Cellulosic Ethanol: Scale-Up and Commercialization - Part 2

June 21, 2013

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by David Glass (D Glass Associates) In the final breakout session of the BIO World Congress on June 19, there was a second panel on scale-up and commercialization of cellulosic ethanol. As with the session on the conference’s first day, several common themes emerged from the four presentations on this panel, some of which echoed the trends seen in the first panel.

The first speaker was Vincent Chornet, the President and CEO of Enerkem, a Canadian renewable fuels and chemicals company. Enerkem’s process for producing cellulosic ethanol is a catalytic technology, utilizing a bubbling fluidized bed followed by a gas-to-liquid process. The initial product of this process is methanol, which the company catalytically converts into ethanol, but which it also sells as a separate product. The company uses sorted municipal solid waste (MSW) as its feedstock, taking advantage of the availability of such waste in view of diminishing landfill capability throughout North America and the absence of new waste incinerators coming on line.

Enerkem has operated a demonstration plant in Westbury, Quebec, with a capacity of 1.3 million gallons per year. The company also has a commercial ethanol plant under construction in Edmonton, which will have a capacity of 10 million gallons per year. The Edmonton plant is expected to begin producing methanol by the end of 2013, with production of ethanol commencing in 2014. Notably, this plant will be supported by a 25 year supply agreement with the city of Edmonton, with the city guaranteeing to provide the company with 100,000 metric tons of sorted MSW per year. The company says that its target price for ethanol produced at the Edmonton facility is $1.50 per gallon.

The Edmonton plant is intended to be the first of several waste-to-fuels plants, with others of the same capacity planned for Varennes, Quebec and Pontotoc, Mississippi. The Varennes plant will be operated by a joint venture formed by Enerkem and GreenField Ethanol, Inc., and the Mississippi facility is receiving grant support from the U.S. Department of Energy and a loan guarantee by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Enerkem is pursuing the development of these facilities themselves, although many of their activities are carried out in partnership with joint venture partners such as Waste Management and Valero.

The next speaker on the panel was Bill Brady, the President and CEO of Mascoma. Mascoma has been pursuing a strategy based on consolidated bioprocessing (CBP), which uses genetically modified yeast strains that express the enzymes needed for cellulosic hydrolysis, which takes place at the same time as the main fermentation step, removing the need for a separate hydrolysis step. The company’s business has two main focuses. The more immediate-term commercial endeavor is Mascoma Grain Technology (MGT), which features genetically modified yeast strains in their TransFerm® line, which express an introduced glucoamylase gene and are used to improve the efficiency of the basic corn ethanol process.

The first TransFerm product was introduced in 2012 and has been used by Mascoma’s customers at over 25 corn ethanol plants to produce over 500 million gallons of ethanol.

Mascoma has just introduced the second product in the line, TransFerm Yield Plus, which is used similarly to the first product but which reportedly delivers yield increases of 3-4%. Both TransFerm products are approved as processing aids in the production of animal feed, and are jointly marketed and sold by Mascoma and Lallemand.

Mascoma’s cellulosic ethanol effort is now called ARC for American Regional Cellulosic. This program takes advantage of the CBP strategy, and is intended to be commercialized in three ways: through existing infrastructure (e.g. through the use of proprietary microorganisms in existing cellulosic ethanol facilities); as a bolt-on to facilities such as existing C5 sugar streams, or in completely new infrastructure.

Mascoma is pursuing two of the latter projects on its own and/or with partners; its Frontier Hardwood CBP facility in Kinross, Michigan and a planned facility in Drayton Valley, Alberta, although neither facility is yet fully-financed. These facilities would use hardwoods as feedstock, expected to be readily available at each location.

Mascoma estimates that its CBP technology can add significant value not only to cellulosic ethanol production but also to any production process using a cellulosic feedstock: according to its projected calculations the technology could result in $10 million a year in savings at a 20 million gallon/year facility (e.g. savings of $0.50/gallon).

Raffaella Cristanetti of DuPont Industrial Biosciences was up next. DuPont’s activities in cellulosic ethanol are part of larger biofuel efforts within the company, including its products to support the corn ethanol industry (e.g., through its enzyme business) and the DuPont/BP joint venture Butamax to develop biobutanol.

DuPont’s cellulosic ethanol technology has been utilized since 2009 at its demonstration-scale operating facility in Vonore, Tennessee, and the company is currently building a 30 million gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa that is expected to be operational in 2014. The feedstock for this plant will be corn stover, and DuPont has been running a pilot program with growers in the area to test and promote the growing and harvesting practices it will need to ensure a reliable source of feedstock for commercial operations.

Christanetti explained that DuPont has committed to invest its own funds in this first plant, with the intention that further development of the technology would be conducted through a licensing strategy.

Like some of the companies that presented in the first cellulosic ethanol panel at the World Congress, the licenses would be for an integrated package of technology to allow full implementation of the cellulosic technology.

The final speaker on the panel was Christopher Standlee of Abengoa Bioenergy. Abengoa, a major international ethanol producer, has operated a cellulosic pilot plant in York, Nebraska for several years, and also has run a demonstration plant in Salamanca, Spain, which has been fully operational since September 2009 and which has logged over 6,000 hours of operation.

The company is currently building a commercial-scale facility in Hugoton, Kansas. This facility will have a 25 million gallon/year capacity and is expected to be in full production by the end of 2013 or by early 2014. This facility will require 360,000 dry tons of feedstock per year, which will initially be met solely with corn stover, but longer term the company looks to expand to other feedstocks such as wheat grass and switchgrass. The plant will also feature onsite electricity and steam cogeneration, to make the plant fully-contained from an energy input perspective. Abengoa’s expectations are that the price of ethanol produced at this facility will be about $2.20 per gallon, and to eventually go as low as $2.00 per gallon.

Cellulosic ethanol is not Abengoa’s only second generation biofuel product. The company is investigating the use of MSW as a feedstock, which will be demonstrated at a demo plant in central Spain, and is also investigating the catalytic conversion of ethanol to butanol, which it envisions as a bolt-on addition to its existing corn ethanol plants.

Common Trends

The most common theme that emerged from these presentations was again the emphasis on feedstock. Although several of the presenters were investigating the use of different alternative feedstocks (as was a common theme in Monday’s session), the more pressing concern was the need for adequate supply chain and/or delivery systems, particularly when relying on a single feedstock source.

For those companies looking to use plants or agricultural waste products, the importance of working and coordinating directly with growers was stressed – this arose during the Q&A session when Standlee said that Abengoa, like DuPont, has worked closely with the growers who they have under contract.

Brady indicated that Mascoma plans to take advantage of the existing delivery system and supply chain infrastructure that is already in place for hardwood and forest products.

The interest by several companies in the use of MSW as a feedstock is further evidence of the importance of selecting an available, economical feedstock. In response to questions, each of the companies indicated that their expectations for the cost of feedstock would be in the range of US $50-70 per dry ton.

Overall, these two panels at the World Congress, along with a similar session which took place the previous week at the Fuel Ethanol Workshop in St. Louis, provide strong evidence that commercialization of cellulosic ethanol is finally at hand. READ MORE