Waste Lines: The Hottest Trends with Bio’s Coolest Feedstock

May 29, 2012

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... Regardless of its naming deficiencies, waste has been hot and getting hotter as a bioenergy feedstock because it solves three of the most pressing problems blocking capacity expansion.

1. The feedstocks are available at fixed, affordable prices – sometimes free, sometimes even transitionally available with a negative-cost tipping fee. And available in fixed, long-term supply contracts.

2. The odious sources are generally already aggregated, for health or noxiousness reasons.

3. They are less subject to considerations such as indirect land-use change that have plagued energy crops, and evoke few protects, if any, from environmental extremists.

Another reason to love waste is that residues can be used over and over again – once you have the idea that waste from one process can be the feedstock for another, there’s no limit but ingenuity from the process being repeated over and over again, making many uses out of the one original aggregation of organic molecules that set the chain in motion.

...Projects like Fulcrum, Enerkem, POET and Abengoa have been the ones getting out of the door in terms of finalizing designs and getting financed. The reasons? Primarily, assurance of affordable, aggregated biomass over the long term – reducing the risk of a first commercial project to the technology itself (generally addressed through loan guarantees), and fuel market volatility which is generally addressed through mandates.

What’s up in the market place? Today, we’ll look at the 6 types of waste and some of the most notable recent projects.

Agricultural ...