Biofuels, True North, Natural Gas, and Primus Green Energy

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Primus Green Energy recently completed a landmark technology demonstration — and heads off to scale with a catalytic technology for making $2.00 gasoline. But, in shifting to natural gas as a feedstock for the first commercial, are they still in the renewable fuels space at all?
Out there in the land of technologies, there are a couple of technologies that have done a remarkable job of figuring out ways to make useful, high-value products from syngas (a soup of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). There are companies like Coskata, LanzaTech and INEOS Bio that have developed techniques for gas fermentation; others like Sundrop Fuels, Fulcrum Bioenergy, Primus Green Energy and Enerkem use inorganic catalysts to form the cooling gases into target molecules like ethanol or methanol, which can themselves be reformed into products like gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.
Now, you can make syngas a couple of ways. One is to heat up biomass. Another is to use a process called steam reformation to make syngas from natural gas.
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In the Big Stall known as “Financing Biofuels at Scale,” a number of the companies that originally set out to use biomass as a feedstock have embraced low-cost natgas as an expedient alternative. Prompting a certain amount of apoplexy amongst the Digesterati and, sometimes, their own investors and supporters.
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First, there’s the policy risk. Right now, the forces of oil — allied with the left wing of the environmental movement for reasons that occasionally passeth understanding — are on Capitol Hill working at top speed to dismantle the entire Renewable Fuel Standard. Having broken enough of it, they think, now to make the argument that it is broken beyond repair.
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Did we mention the technology risk? Very easy to find giant EPC firms with big balance sheets interested in construction advanced biofuels technologies. Much harder to find one who will wrap the project with a broad performance guarantee. What about the risk that enzyme or catalyst prices won’t come down?
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As projects go, Primus has made a remarkable run of late, getting the demo plant operational in quick time and running it successfully. “I’ve never seen anything smoother,” noted Primus VP George Boyajian. “The team we’ve assembled are guys with 30 years experience, no ego, all on the same page, everyone pitches in. What we did in 9 months would take years at a large company, and at 4-5 times the cost. What you need are the guys who specialize in first-of-kind technology — who aren’t as interested in doing the ninth or tenth plant, but thrive in the early stage tech culture. READ MORE and MORE (Manufacturing.net) and MORE (Nautilus) and MORE (Today's Energy Solutions) and MORE (Voice of America) and MORE (Forbes) and MORE (Biofuels Digest 12/6/2013)