Qi BioEnergy

Energex Pellet Fuel, Inc. operates the largest wood pellet plant in North America with an annual capacity of over 120,000 tons. Using a state-of-the-art process control system, automatic packaging facility, and environmental controls, the Energex plant has the capacity to bag 500 tons per day and hold thousands of tons in inventory to service peak demand periods.

Energex people are dedicated to getting product out on time with an offer of next day delivery to most destinations.

In 1993, Energex Pellet Fuel, Inc. acquired the Lac-Mégantic plant which started in 1982 to produce industrial wood pellets. After purchase of the plant, Energex added a packaging facility to bag premium grade wood pellet fuel and completed a total renovation, rehabilitation, and modernization of the plant facility.

In 2000, Energex merged a West Virginia pellet plant with another in Mifflintown, PA.  Energex American, Inc. now has a production capacity of over 50,000 tons per year.

LS9’s world headquarters looks like a dorm room on move-out day. The reception area at the biotech company’s San Carlos, California, digs is stark white, unashamedly bare. No one has bothered to spring for prints or posters for the walls, not even from Ikea. Haphazard stacks of boxes line every corridor. It’s no surprise LS9 doesn’t put much of a premium on appearances–after all, its most important employees are patented microbes too small to be seen. “This is where we grow the bacteria,” says Steve del Cardayré, the company’s vice president for research and development, leading me to a lab space no bigger than your typical college double. He points to a vat containing an oatmeal-like slurry–carbohydrates derived from plant matter that feed the microbes. “After they’re finished growing, all we have to do is take the mixture out and spin it, and density makes it separate into its components.” Click here to read the full article

Several EFC plants were built and operated in various countries in World War II, when wartime conditions changed economic conditions and priorities. These countries included Germany, Russia, China, Korea, Switzerland, the United States, and other countries. Today, due to competition from synthetically produced ethanol, only a few of these plants are still operating with virtually all of them in Russia.

A paper manufacturing plant in Temi-schammaig, Quebec, operates off of byproduct sugars contained in “sulfite liquor,” which contains about 2% fermentable sugars. This is the only facility of its kind in North America. This facility is operated by Tembec, Inc., and produces 4 million gallons per year of industrial grade ethanol.

Several efforts are underway in North America to commercially produce ethanol from wood and other cellulosic materials as a primary product. Table 3 partially summarizes these companies and their activities, which are in various states of progress.

Table 3. A partial listing of companies developing ethanol-from-cellulose technologies.

SUMMARY

Ethanol-from-cellulose (EFC) holds great potential due to the widespread availability, abundance, and relatively low cost of cellulosic materials. However, although several EFC processes are technically feasible, cost-effective processes have been difficult to achieve. Only recently have cost-effective EFC technologies begun to emerge.

Ethanol Finally Has Its Day: 15-Fold Growth Ahead for Cellulosic Ethanol
March 6th, 2008
The corn ethanol boom has come and gone.

But if you think the investment opportunities in biofuels have come and gone as well, think again…

You see, while corn-based ethanol turned out to be a bust (among other reasons, because the net energy produced was hardly more than the energy used to produce it), cellulosic ethanol has positive net energy yield. It also emits 80% less carbon dioxide than regular gasoline.

Why do we at Green Chip Stocks think cellulosic ethanol is here to stay?

Well, the same newly passed Energy Bill that requires a certain amount of ethanol to be present in the nation’s gas tanks also mandates the production of cellulosic ethanol, a fuel that can be made from the cellulose of many non-food plants, rather than competing with corn.

Green Chip Stocks Editor Jeff Siegel, featured on CNBC’s Green Week

The Energy Bill requires that 3% of ethanol be derived from cellulosic sources by 2012, and 44% by 2022. By our estimates, we’ll need to produce 405 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2012… and 15.84 billion gallons in 2022.

Testimony before the Tennessee Senate
Committee on Finance, Ways, and Means
February 19, 2008
Kelly J. Tiller, Ph.D. Director of External Operations
Office of Bioenergy Programs
The University of Tennessee
Good morning, Chairman McNally and members of the Committee, and thank you for this opportunity to update you on the progress we are making with the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative.
We came before this body one year ago with a bold proposal: develop a new cellulosic biofuels industry in Tennessee, quite literally, from the ground up. I am pleased to say that eight months into this complex project, we have tremendous progress to report. We have done important research and preparatory work with East Tennessee farmers to roll out the first contracts for switchgrass production as an energy crop. As of last week, we have notified the first group of farmers selected to participate in the Switchgrass Farmer Incentive Program for spring 2008 planting. This initial round of contracts covering 725 acres is the first phase in building a supply chain designed to achieve annual production of 64,000 tons on 8,000 acres by 2012.
We were very fortunate to have procured—in a literal sense—all of the high quality Alamo switchgrass seed available in the US for planting in our Tennessee Initiative this year. Recognizing this opportunity to supply a growing switchgrass seed market, we are working with some of our West Tennessee farmers who have been growing switchgrass in research projects with us for several years now to develop a farmer-based switchgrass seed industry in Tennessee.
In addition to switchgrass seed R&D, we have more than 20 research projects underway in switchgrass breeding, planting, management, harvesting, storage, transportation, and pre-processing and are near completion of a master research agreement with a major farm equipment manufacturer.
We have completed the steps with the State Building Commission to grant the $40.7 million State appropriation for construction of the demonstration biorefinery to the UT Research Foundation. We have an option on a site for the biorefinery in the Niles Ferry Industrial Park in Vonore. We have selected Mascoma Corporation as a strategic technology partner in our biorefinery design and development and are working to solidify additional partnerships that will ensure that we move from this demonstration phase to self-sustaining commercial operations in the state as quickly as possible.
UTRF has organized a Tennessee for-profit entity which will construct and operate the demonstration biorefinery. Our plans call for construction of the facility and commencing operations to coincide with the expansion of the annual switchgrass harvest and ramping up ethanol production capacity in parallel with switchgrass availability.

As you would expect in a project of this magnitude and complexity, we have challenges to face. The last six months have brought about significant shifts in capital markets. The total cost of constructing this research and demonstration facility and operating it for a 3 year demonstration period is projected to exceed $100 million. While cellulosic ethanol in general and our project in particular, is an appealing value proposition, technologies and commercial scale up are not proven today.
This State’s very substantial appropriations help mitigate the risk for our State’s economy and citizens. However, we still have critical, detailed work to do with the executive management, boards, investors, and bankers of third-party strategic partners that we solicit to join us in putting together a research and demonstration package that satisfies our RD&D objectives, meets investment market requirements, achieves the maximum design flexibility we can afford, and provides a clear path to rapid commercialization.
We are committed to good stewardship and maximizing the value of your investment on behalf of the State and University. Recognizing that we have one opportunity to construct a facility that allows us to demonstrate an integrated biomass supply chain, prove that the conversion technology works 24/7, improve the economics of the system, and scale up the process and demonstrate the economic viability at a commercial scale, the Initiative will not commit any part of the State’s $40.7 million construction appropriation or set a construction timeline until we are convinced that we have all of the pieces in place for maximum likelihood of biorefinery success, based on definitive funding commitments, cost effective engineering and design, and technology that has been expertly vetted.
In addition to direct progress in the Initiative over the last year, the strong commitment Tennessee has made has already paid dividends beyond just the UT Biofuels Initiative.

Your commitment has been leveraged to help Oak Ridge National Laboratory secure $135 million from the US Department of Energy last year for one of three new Bioenergy Science Centers. ORNL’s Bioenergy Science Center is up and running, housed in the new state-funded Joint Institute for Biological Sciences (JIBS) building, involving several UT faculty including the JIBS director. This funds important basic science to address technology barriers, particularly the issue of recalcitrance in plant cell walls, which can then be applied and tested in our demonstration scale biorefinery. The commitment has also made us competitive for a potential award from DOE for up to $30 million toward the additional capital construction and operation costs for the project.
Today, we are two years ahead of other states in efforts to put together all of the necessary pieces to move a cellulosic biofuels industry to fruition. Largely thanks to your vision and commitment, we are fortunate to be the envy of other states recognizing the benefits and market potential of this emerging industry, and we are serving as a model for emulation. You have already appropriated last fiscal year more than two-thirds of our total 5-year funding needs for this Initiative. Continued resolve to fully fund this Initiative, including $5.6 million this fiscal year, is important in maintaining our momentum and progress.
As the Governor has eloquently explained, this investment bears some risk, but it is a logical and comprehensive plan with excellent science and strong farm networks behind it that leverages our strengths as a biomass state. We are well on our way to delivering on our growing reputation as the Saudi Arabia of Cellulose. We thank you again for your vision and commitment to the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative.

Much like the human potential biomass as a source of transportation energy is boundless but we must first take the steps to make it such. There are many dedicated organizations putting in the sweat equity required to make this resource a realization in today’s business model. However at what point do we as a society need to jump and calculate the costs at a later date? It is much like the idea of our fore fathers who took the chance to cross the Atlantic to reach a new land with unlimited possibilities with out doing multiple feasibility studies. At some point there needs to be a collective ambition to realize we don’t know the risks of such a venture however with out taking chances we will never know the possibilities of change and will be limited by our established resource, fossil fuel.

Image a business sector that has the ability to transform our everyday existence by replacing our ideas of a limited energy resource but rather take the pioneering spirit that we have an unlimited resource if we only dare to believe in that which we can’t perceive yet! We must create an atmosphere of ingenuity in the energy sector in order to transform the hierarchy of the established business model that has brought us to this day and age.

The question that remains is the risk factor of establishing such a sector who should burden such a risk? Shouldn’t we all take it upon our shoulders to burden this risk? If not, we all stand to lose when market turbulence’s occur and we have no alternative to the status co.

Cellulosic ethanol is a realistic today! We must establish this industry now in order to learn, conserve and adapt.

How can one learn in the laboratory that which must be learnt on a business level? Research and science are aides to business but business is the catalysis which will drive innovation.

The “1 Billion Dry Tons” study has established that there is the potential to displace 30% of our current petroleum usage. Everyday we wait we squander this exhaustible resource. We must take the steps today to replace this energy resource with the energy resource of tomorrow because it will require the energy of today to produce the energy of tomorrow.

Only in the act of doing can we see the processes in action and therefore create the improvements in which we make the process more efficient.