with more than 130 years of combined experience, creates the larg-est producer of wire and strand-wound prestressed concrete tanks in the world. Initially, Natgun and Dyk will operate under their existing names, as divisions

of DN Tanks. As the integration process takes place, they will evolve into a single operating company. A four-member board of directors, comprised of Charles Crow-ley, William Hendrickson, William Crowley, and David Gourley, will lead DN Tanks. Charles Crowley and Hendrickson will serve as co-CEOs.

Howard joins Ze-gen as CEOZe-gen Inc., a

developer and integrator of advanced gasifi cation technology to convert waste streams into synthesis gas, has hired Walter Howard as CEO, replacing Bill Davis who founded Ze-gen in 2004. An industry veteran, with more than 30 years of global power project development experi-ence, Howard has held executive positions with utility leaders. Davis will remain on Ze-gen's board of directors and stay actively involved as an adviser to Ze-gen focused on special projects.

DP CleanTech appoints board chair, extends European manufacturing capacity

Zhang Shengman was appointed chairman of the board for DP CleanTech Group Ltd. Shengman is the chairman of Citigroup in the Asia Pacifi c, which employs more than 50,000 people in 19 countries generating revenues approaching $15 billion. Shengman is also on the board of directors of Guangdong Development Bank. DP CleanTech recently made its fi rst signifi cant investment in Poland by building a work-shop in Jędrzejów to manufacture boilers and pressure parts to serve the European biomass and waste-to-energy market. The

PEOPLE, PRODUCTS & PARTNERSHIPSBusiness Briefs

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WOOD CHIP WARRIOR: The WC2300 whole-tree chipper was designed for effi ciency.

Walter Howard, who has extensive experience in power project development, has been hired as the CEO of Ze-gen.


investment is a refl ection of the increasing demand for DP CleanTech’s products in Europe. Biomass power has been identifi ed as an effective and affordable means for meeting renewable energy targets in Eastern European countries and DP CleanTech is developing several projects.

NEF, Spriggers Choice develop miscanthus production equipment

New Energy Farms, a miscanthus de-veloper, and Spriggers Choice, a Georgia-based manufacturer of sprig and rhizome harvesting and planting equipment, have developed equipment for growers to lift and plant miscanthus rhizomes. NEF is de-veloping miscanthus as an energy crop for combustion and liquid biofuel uses across North America and the European Union. Spriggers Choice has been developing and manufacturing sprig and rhizome harvest-ers and planters for 22 years, embodying the knowledge acquired from 26 years of experience in the custom sprig and rhizome harvesting and planting business. Successful collaboration has resulted in the development of two new machines to lift and plant miscanthus rhizomes, which will be available in time for the current rhizome planting season.

SACE relocates headquarters

After more than fi ve years on the 100 block of Gay Street in downtown Knox-

ville, Tenn., the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s headquarters has moved to 3804 Middlebrook Pike. The recently purchased offi ce provides more space for SACE’s expanding staff, and allows for SACE to demonstrate energy effi cient technology and renewable energy genera-tion. SACE has begun instituting energy effi cient retrofi ts, and will showcase a clean and effi cient businesses operation. Updates on the building modifi cations will be available through SACE’s website, www.cleanenergy.org.

MHG provides Bioenergy ERP to Spain’s largest biomass supplier

MHG Systems Ltd. has started the fi rst phase of MHG Bioenergy ERP implementation with FactorVerde SA, the largest biomass supplier in Spain. With MHG Bioenergy ERP, FactorVerde will be able to control and monitor the whole biomass delivery chain from small road-side storages, through transportation and terminals, all the way to the power plant silos. FactorVerde CEO Roberto De Anto-nio Garcia says the company chose MHG Bioenergy ERP, because of the strong bioenergy focus of the system and possi-bilities to control and manage the scattered workforce in an easy and reliable manner.

Capstone’s Crouse appointedto REEE advisory committee

Capstone Turbine Corp., a manufac-turer of microturbine energy systems, an-nounced that U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke recently named Capstone Executive Vice President Jim Crouse to a national advisory committee that will promote U.S. exports of renewable energy and energy effi cient technologies. The 29-member Renewable Energy and Energy Effi ciency advisory committee will advise Locke on the development and implemen-tation of programs and policies to help

expand the competitiveness of the U.S. renewable energy and energy effi ciency industries. Crouse and other committee members also will develop strategies to identify and expand export markets for the industries, both in the short- and long-term.

NY Biomass Energy Alliance selects new leadership

The New York Biomass Energy Alliance has selected a new slate of offi cers to advance low-value wood, biomass crops and waste material as an affordable source of local energy to meet the state’s heat, power and fuel needs. Jim Waters, execu-tive director of the Catskill Forest Association, will serve as the organization’s chair. The organization’s new president is Charlie Niebling, general man-ager of New England Wood Pellet, a supplier of biomass fuel, with two pellet production facili-ties in New York. Joseph Visalli will serve as the organization’s issues co-ordinator. The New York Biomass Energy Alliance is a membership organiza-tion, operating under the formal sponsorship of the New York Farm Viability Institute in Syracuse. For more information, go to www.newyorkbiomass.org.

SHARE YOUR INDUSTRY NEWS: To be included in the Busi-ness Briefs, send information (including photos and logos, if available) to Industry Briefs, Biomass Power & Thermal, 308 Second Ave. N., Suite 304, Grand Forks, ND 58203. You may also e-mail information to [email protected]. Please include your name and telephone number in all cor-respondence.

BUSINESS BRIEFS¦

ENERGY CROP INNOVATIONS: An energy crop company and an equipment manufacturer have developed equipment to plant and harvest miscanthus.

Charlie Niebling is general manager of New England Wood Pellet, which has manufacturing plants in Schuyler and Jaffrey, N.Y.

Jim Waters is is executive director of the Catskill Forest Association, a nonprofi t dedicated to enhancing all aspects of forest in the state's Catskill region.


Bio-InitiativeWashington’s commissioner of public lands announces aviation biofuel project during biomass conference keynote.

Bioenergy BasicsColleges and universities need to prepare students for employment in the renewable energy industry.

Peter Goldmark, commissioner of Public Lands for the Wash-ington Department of Natural Resources, kicked off the Pacifi c West Biomass Confer-ence & Trade Show Jan. 11 in Seattle by announcing phase two of his Forest Biomass Initiative.

Goldmark said he planned to roll out a bill for an aviation biofuel pilot facility. The project will use biomass from state trust lands and help clean up emissions from an indus-try that continues to grow exponentially. “There’s ample market here, folks,” he said, citing increased numbers of airline passen-gers and amounts of fuel used.

The bill will not only establish an avia-tion biofuel pilot facility, but will mobi-lize stakeholders in developing a woody biomass supply chain. Phase one of the initiative involved the establishment of four pilot projects, two of which have been suc-cessful. One is a combined-heat-and-power plant at the Port Angeles Nippon paper mill and the other, in Borgford, produces wood oil through pyrolysis. The others hit insurmountable challenges and are not proceeding, Goldmark said. The initiative was launched with multiple goals in mind including job creation and clean energy production.

Goldmark also took advantage of the opportunity to announce a supply study by Washington State University. “It will help landowners realize how much they can use sustainably,” he said. “And I say that word ‘sustainably’ over and over again.”—Lisa Gibson

The handwriting is on the wall for renew-able energy, and the message indicates that the clean energy industry is in need of employees with a strong understanding of sustainable energy, according to Alan Hardcastle, senior research associate at Washington State Univer-sity.

Hardcastle and the other speakers who formed a panel, titled Higher Education as Industry Catalyst: Bioenergy Education in the Pacifi c West, suggested that while the bioenergy economy is growing, the labor force needed for the industry may be falling behind.

“There is a concern that there is a lack of renewable education at all levels,” Hardcastle said, and employers are starting to voice that concern. Several renewable energy companies and other organizations are making an effort to become more sustainable and that has created a “green” skill set he called the new basics. “A green job may require more skills and an understanding of knowing what is going on in clean renewable energy and this will be an important trend in our universities,” he said. Fortunately, educational facilities will benefi t from the new skill set required by some employers.

Rob Costello, the dean for trades and technology at Bellingham Technical Col-lege, spoke about a new sustainable energy certifi cate offered to all students. Technicians will leave the program with an enhanced skill set in sustainable energy that includes the fundamentals of sustainable energy along with an understanding of various technologies, he said. The school has partnered with Washing-

ton State University on a project aimed at an-aerobic digester operational and maintenance skills. “A lot of students say they want to be in renewable energy without having an idea of what that means,” Costello said. The certifi cate program will help students gain a better, more applicable knowledge of what sustainable energy means.

Like Costello, Daniel Schwartz, the director of the bioresource-based energy for sustainable societies interdisciplinary doctoral program at the University of Washington, is working with students to develop bioenergy-related skills. Schwartz has started a doctoral program for students that could be similar to a biomass consulting company. During one proj-ect, the students performed feasibility studies on sourcing biomass for a cogeneration facility that would use wood waste. The group also performed biomass assessments and biomass cost estimations during the project.

Candis Claiborn, dean of the college of engineering and architecture at Washington State, explained the university’s efforts to develop students capable of working at an integrated biorefi nery. The program includes work on fungal catalyst development, algal bio-mass, feedstock pretreatment, thermochemi-cal conversion approaches and several other biorefi nery-specifi c areas. Claiborn also said the school has instituted an entrepreneur-in-residence program that helps students developing innovative products or processes to meet other entrepreneurs in the community, all of which will help the bioenergy industry grow. —Luke Geiver

EventCoverage

LEARNING CURVE: Schwartz (left to right), Costello, Claiborn and Hardcastle discussed the importance of preparing an educated workforce for the growing renewable energy industry.

REFUELING WITH BIOMASS: Goldmark announced a bill to build an aviation biofuel pilot facility that would use biomass from state trust lands and help clean up emissions from a growing aviation industry.


Emissions are no longer an issue when building waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities today, thanks to technological innovations. Rather, one of the most challenging issues today is public percep-tion and/or NIMBYism (not in my back yard).

That was one of the key points made during the plenary panel called Maximizing an Embattled Biomass Stream: Waste-to-Energy Developments in the Pacifi c West.

Panelists discussed the benefi ts and advancements of WTE and the nation’s increasing demand for it, the challenges involved, and some examples of successful projects and investments.

Panel moderator Robert Grott, executive director of the Northwest Environmental Business Council, said that many landfi lls in the Pacifi c West and across the country are at or near-ing capacity and options to reduce waste are limited. “We have technologies in development to convert trash into chemicals, heat, fuel and power but we face regulatory environments that make deployment of them nearly impossible,” he said. So for now, and some time to come, WTE is the best available option.

Self-proclaimed garbage engineer Damon Taam, system contract manager for the Spokane (Wash.) Regional Solid Waste System, said Spokane accounts for about 300,000 tons of the 5 million tons of waste Washington generates each year. Taam has spent more than 30 years in the WTE industry and played a signifi cant role in the development of Spokane’s WTE facility, one of only three in the state. “It is very clean and very effi cient and solves multiple problems for Spokane,” he said.

Taam said garbage is an attractive renewable energy resource for developers. “It is [attractive] because people pay you to take it, and you get energy from it and then people pay you for that,” he said. “The development of renewable energy costs money and this is a way to generate extra revenue.”

With garbage there are constraints, Taam said, but these have to be overcome because the population is increasing and so is the amount of waste generated. “It’s a lot like a wastewater plant—it’s coming down the pipe, and you better take care of it,” he said.

Waste Management-Pacifi c Northwest Area Vice President Dean Kattler discussed the company’s current waste-to-energy capacity, its investments in emerging technologies and plans for the future.

Waste Management’s Wheelabrator division currently operates 17 WTE facilities across the U.S. The company is also involved in 124 landfi ll gas projects, is co-owner of the largest landfi ll gas-to-liquid natural gas plant in the country, and has investments in or partnerships with fi ve WTE technology compa-nies in North America.

One of the investments is a partnership with plasma-enhanced melter technology company InEnTec, to form joint

venture company S4 Energy Solutions. Together the companies have constructed a 25-ton-per-day (tpd) pilot facility in Arlington, Ore., at a Waste Management landfi ll, which will open for testing this year.

The facility may be small, but Kettler says that with WTE comes trial and error. “Scalability is a major concern with plasma gasifi cation, so that’s why we’re taking very small steps with a 25-tpd facility,” he said. “You might have heard that plasma gasifi ca-tion is becoming the buzzword and there are some plants being built that are 200, 300 and 400 tpd, but we truly believe they are not sustainable and that technology isn’t ready for that size of commercial application at this stage.”

The fi nal presenter, Conrad Fichtner of AECOM, discussed a study the company performed for Metro Vancouver looking at waste treatment, energy recovery and disposal solutions. Several options were explored, he said, including mechanical biological treatment, WTE (mass burn), a new, remote landfi ll 200 miles away and various combinations.

AECOM found that WTE was the most economical option, and provided the best carbon dioxide benefi ts compared to land-fi lling. “Can you build a WTE facility in a big city? You bet you can,” Fichtner said. “We don’t need to be afraid of WTE from an emissions perspective anymore. There’s this perception that we kill babies, but we don’t. In Canada, it isn’t regulatory issues, it is public perception.”

On regulations, Taam said the U.S. EPA is now a proponent of WTE facilities, rather than a hindrance. He said he gives more than 300 presentations a year to the public to inform them of the benefi ts of WTE. “We have to educate, educate, educate,” he said. “The community fi rst needs to make the decision that this is a positive thing.” —Anna Austin

EVENTCOVERAGE¦

ENERGIZING WASTE: Grott (left to right) moderated a panel consisting of Taam, Kattler and Fichtner, who shared their insight into waste-to-energy development in the Pacifi c West.

Emission RemissionConvincing NIMBYs that WTE project emissions aren’t harmful is a labor-intensive task.

Weaving their way through a maze of piping, knobs and gauges, tour participants at the Pacifi c West Biomass Conference & Trade Show saw fi rsthand how steam is produced and distributed to more than 200 downtown Seattle buildings.

Seattle Steam is a privately owned district heating system that supplies 600,000 pounds of steam per hour to hospitals, ho-tels and other structures through an 18-mile pipeline to Seattle Central Business District and First Hill Neighborhoods. The plant uses a 60 percent waste wood feedstock, the rest comprised of natural gas and oil.

During the tour, Seattle Steam President Stan Gent took the participants to the large, round combustion chamber, warning them of the high temperature even on the outside of the chamber. “The combustion of the fuel is probably the easiest part of what we do,” Gent said.

Participants also got a look at the plant’s storage, handling, grinding and screening processes located across the street from the

plant. A grey silo dwarfi ng all the buildings around it holds 250 tons of wood, roughly one day’s worth of feedstock. Each truck load brings in 20 to 25 tons, emptying it inside the cemented and unheated drop-off area adjacent to the silo. The facility also controls odor and dust, Gent said.

Attendees descended a grated stairway into an area where machines grind and screen the biomass until all the material is three inches or smaller. From there, the tour con-tinued through a tunnel where the feedstock is blown under the street to the combustion chamber. The pressure, power and force of the equipment could be felt through vibra-tions throughout the room.

Seattle Steam also has a natural gas-fi red plant just blocks away that Gent hopes will be an operating combined-heat-and-power plant by 2012. The company has a federal grant for $19 million to help with the costs and hopes to produce 35 megawatts of elec-tricity and 25 megawatts of heat at about 90 percent effi ciency, he said. —Lisa Gibson

Steam for SeattleDistrict heating system supplies steam to several downtown buildings.

PRESSURE COOKER: Seattle Steam is a privately owned district heating system with the capacity to supply 600,000 pounds of steam per hour to local hospitals, hotels and other businesses through an 18-mile pipeline.

¦EVENTCOVERAGE

In Washington’s Tualco Valley, the Qualco Energy Corp. anaerobic digester in Snohomish County has come a long way since the project was conceived in 2003.

Qualco Energy Corp., a nonprofi t organization formed by representatives from the Sno/Sky Agricultural Alliance, Northwest Chinook Recovery and the Tulalip Tribes, began operating the digester in 2008. The digester was fi rst proposed to help consume waste from local dairy operations and to pre-vent runoff into salmon streams on land that formerly housed a correctional facility.

According to Daryl Williams, environ-mental liaison for the Tulalip Tribes, Qualco uses a modifi ed mixed plug fl ow mesophyllic digester capable of producing 600 cubic feet per minute of biogas that powers its 450-kilo-watt generator. Manure is collected from Werkhoven Dairy’s three farms and piped to Qualco’s 2 million gallon digester tank.

Qualco sells electricity to Puget Sound Energy Corp. and is negotiating a power-pur-

chase agreement with the Snohomish County Public Utility District.

The solids left over from the anaerobic digestion process are used as compost mate-rial, Williams said. Qualco currently gives its digestate material away for free, but they will charge a fee once a market for it is found. “We’ll hopefully sell the solids for about $10 per yard,” Williams said.

Waste liquid from the digester gets piped to a nearby lagoon and is utilized for irrigation.

Qualco was awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. DOE to conduct an environ-mental assessment and feasibility study in 2005, and received $500,000 from the USDA to help pay for the digester.

Williams said the economic and envi-ronmental impact of the anaerobic digester has been a boon for the county, adding that Qualco intends to expand operations to include more generators and solar panels. —Bryan Sims

Biogas BenefitsAnaerobic digestion project in Washington’s Tualco Valley is paying off.

COW POWER: The anaerobic digester at Qualco Energy Corp. in Washington’s Tualco Valley uses manure from area dairy farms and other waste material such as expired beer and soda, and waste trap grease.

EVENTCOVERAGE¦


Signifi cantly different than the 111th Congress, the new Republi-can-controlled 112th Congress will likely implement many changes to the country’s renewable energy policies. This is largely because there are different committee leaders, many new members and key staff in positions relevant to the renewable energy and biomass sector, and that Obama is moving to the middle in preparation for 2012 elections, according to Patrick Rita, founder and principal of Orion Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based government relations consulting fi rm.

Rita explained his outlook during a webinar held by the Biomass Thermal Energy Council in January.

A priority of the new Congress will be oversight, according to Rita. “Already, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power Ed Whitfi eld from Kentucky, a coal-state legislator, is expected to summon [U.S.] EPA to the hill shortly to defend their efforts to regu-late greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act,” he said. “That issue will be hotly debated with lots of legislation already in the hopper.”

Another key issue will be how new energy programs are funded. “Under the Democratic-controlled Congress, funding for programs was pay as you go,” Rita said. “The funding mechanism now will be spending cuts identifi ed in existing programs.”

So what can such a divided government produce? Not any sort of sweeping climate and energy laws like we saw in the 111th Congress, according to Rita. “What we’re seeing is some real interest in the concept of a clean energy standard, unlike a renewable energy standard, it would include coal carbon capture and storage technol-ogy, nuclear power, natural gas and the like.”

Tax reform is also a priority, Rita said. “We’re hearing there is an effort to get back to the concept of moving away from tax incen-tives that attempt to pick winners and losers, and more toward an outcome-based tax policy. ”

Rita said it appears as though the 1603 Program will not be re-newed for 2012, and the Farm Bill will be heavy-laden with renewable energy programs such as the Biomass Crop Assistance Program. The defi nition of biomass will also be at large, he said, and boiler Maxi-mum Achievable Control Technology will continue to take center stage. “The EPA was granted a one-month reprieve, and we don’t know what the reconsideration process will yield, but the EPA will be exploring a legislative fi x,” he said. “A major issue coming down the pipe is the utility MACT, and I think that will have a major effect on all players in the renewable energy space.” —Anna Austin

Potential Game ChangerThe new Republican Congress will likely make changes to federal renewable energy policies.

ON THE HILL: A new Congress could mean changes to federal renewable energy policies and the way they are funded.

FiredUp


FIREDUP¦

To replace the system in which renewable heating process equip-ment is purchased through capital grants, the U.K.’s Department of Energy and Climate Change is developing the Renewable Heat Incen-tive to encourage the purchases through tariffs.

Implementation of the program is expected in June, and while fi nal details have yet to be released, the public consultation document outlines its key aspects:

• Support a range of technologies including air- and ground-source heat pumps, solar thermal, biomass boilers, renewable com-bined heat and power; and use of biogas, bioliquids and the injection of biomethane into the natural gas grid.

• Support heating at all scales including households, businesses, offi ces, public-sector buildings and industrial processes in large facto-ries.

• Tariff levels have been calculated to bridge the fi nancial gap between the cost of conventional and renewable heat systems at all scales, with additional compensation for certain technologies for an element of the nonfi nancial cost; and a rate of return of 12 percent on the additional cost of renewables, with 6 percent for solar thermal.

“I certainly expect it to have a signifi cant impact on the use of heat,” says Geoff Hogan, information offi cer and researcher for the U.K.’s Biomass Energy Centre. “It obviously depends on how gener-ous it is, but if it’s reasonably generous, as fi gures suggest, then we do expect quite a reasonable incentive for people to install renewable heat of one kind or another.”

The DECC does, however, specifi cally propose the exclusion of wood-burning stoves, saying they present practical diffi culties such as monitoring how much they are used and to what extent they are used with renewable fuel rather than coal. Under the current proposals, qualifying systems completed after July 15, 2009, will be able to claim

the RHI, according to the consultation. The document also specifi es that payments can only be made to the owner of the renewable heat-ing plant, to a producer of biogas or biomethane or to a producer of biofuel for generating heat. The DECC also proposes that RHI benefi ciaries receive support over a number of years rather than in the form of a single upfront payment, encouraging owners to keep their equipment operating and well-maintained.

For small-scale applications of up to 45 kilowatts (kW), the agency recommends 9 pence per kilowatt hour (kWh) for solid biomass and a tariff lifetime of 15 years, and 5.5 pence per kWh for biogas on-site combustion for a lifetime of 10 years. For large-scale applications of 500 kW and above, the DECC proposes between 1.6 and 2.5 pence per kWh with a tariff lifetime of 15 years. For qualify-ing applications in between, solid biomass would receive 6.5 pence per kWh for 15 years, with on-site biogas receiving 5.5 for 10 years, as proposed.

“We are trying to meet various commitments to our lower car-bon future,” Hogan says. The U.K. has a renewable energy goal of 15 percent by 2020, aiming for 80 percent carbon emissions reduction by 2050, as well as other international obligations. In 2009, the U.K. used more than 895,000 metric tons (986,500 tons) of oil equivalent from biomass to generate renewable heat, according to statistics compiled by the DECC.

“We’re not as advanced as many other European countries in terms of percentage of heat generated,” Hogan says, explaining that the country has an extensive gas grid, along with cheap gas prices and cheaper gas combustion equipment compared to solid fuel combus-tion equipment. “So without some sort of incentive, we haven’t had the extensive rollout of biomass heat that they have in other coun-tries.” —Lisa Gibson

Turning Up the HeatThe U.K. is developing a program to incentivize renewable heat generation and use.


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Soon, Mississippi may be known as a biomass energy hub, as its wide availability of low-cost resources is being highly recognized and developing projects are plentiful.

For example, a biomass power project proposed in Port Gibson in southwestern Mississippi has generated a lot of attention. National Clean Fuels Inc. has partnered with the Center for Environment, Com-merce & Energy and the City of Port Gibson to build a 10-megawatt biomass power facility that will gasify sawdust and wood chips.

With this and many other biomass projects, Mississippi offi cials have realized there eventually needs to be a cap on its resources to en-sure sustainability. Currently, there is no estimate to quantify the capac-ity potential of biomass energy in the state. To remedy that situation, the Mississippi Development Authority’s Energy Division announced it was making $400,000 available to develop a biomass feasibility study. Submission of proposals were due in December; the fi nal report is due in 2012.

According to the Mississippi Technology Alliance Strategic Bio-mass Initiative, an organization that tracks renewable energy and energy effi ciency projects, there are almost 50 biomass-related projects in the state, says director Sumesh Arora.

Brent Bailey of the 25 x ’25 Alliance says the major biomass resource in Mississippi is its forestlands, which covers about 65 percent of the state’s land area. “Other resources include municipal solid waste, animal manure, agricultural products and residues, and poultry litter, as

nearly 8,000 poultry houses exist around in the state,” he says. Biomass developers are also attracted to Mississippi because of

its excellent transportation system. The state is surrounded by water-ways—the Mississippi River, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and the Gulf of Mexico. Each has superior port and navigational attributes that are key for material import and export, says Pete Weisenberger, president of the Mississippi Biomass Renewable Energy Council.

Weisenberger says the state has outstanding university research support and several state incentive programs have been developed to spur research, development and commercially viable utilization of renewables.

In order to attract the private equity capital needed to support the industry, Weisenberger says investors must be able to pencil in solid and stable rates of return on investment. “The state’s taxpayers have dem-onstrated their willingness to tee it up and front the costs of attracting many of these companies to Mississippi, putting us at the forefront of the industry,” he says. “In the long run, private investment has to take the lead and run with it.”

In short, Mississippi needs a long-term, comprehensive energy plan that makes biomass a signifi cant component of the state’s energy portfolio. “Mississippi and the mid-South is the sweet spot for biomass resources, and we have the people, the raw material, the research facili-ties, the know-how and the willingness to put all the parts together for success in this industry,” Bailey says. —Anna Austin

Mighty Mississippi Mississippi is poised to take advantage of its abundant biomass resources.


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FIREDUP¦

Greenleaf Power LLC has accumulated a biomass power portfolio of just more than 100 megawatts through the purchase of three operating plants in California. Although it is one of a few com-panies with a business plan that focuses on acquiring existing plants in lieu of building, Greenleaf President Hugh Smith says he doesn’t see an industry-wide trend of consolidation.

It’s opportunistic, he says, and John Eustermann, partner with fi rm Stoel Rives LLP, agrees. “They’re doing it because I think they have the ability to balance-sheet fi nance it and the ability to either take over good PPAs (power purchase agreements) or acquire good PPAs from those entities that want to make sure they’re in compli-ance with the RPS (renewable portfolio standard),” Eustermann says of the numerous companies pursuing the acquisition strategy.

He adds that he hesitates to think a consolidation is brew-ing, but it wouldn’t be bad to create a portfolio of assets in a state subject to an RPS. Smith echoes that opinion, saying a state RPS, like California’s of 33 percent by 2020, undoubtedly plays a crucial role in deciding which plants to purchase. Greenleaf is open to purchas-ing plants all across North America but has remained in California because opportunities so far have been there, Smith explains.

Smith has seen no apparent trend in the reasons why companies choose to sell their plants, simply revealing that plants often don’t fi t the core interests of the company. That’s not to say Greenleaf

hasn’t had to work to improve aspects of its acquired plants such as operations, feedstock contracts or PPAs, but each has been capable of continued operation at the time of purchase.

“We’re very pleased with the progress we’ve made to date,” he says. “We haven’t accomplished everything we’re hoping to ac-complish at those three, but we’re working both on improving the operations of those facilities while continuing to look for additional opportunities in the market as well.” —Lisa Gibson

Acquisitions Atmosphere Despite a number of energy companies purchasing biomass power plants, a consolidation trend is likely not on the horizon.

CALIFORNIA CONNECTIONS: Greenleaf Power LLC has purchased three California biomass power plants, including this one in Mecca.

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vested millions of tons of ag residue in his career, sending it through a supply chain to Asian markets.

While supplying biomass for energy production is different than supplying it to the customers and markets that Pacifi c Ag Solutions traditionally serves, each supply chain segment comes with benefi ts, not just for the company but also the economy, says Harrison Pettit, PowerStock’s vice president of business development, who joined the company early last year, after working at Pa-cifi c Ethanol Inc.

One of those benefi ts is massive job creation. An element of the ag biomass in-dustry that has not been widely understood is the economic impact just from employ-ment around harvest, collection and storage of biomass for a large-scale project, Pet-tit says. “For example, a big project using corn stover could easily require 400 to 500 employees just for the harvest portion. It’s almost 10 times the amount of conversion jobs—sure they’re not as well-paid or as

highly skilled—but it’s a very large number of people.”

Harvesting also requires a lot of ma-chinery. “We currently have the nation's largest single entity fl eet of large square balers at 18,” Pettit says. “That number is small compared to what a full-scale bio-fuels or bioenergy project would require, so it speaks to the fractured nature of the traditional Western export feed and forage industry. It also speaks to the importance of having a good working relationship with equipment manufacturers so that we can make sure to have the right amount of equipment when it is needed.”

Demand Leads to SupplyThus far, the company has been hired

mainly by large-scale project developers or technology providers rather than individual farmers, but there’s a reason for that, ac-cording to Pettit. “The demand side for the project needs to exist in order to develop that supply chain,” he says. “The corn sto-

ver exists because the corn is being raised, but there needs to be more substantiation in harvest and delivering it.” On the fl ip side, supply uncertainty must be reduced.

In the biofuels sector, PowerStock is currently engaged in a few commercial-scale projects. One is the Spiritwood Ener-gy Project in Jamestown, N.D., which is a 20 MMgy cellulosic ethanol plant that will use an as of yet undecided biomass feedstock gathered from a 70-mile radius around the plant. Last fall, PowerStock and North Da-kota State University in Fargo completed a feedstock feasibility study for the project.

On the power production side, Pow-erStock has done some work with Port-land General Electric, which operates a 585-megawatt coal-fi red power plant in eastern Oregon. “It’s the only [coal-fi red power plant] in the state, so it’s a bit of a lightening rod,” Pettit says. “PGE has an agreement with the [U.S.] EPA and the Ore-gon Department of Environmental Quality to close this plant by 2020, so we’re working


with them to fi gure out if they can convert some or all of this facility to biomass.” So far, PowerStock has helped PGE test-fi re corn stover pellets at the facility at blend rates of 3, 5 and 7 percent.

In smaller projects, PowerStock is working with Novus Pacifi c, which secured a USDA Rural Energy for America Pro-gram loan for an anaerobic digestion facil-ity that may be sited at the Port of Morrow in eastern Oregon. The digester will utilize local crop biomass and a small amount of livestock manure to generate 1,000 MMBtu of methane gas to heat an existing ethanol plant, according to Pettit.

Step-by-Step Process The development of feedstock supply

chains for these projects must be carried out similarly to technology processes, going from bench to pilot to demo to commer-cial stages, Pettit says. “The same phased development has to occur when building a large-scale feedstock supply—[the project

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developer] can’t just get 100,000 acres un-der contract and know the cost of deliver-ing that in a year,” he says. “It’s a multiyear process where you increase the scale each year to fi nd out where the sensitivities are and where you can reduce cost.”

Another caveat when developing a sup-ply chain is that despite the great amount of anticipated demand for ag biomass, there’s still no infrastructure. “You couldn’t have coal-fi red plants if you didn’t have rail-roads,” Pettit says. “This infrastructure still needs to be created, and the fi rst stage is to build these fi rst plants and demonstrate a system. There will be a commodity market for ag biomass just like there is right now with wood biomass.”

The fi rst step in developing a supply chain is performing a feasibility study pri-or to an experimental harvest. Developers need to study the composition of the har-vested feedstock during storage to deter-mine how it weathers and how much degra-dation is occurring. The constituent matter in the stored material must also be indenti-fi ed and then harmonized to the end use, whether that involves collecting and storing feedstock for a digester, a cellulosic ethanol plant or for combustion at a power plant, Pettit says. “It’s often not well understood. Each has its own requirements based on maximizing the value of the feedstock for the end use. For example, for the fermenta-tion process for fuels, you don’t want any-thing nonfermentable in that bale. You’re just carrying something of no value, or negative value. If you’re going for a power process, you’re looking for Btu.”

Another issue is that existing harvest-ing and collecting equipment wasn’t devel-oped for bioenergy, rather it was designed for the feed and forage industry. “While our understanding can make a signifi cant differ-ence, the equipment will need to adapted,” Pettit says, adding that the company works closely with equipment manufacturers when making modifi cations. “Equipment alone is a huge potential area of optimization and cost savings,” he says. “That’s somewhat obvious, but a very important variable is the density of the material you’re handling, and that’s very much related to equipment.”

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early years of a project, and it’s better to have it than not to have it, but you can’t build a project with the assumption that something will be there—you’ve got to have other pos-sible fi nancing to support your project.”

Perhaps most importantly, according to Pettit, for a project to move forward success-fully, everyone—the growers, the harvesting companies, the project developers—needs to be rowing in the same direction. “Our main emphasis is that we can utilize our experiences of scale, understanding the lo-

gistics, the handling, and operating practices of what was traditionally a feed and forage industry, and apply them to new, unique mar-ket requirements,” he adds. “Because of the potential scale, it’ll be a much larger one. To us, it’s another leg on our forage and fi ber markets stool.”

Author: Anna AustinAssociate Editor, Biomass Power & Thermal

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When formulating a supply chain, proj-ect developers also need to consider the distance from the fi elds to the plant, or size of the project radius. “Acreage has a big in-fl uence on project feasibility,” Pettit says, as well as the participation of local growers. “The further you go, the more miles you have to go to deliver it. It also spreads your equipment out and you’re less effi cient in your asset utilization—you’ll need more, which adds to the cost. It really all comes down to the number of acres required, but there are a lot of variables that affect a de-livered dry ton and it changes with every project.”

PowerStock also offers a proprietary design for storing large, square bales of ag residue, which it has coined StackPad. Its design involves a storage base that is built up so the bales aren’t contaminated from the ground and are stacked in a stable fashion, Pettit says. The company has also developed a tarping system that protects the feedstock. “We’ve developed this sys-tem over many years of doing this, mak-ing plenty of mistakes along the way,” he says. “It is not really a technology, rather, it is know-how.”

Building MomentumIn terms of future activity, Pettit says

the company’s legacy business remains strong, but PowerStock is mainly focusing on the bioenergy industry. “That’s the larger opportunity, and we really see the momen-tum starting to build on projects,” he says.

PowerStock predicts that a lot will hap-pen in terms of facility development in 2013 and 2014. “On the feedstock supply side, 2011 will be very busy, especially in the Midwest,” he says.

That potential for activity is largely de-pendent on government policy, Pettit says. “We’d like to see more clarity, less uncertain-ty and stronger policy signals,” he says, add-ing that the company is supportive of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program. How-ever, uncertainty regarding the funding and duration of the program could erase some of its initial benefi ts. “You can’t build a 20-year asset based on a program that lasts two years,” he says. “It may be very helpful in the


¦DENSIFICATION

MILLING AROUND: While pellet mills are generally similar, the die and feed systems vary when making pellets from crop residues versus wood.

PHOTO: PELLET TECHNOLOGY


DENSIFICATION¦

While wood and crop residue pellets have largely the same end uses, vast differences surface in comparing their energy content, feedstock pricing and production components. BY LISA GIBSON

PelletIngenuity


None of the customers interested in licensing pelletizing systems from Nebraska-based Pellet Technology

will be pelletizing wood. Instead they will be pelletizing a resource that is more abun-dant, cheaper and requires less manpower to harvest. Corn stover, along with some other agricultural residues, is becoming more plentiful with the increase in yields of traditional crops. Pellet Technology has equipment capable of pelletizing wood, switchgrass, wheat and soybean stubble but corn stover is by far the company’s primary material.

Every pound of corn leaves a little more than a pound of biomass, says Russ Zeeck, Pellet Technology president and COO, and harvesting that residue can help farmers solve build-up problems that come with excessive accumulation. “We can pel-letize wood for those people who want it,

but with the numbers and cost, users are focused on stover,” he says. The company serves industrial cogeneration users, mainly in Europe.

Process, Pricing and EquipmentWhile pellet mill processes are gener-

ally similar, the inner workings can differ with the type of feedstock. “Ours is pat-ented and a completely different design,” Zeeck says of Pellet Technology’s propri-etary system. “While you still have a pellet mill machine, the die and feed system of that pellet machine vary [with wood versus crop residue feedstock].”

The equipment requirements in han-dling systems are different for the two raw materials, and added drying equipment is necessary at most wood pellet plants. Because of those variations on the basic design, wood pelletizing facilities have a

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RIPPED TO SHREDS: The front-end system for a crop residue pelleting facility requires the use of shredders to rip up bales of crop residue before they are pelletized.

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capital cost around 40 percent higher than that of agricultural residues, Zeeck says. Ballparking, he says a 175,000 ton-per-year wood pellet plant could cost between $20 million and $25 million, compared with $15 million to $17 million for a similar-sized stover pelletizing plant.

Subsequent to contrasts in essential equipment comes a change in permitting requirements and timelines. The lack of drying systems in a corn stover pellet plant means those facilities can be permitted in 90 days. “You have a much more limited permitting requirement,” Zeeck says.

Those benefi ts and others, including price stability, infl uenced heavily by demand in existing and future markets, contributed to Pellet Technology’s decision to feature corn stover in its applications. For example, raw wood feedstocks currently have compe-tition in the pulp and paper industry as well as the housing industry and off-shore uses, Zeeck explains. “That puts a lot of pressure on a feedstock,” he says. “And if you step back and look at the volume needed, and if we were to complete 50 percent of the liquid fuel pilot plants that have been announced, that biomass demand shoots up dramati-cally.” On the other hand, though, with that wood demand and multiple end uses comes a market that’s better developed.

But corn stover’s superior price stabil-ity comes into play once again when consid-ering fi nancing for plant construction. The feedstock takes at least one risk variable out of the development process with its longer-term price security. “We can work with cus-tomers and lock stover in for a secure price for seven years,” Zeeck says. “Our fi nancing groups like that because of the fact that the feedstock has a fi xed price.” Wood prices become diffi cult to secure past one or two years because of their variability, he adds.

Energy and AshIf that doesn’t satisfy curiosity about

Pellet Technology’s choice to feature corn stover systems, Zeeck would add that the feedstock brings with it a consistent chem-istry profi le that helps stabilize the entire pelletizing process. “If you take a White

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Scotch Pine that is in Arkansas versus one that is in Oregon, you are going to have a totally different chemistry makeup of the wood itself because they bring their nu-trients from the soil,” he says. But farm-ers maintain a certain chemistry profi le for their corn, regardless of the state it’s grown in, translating to stabilized per pound Btu values between 7,100 and 7,300. “All this comes down to the chemistry, especially in the combustion world,” he says. “For the past three years, we’ve stayed very consis-tent on that Btu value.” In addition, corn stover feedstock realizes an 85 percent net Btu gain between energy going into the pel-letizing process and energy coming out, as it uses about 60 to 70 percent of the energy required in wood pelletizing processes.

But neither wood nor corn stover wins the comparison across the board. While stover offers consistency in Btu, that value falls well short of some wood species. Not to be outdone, wood can offer a Btu value of between 7,000 and 11,000, according to Jim Brown, salesman with Wood Grain Mill Works and former project manager of At-las Pellets. “Almost all wood fi ber has high-er Btu content than agricultural pellets,” he says. “There may be some switchgrass va-rieties that come close, but typically wood has more Btu.” In addition, wood pellets have consistently lower ash content.

Earthtech Energy Inc. ran into prob-lems with ash content in most of the recipes it concocted for ag residue pellets, accord-ing to CEO Marion Mast. “Most of them burned but would not come to the 1 per-cent ash requirement,” he says, adding that issues in transporting the crop residues to the plant can make the feedstock unusable. The company had a list of resources it had hoped to use at its own crop residue pellet plant, but hit a wall with the U.S. EPA when trying to sell to district heating companies, he says. The EPA requires a stack test for all new formulas and each test needs about 200 tons of feedstock. Because of that and other factors, Earthtech does not make its own pellets. Instead, the company offers consultation on processes and equipment for solid biofuels.

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PELLETIZING PRACTICE: Pellet Technology designed its proprietary pellet system specifi cally for crop residue because the company says it is more abundant, cheaper and requires less manpower to harvest.

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As Earthtech Energy learned, pel-letizing agricultural residue isn’t always as simple as pelletizing wood. Corn stover is particularly hard to densify because of its light bulk density once it is ground, Zeeck explains. “It’s kind of a unique animal,” he says, adding that a multitude of attempts by numerous companies to pelletize the material have failed. “We’ve been able to come up with a design that allows a process to pelletize seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which is really what is needed, especially in liquid fuels and electric utility industries,” he explains. “They need a product that’s at their door seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” The company’s pro-prietary process also makes particle sizing customization possible, which is crucial for a consistent quality parameter, he adds.

Lagging BehindEven with such effi cient systems avail-

able, the U.S. has yet to realize a substantial uptake in the pellet market beyond resi-dential use. Europe has the most extensive industrial and commercial pellet use and Asia is following suit. “There is very little commercial or industrial use of pellets in the Americas,” Brown laments, adding that the U.S. government incentives currently favor liquid biofuels over other biomass applications. “There seems to be very little help in the biomass area and until that at-titude changes; until natural gas triples its current pricing, there probably won’t be much commercial or industrial pellet use. So I don’t see a big need for agricultural pellets.”

Mast echoes the complaint about meager government investments of both money and effort, saying the lack of a solid biofuels infrastructure is the U.S.’s shortfall, stemming from resistance to promote them on a government level. “There is huge po-tential in solid biofuels but also some yel-low fl ags that need to be addressed [includ-ing] maintaining commodity pricing, EPA testing, service centers and certifi cation of products,” he says, adding that it will take more than just one person or company to establish the necessary infrastructure.

But in the meantime, slow progress is better than none and more feedstock op-tions could help develop that infrastructure and increase pellet use in electrical and ther-mal applications. Infrastructure is not so much an issue with corn stover pellets, as they can use existing storage and transporta-tion means, Zeeck says. “Once this product is pelletized, that allows easy transportation through existing corn grain infrastructure systems,” he says.

An increase in biofuel facilities will in-crease demand for pellets from both wood and agricultural feedstocks, and the supply needs to be closely evaluated and reviewed, Zeeck cautions. He adds that Pellet Tech-nology evaluates projects on a case-by-case basis to determine which feedstock is ap-propriate.

While residential users would undoubt-edly see more benefi ts with wood pellets be-cause of their higher Btu value and less ash, industrial users will want to weigh those fac-tors against the cheaper cost of crop residue pellets, Brown says. “You’re going to have to buy ag pellets at ‘x’ amount cheaper to justify higher ash and lower Btu.”

It’s clear that pellets made from wood and those from crop residue take turns leading the race to an effi cient and desir-able feedstock, but they seem to fi nish neck and neck. “There are a lot of positives both ways,” Zeeck says.

Author: Lisa GibsonAssociate Editor, Biomass Power & Thermal



¦ANAEROBIC DIGESTION


ANAEROBIC DIGESTION¦

Research shows that codigesting crop residue with manure can boost methane production, and new technology is expanding its use in digester systems.BY ANNA AUSTIN

CoDigesting Crop Residues


From sewage sludge to food waste to grass clippings, it seems every organic waste stream under the sun is or has been a potential candidate for anaerobic digestion (AD).

The whole process isn’t as simple as dumping any amount of manure or food waste into a pit, however. Adequate ratios and the right mix of each feedstock must fi rst be determined in order for a digester to achieve maximum performance.

Researchers today are working to determine what that recipe is, and how AD systems can be improved and optimized to gen-erate the most energy while allowing for fl exibility in feedstock input capabilities, including the use of cellulosic biomass such as crop residue.

According to Jun Zhu, professor of renewable energy and environmental engineering at the University of Minnesota , there are issues associated with using manure alone for AD, due to its low carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio. Introducing crop residues into the mix can not only enhance methane production, but at the same time reduce the volume of residue materials for dis-posal, he says.

Zhu’s conclusions were determined through experiments with three crop residues—corn stalks, wheat straw and oat straw. When added to swine manure, all increased the total daily volume of methane gas production, though corn stalks performed the best, followed by oat straw. The only preparation done to any of the feedstocks was the chopping of the straw to allow it to be passed through a 40 mesh sieve, which has 40 wires per inch.

Zhu says the optimum amounts of crop materials added to swine manure were determined by the desired C/N ratios of the mixture, but the ratios change with the amount of manure—the nitrogen source—and each type of ag residue—the carbon source. The importance of getting the C/N ratio right is that the microbes that eat the substrates, or feedstock, need a suffi cient concentration of each to achieve optimum growth for the diges-tion process, hence producing the most methane in the shortest period of time.

Typically, somewhere between a 16-1 to a 30-1 C/N ratio is the AD microbial sweet spot. “We tested C/N ratios of 16-1, 20-1, and 25-1, and found that 20-1 was the best,” Zhu says.

There are at least two characteristics of these feedstocks that make them perform better than wheat straw, Zhu says. “Since wheat straw has signifi cantly higher carbon content than corn stalks and oat straw—46 percent versus 39 percent—the quantity of wheat straw added is less than those of corn stalks and oat straw,” he says. The quantity reduction for wheat straw means a reduction in the amount of easily degraded materials—or food—for digestion, hence resulting in reduced biogas productivity.

The second reason is because crop residues are primarily composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin, among which lignin is the least degradable material in AD. This is due to the shielding effect of lignin resulting from the intense cross-linking with cellulose and hemicelluloses. “As such, crop residues with


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METHANE BOOST: Adding corn stalks to swine manure produced the most methane per day, compared to oat and wheat straw.

SOURCE: JUN ZHU, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

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higher lignin content will limit the degradation of such fi bers,” Zhu explains. “According to [information published by academ-ics] the lignin content in wheat straw, corn stalks and oat straw is 18, 8.4, and 13 percent, respectively. The high lignin content in wheat straw makes its sugars more diffi cult to use by microbes than that of the other two residues, leading to lower productivity of biogas and methane. Interestingly, the lignin content of these crop residues appears to well explain why corn stalks performed the best in biogas and methane production, followed by oat and wheat straws.”

While adding crop residue to a digester may seem like a sim-ple concept, it isn’t that easy, as most digesters on the market today are traditional liquid-state digesters and are not designed to handle more than 15 percent solids. Günther Bochmann, a project manager at the Biogas Research & Consulting Group in Austria, says he thinks the biggest factor in utilizing ag residues or energy crops in livestock AD systems is process engineering. “Here, a lot of mistakes can be done,” he says. “Some plant man-ufacturers think they know everything, and that all plants match to every substrate.”

A researcher at Ohio State University is taking AD system engineering to a new level, by developing a (patent-pending) AD technology that integrates a traditional liquid anaerobic digester with a solid-state anaerobic digester to allow for the expanded use of cellulosic biomass feedstocks such as crop waste and yard clippings, as well as a substantial increase in digester per-formance.



DIGESTER DEVELOPMENT: Quasar energy group plans to install an innovative AD technology at its biogas plant in Zanesville, Ohio.

A Step FurtherAssistant professor Yebo Li, who

works in OSU’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, has more than 15 years of experience with process and system development for the production of biofuels and biobased products. He recently scored a $2 million grant from the state of Ohio’s Third Fron-tier Advanced Energy Program to further develop his system, dubbed integrated an-aerobic digestion system or iADs.

Explaining how the technology works, Li says the effl uent from the liquid anaero-bic digester (less than 15 percent solids) is mixed with lignocellulosic biomass such as corn stover and yard waste and fed into the dry digester. Before being put into the system, the cellulosic biomass generally needs to be shredded or ground to around 1-inch particle size. “The effl uent from the liquid anaerobic digester is performed as inoculum and a nutrient amendment for the dry digestion,” he says. In other words, the effl uent left over from the liquid AD process is used to treat the solid waste in the solid-state digester. “Most of the ligno-cellulosic biomass has a high carbon con-tent, and needs a nutrient amendment—supplementation of nitrogen.”

AD systems on the U.S. market today can only process up to 14 percent solids compared to Li’s, which has demonstrated capabilities of processing from 20 to 40 percent solids, resulting in substantially in-creased biogas production.

‛If we can include lignocellulosic biomass into the digester, it will increase the available amount of feedstocks within a specifi c transportation range.’

―Yebo Li, OSU Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering



“The fi nished material of the dry di-gester is stackable and like compost, and the biogas produced in the solid-state di-gester can be combined with that from the liquid phase digester to be converted in one combined-heat and-power unit,” Li says.

Importantly, the system allows for the use of various sources of cellulosic biomass such as yard trimmings and crop residue. “If we can include lignocellulosic biomass into the digester, it will increase the available amount of feedstocks within a specifi c transportation range,” Li says. Among feedstocks tested in the iADs, crop residue such as corn stover and wheat straw performed better than yard waste, he says. Like Zhu, Li adds that the composition of the cellulosic biomass in-fl uences the performance of the digester. “High cellulose and hemicellulose content will be benefi cial, while high lignin content will have a negative impact,” he says.

Other benefi ts of the system include the elimination of effl uent management, and the solids that are left over in the pro-cess can be sold as natural fertilizer.

In order to demonstrate the technolo-gy on a large scale, Li and OSU have part-nered with Ohio-based biogas company quasar energy group, formerly known as Schmack Biogas, to install it at one of the company’s facilities.

“What we came to realize last year, when Dr. Li approached us about the tech-nology, is that it will increase the feedstock types that we can accept in our systems, and it will pretty much double the energy output of a typical system,” says Caroline Henry of quasar. “We’ll be able to accept cellulosic biomass, which in a regular liq-uid digester we can’t.”

Henry says the initial plan was to in-stall the iADs in its facility in Wooster, Ohio, where the company has an operat-ing digester on the OSU campus, but it will likely be moved to its plant in Zanesville, Ohio, instead. Quasar also has an operat-ing facility in Akron, Ohio, a facility under

construction in Columbus, Ohio, and has designed a project for an ongoing fi ve-farm digester project in Rutland, Mass.

Henry was unsure of the distance from the facility the crop waste could be hauled and remain economical, but says feedstocks typically accepted at quasar’s facilities come from a maximum of 60 miles, usually between 40 and 50 miles, to be cost-effective. She says the state’s Third Frontier Advanced Energy Program, which is providing the $2 million grant to fund Li’s research and quasar’s project, will help make that and similar determinations as the technology is commercialized.

Current plans are to initiate installa-tion of the digester this year, according to Henry, and some of the initial planning and engineering has been done already. When

complete, the integrated system will be able to process more than 30,000 wet tons of biomass annually and produce more than 750 kilowatts of electricity.

Henry adds that crop waste is abun-dant in Ohio, where quasar has sited all of its facilities. “The Ohio agriculture indus-try produces nearly 5.3 million dry tons of sustainable corn and wheat crop residues annually,” she says. “That’s waste that we can start accepting and using in the iADs.”

Author: Anna AustinAssociate Editor, Biomass Power & Thermal



¦INTERNATIONAL


INTERNATIONAL¦

Although using crop residues for centralized power facilities in China would bring higher costs than their continued use in households, the prospect has enormous potential that is already being realized. BY LISA GIBSON

China’s Crop Residue Capacity


Eastern China’s prime cropland and agriculture-friendly climate make it a great place to farm traditional crops

such as wheat, rice, corn and cotton. Is it possible, then, that the region could repre-sent a prime location for centralized power facilities that run on crop residues?

Apparently so, as numerous plants have sprung up there and around the country, jump-starting a growing market for the raw material. Power solutions pro-vider DP Cleantech has helped establish 25 power plants in China that are current-ly operating on ag residues, mostly straw

from cotton, corn, wheat and rice. Keep-ing the development alive and speedy, the company is offering solutions for several more similar facilities across the country. DP Cleantech is one of a few engineer-ing, procurement and construction con-tractors to break into the elusive Chinese

¦INTERNATIONAL

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Household StovesWheat and riceWheat and corn

Village FacilityWheat and riceWheat and cornForest on croplanda

Centralized facilityWheat and riceWheat and cornForest on cropland

Cost estimates to reduce carbon emissions above baseline per year

NOTES: a The TCEC for fi rewood is 0.61 (RERPC, 1990).FSF: Fuel substitution factorC: CarbontC: Ton(s) of carbonSOURCE: "AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF USING CROP RESIDUES FOR ENERGY IN CHINA"


INTERNATIONAL¦

bioenergy sector, with an 85 percent market share, and sees almost endless potential for the 800 million tons of agricultural residues produced in the country annually.

Crop residues in China are tradi-tionally collected and burned in the open, used in animal husbandry or in rural households for cooking and heat-ing. In the past few years, however, centralized power facilities are offering a better, cleaner and more profi table solution for disposing of agricultural wastes.

Studying the Impact“The Chinese biomass markets are

excelling rapidly such that I think it’s re-alistic to assume that there will be any-where from 22 to 35 plants contracted to start work this year,” says Simon Parker, CEO of DP Cleantech. Besides the 25 operating power plants—nine 12-megawatt (MW) and 16 30-MW—the company is contracting 12 more that are under construction currently, along with two 30-MW facilities in ac-tive development stages for Zunhua City in Hebei Province and Sihong City in Jiangsu Province, both in eastern China. Those plants are expected to consume around 250,000 tons of local crop residues each year.

The potential for these facilities, especially in productive, rural areas, is enormous, but will not come without a high cost, according to “An economic analysis of using crop residues for en-ergy in China.” Additionally, that study says 60 percent of China’s crop residues are already used in rural households to replace coal in cooking and heating ap-pliances, and new centralized facilities would cut into that supply. On the oth-er hand, though, they would provide an extra source of revenue for farmers.

“The rural parts of China have been using crop residues for years,” says Rob-ert Mendelsohn, study co-author and

professor of forestry at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. “Now there’s an opportunity cost where you’re taking away from something that already has a use.” But Parker says that problem is not one of the main issues DP Cleantech and its partners have faced in establishing centralized facilities. “A lot of that fuel is used in rural China and whenever you fi nd a higher-value use for it, that would potentially take away from that other source, but that’s not our pri-mary challenge.” He also reiterates Men-delsohn’s point that as residents of rural China begin to realize higher disposable incomes, household use of those residues decreases, and the fact that farmers are paid for their residues further increases that disposable income.

Instead, the biggest challenge is col-lecting the fuel, Parker says. “It’s quite

expensive to collect because there isn’t industrialized farming in China in the same way there is in other countries,” he explains. The lack of industrial bal-ing machinery means that work has to be done by hand, far less productively than could be accomplished with machinery. Parker says the ag residue harvest ma-chinery sector in China is “absolutely negligible” and an order for a mere 60 balers would more than double the exist-ing capacity of baling equipment in the country. “That’s why the price of crop residue is higher than the competing use in households,” he says.

The logistics for that residue sup-ply vary for existing centralized biomass plants, Parker says. Some operate through a middleman who helps harvest residues and then transports them to the collec-tion centers, usually owned by the plant


operator. Increasingly common though, is the development of cooperatives to elimi-nate the middleman and ensure that more of the profi t goes to the farmer.

A Little FiguringChina contains 96 million hectares

(237 million acres) of cropland, most of which is concentrated in the Eastern portion of the country along fertile river valleys, according to Mendelsohn’s study,

which he cautions is only representative of rural, highly-productive areas in China. Specifi cally, it revolves around one village: Sunyang Village of Jiangsu Province. The province lies in the northern subtrop-ics along the Yangtze River and belongs to one of the major agricultural produc-tion zones of China with prime ag land and rich water resources. “We argue that although only a humble starting point, the study makes a serious contribution

¦INTERNATIONAL

by providing at least a fi rst estimate of biomass production potential and cost,” the authors write.

Centered on possible carbon mitigation above the baseline already mitigated by replacing coal in house-hold appliances, the study examines using crop residues in a 100-kilowatt trigeneration village facility, as well as a 40-MW centralized electrical plant with commercial or near-commercial technology. The village facility would produce gas for cooking, hot water for heating, and electricity for the grid.

The study recommends growing wheat and corn to produce the most residues possible, but also takes into account costs and carbon mitigation of wheat and rice residues, as well as growing trees for energy on prime ag-ricultural land. Needless to say, trans-portation costs are nonexistent with household use of wheat, corn and rice, but jumps to $4.80 per ton for a vil-lage trigeneration facility, and $9.60 for a centralized power plant. Transporta-tion costs for wood are just half that, although wood has an added drying and storage cost of $2.70 per ton in both scenarios. “Transportation costs are higher for the larger facility be-cause it needs more fuel and therefore the crop residue has to be gathered from a larger circle,” Mendelsohn says. “We looked at least-cost options for transport.”

The centralized facility would re-quire about 240,000 tons of residues and about 30,000 hectares of crop-land. So assuming that 75 percent of the land around the facility is cropland, supplies would have to be drawn from a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius, the study cites. In comparison, 600 tons of crop residues would be necessary for the village facility and, under the same assumption, that could be sourced from a 0.6 kilometer circle around the plant. Parker says most operating centralized biomass power plants in China target an area of about 40 to 50 kilometers,


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depending of course on the calorifi c value and density of the fuel.

But don’t jump on the village plant bandwagon just yet. It would possess an electrical effi ciency of just 20 per-cent, 10 percent lower than that of the centralized facility. “The additional ef-fi ciency gain of the centralized facility outweighs the increased transportation costs compared to the village option,” Mendelsohn says.

Furthermore, using wheat and rice in the village facility would replace 1.6 tons of carbon per hectare and the cen-tralized facility would replace 2.4 tons per hectare. Subtracting the amount al-ready mitigated by household use, that yields a net contribution of 0.2 tons of carbon per hectare and 1 ton of car-bon per hectare respectively, according to the authors’ calculations. For wheat and corn, the net contributions are even greater, at 1 ton for a village facility and 2.2 for the centralized plant.

Taking costs and carbon mitigation into account, the study found that using wheat and rice residue in a village facil-ity instead of households would come with a marginal cost of $192 per ton of carbon. Wheat and corn in a village fa-cility in lieu of households would come with a marginal cost of $195 per ton of carbon. Figures for the centralized facility are considerably lower, at $77 for wheat and rice and $117 for wheat and corn.

“These do not look like attractive options for China,” Mendelsohn says. “The current social benefi t of remov-ing carbon is estimated to be between $10 and $30 per ton of carbon so spending $77 to $190 per ton is high for the moment.”

In addition to high costs, Bill Hol-mberg, chairman of the Biomass Coor-dinating Council, predicts densifying all that crop residue for centralized or vil-lage facilities would be a barrier. But on the contrary, Parker says densifi cation is, in fact, not a problem at all, as China is installing more effi cient systems that

don’t require it. Instead, raw residues are fed directly into the systems, completely bypassing the need for energy intensive pelletizing processes. “If you can actually take the raw fuel and burn it as is, it’s a more effi cient system and that’s what all the power plants in China are moving to-ward,” he says.

The Chinese government is pushing the effi cient use of centralized systems around 30 or 40 MW, located strategical-ly to prevent transporting the electricity

over long distances to reach rural China, Parker says. Thus far, that push has been effective and Parker says the growth rate is explosive, giving way to a rapidly matur-ing market that is beginning to gain notice from other China-based contractors and developers.

Author: Lisa GibsonAssociate Editor, Biomass Power & Thermal



CONTRIBUTION

¦FEEDSTOCK

Crop Residues: Issues Relating to Collection, Transportation and StorageBioenergy producers looking to purchase crop residues must understand and be willing to work with farmers to determine the most viable options for harvesting the feedstock.BY KATE BECHEN

Crop residues, such as corn stover (leaves and stalks of corn plants left in the fi eld after harvest), are poised to be a signifi cant source as

a feedstock for biofuel production and as biomass for creation of electricity, but pro-hibitively high collection and transportation costs are often cited as major impediments to completion of projects. Despite these is-sues, crop residues offer signifi cant benefi ts as a feedstock. First, crop residues are, as the name suggests, waste that is left over af-ter harvesting the primary crop. This waste can be signifi cant. Corn stover, for exam-

ple, makes up about half of the yield of a corn crop. Second, use of the crop residue, rather than the primary crop, avoids the food vs. fuel debate. Third, the feedstock can come from a variety of crops (includ-ing corn, wheat or sorghum, just to name a few).

Any biomass project requires a reliable, long-term and economically viable feed-stock agreement. To ensure a signifi cant and reliable feedstock supply, developers looking to utilize crop residues must de-velop close, cooperative-like relationships with local farmers. Project developers often

utilize a spoke and hub arrangement for the collection and storage of crop residues. The costs associated with transportation neces-sitate that the end user (or intermediate col-lection facility) be centrally located in the heart of a biomass zone. In general terms, transportation of crop residues in excess of 100 miles will likely be cost prohibitive.

Availability and PricingSince crop residue is a byproduct of

the primary crop, the quantity available from any given grower is dependent upon the success of the harvest. Further, a cer-tain amount of crop residue must be left on the ground to ensure soil health. The amount of residue that must be left behind

The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and do not necessarily refl ect the views of Biomass Power & Thermal or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).


is somewhere between 40 percent and 70 percent, depending on the type of crop and yield, topography, climate, management and tillage practices, soil type and other factors. Further, many growers fi nd that leaving the entire residual amount in the fi eld every few years or so offers additional soil enrichment benefi ts. Farmers must also factor in crop rotation (some crop residues yield more biomass than others), delay in fall tillage, erosion, decreased habitat for wildlife (es-pecially game birds), soil nutrient issues and the alternative uses of crop residue, such as feed for livestock, when considering the amount of feedstock the farmer can supply and the purchase price. A 2008 report by the Biomass Research Development Board estimated that farmers will need to receive between $40 and $60 per dry ton of crop residue biomass. Densifi ed crop residue would likely be closer to $60, if not higher. Further, issues such as baling and hauling responsibilities must obviously be factored into pricing.

Collection Satellite processing may save costs by

allowing certain preprocessing of crop resi-due feedstock to occur before transporta-tion to the biorefi nery or conversion facility. Drying and densifi cation of the feedstock with mobile equipment that can be located close to the feedstock can reduce transpor-tation costs. The establishment of regional processing centers that aggregate, process, store and supply biomass to the region could also provide signifi cant cost reduc-tions. In addition to drying and densifi ca-tion, regional aggregators could perform other preprocessing procedures to homog-enize feedstock from several sources. Proj-ect developers often fi nd that using a com-bination of crop residues offers signifi cant benefi ts. For example, combining wheat straw and corn stover creates a higher yield biomass. Further, having a second source of feedstock protects the end user against crop failure and provides the logistical benefi ts associated with a broader harvest window, such as decreased storage costs. Larger de-velopers may be able to decrease expenses associated with having multiple feedstock agreements. The aggregator, given its size, may be able to provide a more reliable sup-

ply, as a result of the large quantities it can handle.

Denser fuel pellets can offer some cost savings in transportation and storage but the drawback is that often the pelletization pro-cess results in feedstock loss. At the same time, the storage and transportation costs of denser pellets are signifi cantly lower than other options, such as baling. Corn stover is typically compacted into large, round bales on the farm. The cost of a round baler is actually signifi cantly less than the cost of a standard small, square baler. Further, devel-oping synergies between harvest and trans-port, for example by using self-compacting wagons for both harvesting and transporta-tion, may also provide cost savings.

Depending on the size of the end user and the feedstock involved, storage may be needed anywhere from six months to one year. In addition, storage issues will depend largely upon the climate. In the Midwest, crop residue must weather ice, rain, snow and humidity. Wrapping large, round bales with mesh offers some protection from the elements. Water tends to bead up and roll off the mesh-wrapped bales. If the bales are stacked, some of this water repellant effect is lost, so a tarp over the top bales may add additional protection. The mesh wrap and tarps obviously add additional cost, but the avoided feedstock loss may offset the costs. Indoor storage is another option, although that usually results in more densely packed bales, which increases the risk of loss due to fi re. Improper storage techniques can result in potentially signifi cant biomass loss. The longer dry biomass sits, loss due to aerobic biodegradation will occur. If the biomass gets wet, you will also have loss, including methane. These emissions, when added to the energy expended in harvest, collection and transportation can result in signifi cant greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to feedstock loss and emissions, wet bales can heat up to the point that fi re becomes a re-alistic concern.

Transportation and Delivery Transportation is arguably the single

most important cost factor in the entire biomass supply chain. The transportation costs can make or break a project’s margin. Transportation cost is directly associated

with the form of feedstock, with pellets, bundles, bags and bales offering more ef-fi ciencies than loose feedstock. Transporta-tion may occur in stages, such as from fi eld to aggregator and then aggregator to end user. Transportation by tractor-trailer is most common, although train or water as the primary transport mechanism should also be considered.

Delivery schedules must be negotiated and will depend upon the requirements of the purchaser, its storage capacity and the type of feedstock. Further, if large round bales are being delivered, the receiving area must be large enough and organized in a way that avoids truck congestion. The parties in-volved should consider how emergency de-liveries will be handled and whether either party has the right to cancel or postpone a regularly scheduled delivery. Further, the time of day during which delivery will oc-cur must be considered so that deliveries do not disrupt operations. Depending upon the facility design, the type of feedstock and the storage capacity of the facility, deliveries may be to a storage area or a staging area. The facility may want some fl exibility in de-livery location depending upon the time of year or other factors, such as facility mainte-nance or use of a secondary feedstock.

ConclusionBecause crop residue is a byproduct

of the grower’s primary business, it is not often the focus of a grower’s attention and business plan. As such, growers may be less willing to make changes to their underlying business and practices simply to develop a supply of crop residues. Therefore, pur-chasers of crop residues must be willing to work with growers to determine what col-lection and transportation options will work best. Depending on the underlying feed-stock and its geographic location, different collection and transportation techniques may be needed.

Author: Kate BechenAttorney, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP’s

Energy & Sustainability Industry [email protected]

(414) 225-4956

FEEDSTOCK¦


CONTRIBUTION

¦MISCANTHUS

Field Day Explores Energy Crop Production Miscanthus field day attendees learn how to plant, grow and harvest the perennial grass, a popular source of energy in Europe that has great potential in the Southeast U.S. BY CHEREE FRANCO

On a January morning in Soperton, Ga., farmers mingled with academ-ics and investors in a large steel-beamed barn, sipping coffee and

brainstorming biomass. As they chatted about the search for clean energy, thermometers reg-istered a rare (for south Georgia) 27 degrees, at-the-pump gas prices hovered just under $3 per gallon and deepwater oil drilling lawsuits dotted the headlines. But among those gath-ered for Repreve Renewable’s fi rst-ever fi eld day, optimism was palpable.

A joint venture between sod entrepre-neur Phillip Jennings and publicly traded textile company UNIFI Manufacturing Inc., Repreve holds the exclusive license to Freedom Giant Miscanthus. A handful of people—among

them Jill Stuckey, director of the Georgia Cen-ter of Innovation for Industry—believe that this particular strain of miscanthus could be America’s most promising energy solution.

“This is all about tons per acre per year,” Stuckey says, adding that with the resources used to grow those tons—the water and fossil fuels—and planting and harvesting costs, Free-dom could yield more tons per acre with less inputs than other energy crops, she says.

A perennial grass native to the Asian Pa-cifi c region, giant miscanthus has been a popu-lar source of energy in Europe for decades. In addition to copowering the largest coal-fi red generator in the U.K., it’s used extensively in Denmark and Sweden. Worldwide, at least a dozen countries are experimenting with mis-

canthus as a premium biomass feedstock.“If you’re looking for a crop that reaches

heights of 10 to 12 feet and you don’t want that 15-year lag time, this is it,” says Brian Baldwin, a researcher with Mississippi State University’s Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Sta-tion and the developer of the Freedom strain. “In every test I’ve performed or read about, the yield on giant miscanthus doubles that of switchgrass.”

There are other strains of miscanthus, but in the sandy soil and subtropical climate of the Southeastern U.S., Freedom has higher yields and dried quicker—a bonus because dry har-vests are cheaper to transport and process. In its best year, Baldwin’s oldest test plot yielded 20 tons an acre. Twenty-fi ve tons is enough energy to power two U.S. households for an entire year.The claims and statements made in this article belong exclusively to the author(s) and

do not necessarily refl ect the views of Biomass Power & Thermal or its advertisers. All questions pertaining to this article should be directed to the author(s).

GIANT GRASS: Freedom Giant Miscanthus was developed at Mississippi State University and is licensed exclusively to Repreve Renewables, a joint venture between sod entrepreneur Phillip Jennings and publicly traded textile company UNIFI Manufacturing.

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Giant miscanthus has additional advan-tages, as well. A single planting yields about 20 years of harvest, the species thrives in and even enriches low-grade soil, it increases biodiversity by providing animal habitat, and it tolerates drought, cold and excessive rain.

Despite its benefi ts, U.S. growers have plenty of questions.

“People contact me asking if equipment even exists to harvest such a tall grass,” Jen-nings says. “Part of why we set up this fi eld day is to show people how to plant giant miscant-hus, and that yes, it can be harvested, it can be baled.”

Giant miscanthus reproduces via rhizome division so it won’t become an invasive species the way that fertile-seed strains of miscanthus would. It also means giant miscanthus is more diffi cult to plant.

“We had fi eld demonstrations, we had presentations from big equipment people, reps from companies like AGCO and Case IH,” Jennings says. “And we have video. So now no one can say, ‘you can’t get that out of the fi eld.’”

Developing a MarketMany of the farmers and investors who

attended the fi eld day shared a more immediate concern.

“I’m interested in planting our old tim-ber land with miscanthus,” says Wade Reese,

a farmer from Whitesville, Ga., who attended the event. “But who’s going to buy it?”

Even Jennings admits that the industry has a lack of “off-takers,” or external buyers. “But we’ve come a long way in a short time,” he says. “The fi eld day was about getting these concepts together—farmers, government, fi -nanciers. We continue to put money into com-mercializing this thing. We know a lot more than we knew a year ago.”

And a growing collection of investors and entrepreneurs refuse to be deterred.

“We are making this economically viable,” says Bruce Meyer of Georgia Clean Energy Solutions, who works as a consultant and liai-son between growers and end users.

“End users go beyond utility companies,” he says. “They include any energy-intensive business that runs solid-fuel boilers. But for the industry to view this as a viable fuel there has to be a reliable supply chain. Farmers have to organize and make a commitment to plant enough acres each year to meet a supply con-tract. And the utility needs to be willing to enter into an eight- to 10-year contract. Right now in the state of Georgia, we’re spending huge amounts buying coal from other states. We could keep that money in-state and even have a multiplier effect, while reducing our carbon footprint.”

“The end users are ultimately everybody here,” Baldwin says.

Government SupportFor now, the industry’s success is partially

dictated by government policy. Until 2012, the federal Biomass Crop Assistance Program will offer matching payments and establishment and annual payments to approved growers.

“We have government incentives,” says Craig Patterson, Repreve’s manager of com-mercial operations. “These are not long-term subsidies. If you want to take advantage of BCAP, the time is now.”

“It all comes down to government poli-cy,” says Chase Kasper, director of technology commercialization at Mississippi State Univer-sity. “Do we want to drill off our shores? Do we want to burn clean fuel and get off foreign oil? Once the government supports the initial investment, the market accepts it, and it takes off on its own.”

“If you look at individual clean-energy mandates state by state, they reach their peak in the early ’20s. 2022 is the date of the federal mandate,” says Ronald Smith, CFO of both UNIFI and Repreve. “Right now we have sig-nifi cant demand and not a lot of supply. We’re participating in the market at a premium.”

Stucky agrees.“The infrastructure is already in place,”

she says. “I’m dealing with seven companies right now that turn biomass into transportation fuel. These systems can work with any kind of dry biomass, and they are actively seeking sup-pliers.”

UNIFI considers itself a socially respon-sible operation, but Smith is upfront about the company’s primary interest—Freedom’s even-tual fi nancial payoff.

“UNIFI is a publicly traded company,” he says. “So if we’re participating in this, we have to believe in the return. We made this investment because the literature strongly sug-gests that perennial grasses are going to sup-port world energy demands of the future. And among perennial grasses, Freedom is the best option out there.”

Author: Cheree Franco Writer, Offi ce of Agricultural Communications,

Mississippi State [email protected]

MISCANTHUS¦

ROOTING IN: Freedom Giant Miscanthus reproduces via rhizome division. Freedom fi eld day participants learned about planting procedures and handled the rhizomes.

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2011 International Biomass Conference & Expo 56

2011 International Biorefi ning Conference & Trade Show 54

2011 Northeast Biomass Conference & Trade Show 55

2011 Southeast Biomass Conference & Trade Show 11

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Spring 2011 Biomass Power Map 9

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Vecoplan 27

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West Salem Machinery 21

Wolf Material Handling Systems 41

Exhibit Space and SponsorshipsNow AvailableDon’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to reach hundreds of people in the biomass industry in search of solutions. There is simply no other means of meeting with this many biomass-related decision makers, influencers and stakeholders in the Northeast.

Be there, interact and do business with these key decision makers, influencers and stakeholders. Exhibiting at the Northeast Biomass Conference & Trade Show will deliver real value toward your bottom line. Contact an account representative today for more information, or to learn about exhibit space and sponsorship opportunities.

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Biomass Power & Thermal - March 2011

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Transcript of Biomass Power & Thermal - March 2011