Qi BioEnergy

A unique plant in Örnsköldsvik

Unique to the Ethanol Pilot in comparison with other pilot plants is that it is run continuously by shifts. Stoppages caused by such problems as deposits, clogging, and wear and tear, which occur during long-term operation, are a matter of critical importance for the financial viability of any future production plant, just as the integration into a bioenergy combine plays a crucial role. During the first two years of the plant’s operation, the focus has been on accessibility, operational safety and process monitoring. A large number of process refinements have been made, especially in regard to the hydrolysis reactors.

Energy crop company Ceres, Inc. announced that it will sow thousands of acres of switchgrass, high-biomass sorghum and other energy crops over the next three years near St. Joseph, Missouri to support a next-generation biorefinery being engineered by ICM, Inc., a leading biofuel process technology provider. The demonstration-scale project, which includes participation from academic institutions, government and other technology providers, will produce fuel, known as cellulosic biofuel, from biomass rather than corn. Last week, Department of Energy officials announced up to $30 million in supplemental funding for the planned facility.

During the past 25 years, government and private industry in the United States have spent $9 billion attempting to develop economic and environmentally sound methods for the creation of fuel from biomass.

Considering this fact, the achievements of Dr. James Gaddy and his team in Fayetteville, Arkansas, have been unique.  There is no other technology that can efficiently and economically co-produce ethanol and electricity from a wide array of carbon-based wastes.

The process involves three main steps:

• Gasification - Unlike combustion, the technology uses an enclosed two-stage process to thermally decompose the carbon molecules in organic feedstocks.
• Fermentation - A patented microorganism reconstructs CO, CO₂ and H₂ into ethanol and water.
• Distillation - anhydrous ethanol is produced by conventional distillation followed by a molecular sieve.

The gasification step produces no air emissions.  The synthesis gas exits the gasifier at temperatures of up to 2,350°F, and must be cooled to about 98°F before being fed to the microorganisms. This cooling process generates an immense amount of waste heat that can be used to create high temperature steam to drive electric turbines.

The process will normally convert more than 90% of the organic material it receives.  The remaining ash is landfilled or could be recycled in products like cement blocks or paving.

As the process uses waste products that otherwise would have been placed in landfills and BRI’s plants will generate an excess of electricity beyond their parasitic needs, they can produce liquid and electric energy while consuming zero new BTUs in the process. This makes the current discourse about the energy efficiency of ethanol obsolete.

The bacterial culture is anaerobic, meaning that it dies when exposed to the atmosphere.  The process creates no environmental or health hazards, ground or water contamination, and minimal air emissions.  When biomass is used to co-produce ethanol and electricity, significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved.

The figure below is a simple diagram of the various steps in the BRI Process:

Coskata says its proprietary process, which relies on a combination of gasification and fermentation by microorganisms, is up to six times more efficient than the production of ethanol from corn. The process can handle everything from switchgrass to industrial waste to household garbage, produces fewer emissions and noxious byproducts than comparable systems, and will result in ethanol with a production cost of around one dollar per gallon.

Click here to read the full article with a great slide show 

Biomass varies widely in both mass and volume fuel density. It varies in chemical composition and the proximate/ultimate analysis gives records this data. It often has high water content, and the different methods of recording and measuring MC can be confusing.

While biomass can be used directly (mostly in wood fires), it can be converted to higher forms of fuels. Biomass is converted to various fuel forms in thermal (combustion, pyrolysis and gasification) processes and biological (fermentation and digestion) processes. Click here for a road map to all the various biomass conversion processes.

Probably most of you were exposed to chemistry in high school and promptly forgot it. The chemistry of biomass and other conversion processes is very simple, involving primarily carbon, C, hydrogen, H and oxygen, O. A brief explanation is given here in terms of a “Ternary diagram” of fuels which will help to keep the chemistry of fuels straight in your minds.

Air Fuel Ratios for biomass pyrolysis, gasification and combustion:
Air is the primary requirement for these thermal reactions of biomass, and adjusting to the correct air fuel ratio has given us incredibly clean cars in the last 20 years. This diagram shows the air-fuel ratios for pyrolysis, gasification and combustion of biomass.

The “ultimate” analysis” gives the composition of the biomass in wt% of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (the major components) as well as sulfur and nitrogen (if any).

The process, first announced in November 2004, has proven an additional significant achievement of 20 percent ethanol concentration average by the 11 Broin-managed plants currently operating the technology and producing over 525 million gallons of ethanol annually.

“Enhancement of the BPX process and new technological innovations by our companies have led to major breakthroughs in processing efficiency never before achieved in full scale commercial production,” said Broin Companies CEO Jeff Broin. “We believe there is no other process available today yielding 20 percent ethanol concentrations.”

BPX is the process of converting starch to ethanol without cooking. It achieves efficient conversion of starch to glucose–without heat–directly to fermentation. Benefits of BPX technology include reduced energy costs, additional starch accessibility for conversion to ethanol (higher yield), reduced fermentation byproduct formation (higher yield), significant reduction in VOC emissions, increased nutrient quality in DDGS, and improved DDGS flowability and anti-caking properties.

In July 2005, the company announced Broin Fractionation, trademarked BFRAC™, a biorefining revolution that separates the corn into three fractions including fiber, germ, and endosperm. The endosperm is then fermented to created ethanol, while the remaining fractions are converted into new value-added co-products, including Dakota Gold HP™, Dakota Bran™ Cake, corn germ meal, and corn oil. In addition to these high value co-products, the process also results in decreased energy consumption.

In addition to the BPX and BFRAC processes being very important to ethanol production and biorefining, these processes are also synergistic in nature. “Our BPX process is a key enabler for the fractionation (BFRAC) of grain and efficient conversion of endosperm to ethanol in Broin-managed facilities,” said Jeff Broin.

To date, these proprietary technologies have only been available to Broin designed and managed plants in the U.S. “We are pleased to announce that we are now offering these world-changing technologies to all ethanol companies in the U.S., with opportunities for international companies in the near future,” said Jeff Broin.

A research collaboration with Iowa State University into starch for ethanol production is receiving funds from POET. Through the collaboration with POET research, ISU researcher Jay-Lin Jane is hoping to find starches to further improve the efficiency of POET’s patent-pending BPX™ process.

BPX is a raw starch hydrolysis that converts starch to sugar and then ferments to ethanol without the use of heat. It is utilized in 20 of POET’s 22 ethanol production facilities where its benefits include reduced energy costs, increased ethanol yields, increased nutrient quality in the feed co-products and decreased plant emissions.

“Our collaboration with Dr. Jay Lin Jane is intended to extend the performance of our patent-pending BPX process to provide a greater yield of ethanol per bushel of corn without the need for cooking,” said Dr. Mark Stowers, Vice President of Research & Development at POET. By understanding the starch structure and methods of processing starch, we expect to be able to target further increases in ethanol yield per bushel, reductions in energy required and improvements to the quality of distillers grains.”

“There are differences between the starches in different lines of corn, Jane said. “Starches are made different, and we are trying to identify which lines of corn starches are more easily hydrolyzed by the enzyme and the mechanism of enzyme hydrolysis of uncooked cornstarch.” Hydrolyzing the cornstarch is breaking down starch to glucose.

The best starch needs to break down more easily. Jane has found that starches with certain molecular and granular structures work best. “Some starches are loosely packed in the granule and can be hydrolyzed easily,” said Jane. “While others, especially those with different crystalline structures, will be difficult for the enzyme to hydrolyze,” she said. Once the right starches are found, POET will use that knowledge to further optimize its BPX process.

People everywhere value mobility – the ability to move around quickly and easily so they do the things they want to do. People are also becoming increasingly concerned about the toll which their cars and trucks take on the environment, as well as on their health and well-being.

We do not view this situation as a tradeoff – mobility or a clean environment. We see that “sustainable mobility” is the path for the future, giving people choices about how they get around with lower environmental impact.

Renewable biofuels, like ethanol, will reduce dependence on imported oil and reduce the U.S. trade deficit. The production and use of ethanol displaces crude oil needed to manufacture gasoline. This is a huge challenge. Around the world, about $1.5 trillion is spent every year on road fuels. The United States alone consumes about 145 billion gallons of gasoline each year.

In addition, options for environmentally responsible transport raise many other issues, including climate change, national energy security, rural development, cost effectiveness and food for a growing global population.

The biofuels industry is on the cutting edge of technology, pursuing new processes and renewable energy sources to help us achieve energy independence and food security.

Biofuels, like ethanol, are a pivotal component of our Nation’s renewable fuels portfolio. However, there is no single, silver bullet answer to sustainable mobility. The keys for the United States are: (1) to create a well-established biofuels market which builds on our current reality, moving us in the right direction; and (2) to innovate over time to broaden the market and to further diminish the already minimal environmental impacts. Fortunately, we do have a base on which to build and innovate. Ethanol made from US corn is the largest volume biofuel available today. It has been used in blends with gasoline for more than 20 years. And modern corn ethanol plants are energy efficient, producing a fuel which helps reduce greenhouse gases. Ethanol made from corn, however, cannot be a single answer to climate change and America’s addition to imported oil. But it is definitely an essential part of the biofuels path forward. It is only a first step in the renewable biofuels evolution, and it is dynamically evolving and providing significant benefit to the environment.

Cilion, backed by some of world’s most progressive investors, has the resources to be part of the solution to the challenges of sustainable mobility, starting with corn ethanol and progressing further. For example, in Keyes, California, we are building one of world’s most energy efficient ethanol plants, creating 2.6 times more energy in our products than it takes to produce.

LanzaTech has developed a proprietary platform for producing lowest-cost fuel ethanol in any industrialized geography, at a much larger scale than is currently being envisioned elsewhere.

Specifically, our plan is to develop an ethanol production process that can be retrofitted to industrial facilities to generate ethanol from the carbon monoxide component of waste flue gases.

Industrial flue gases are an inherently low cost, high volume, point location resource, produced in most industrialized regions. LanzaTech’s mission is to enable industries that produce high volumes of carbon monoxide containing flue gases to become the lowest cost, highest volume producers of fuel ethanol.

BCC technology converts lignocellulosic biomass into a bio-crude which is suitable for upgrading to transportation fuels. This offers significant commercial benefits including using harvesting waste rather than food crops; environmental sustainability; reduced reliance on fossil fuels; and enabling economic development in rural areas.The key technical problem addresses by BCC is opening up the solid fibrous woody material so that it can be transformed. The existing state-of-the-art processes are costly and energy or chemicals intensive. BIOeCON has developed a simple non-energy-intensive way to make woody biomass accessible to catalysts, which enables the conversion of the biomass in to a bio-crude with good product properties.