World's First Commercial Straw to Ethanol Plant.

This post is not just about a demonstration wheat straw to ethanol facility to open this year in Babilafuente, Spain.

Combined with the first item on this and updates, which can be found at the end, it contains a comprehensive series of items on cellulose (straw, wood) generated fuel ethanol, and lists the the various companies in America and Europe now involved in cellulose conversion technology for making biofuel.

Companies mentioned or connected here include Abengoa,Iogen, Sunopta, Genencor, Diversa, Syngenta, DuPont, and Novozymes.

Later weblog posts by GMO Pundit provide details on enzyme catalyst related technology from companies like Genencor. Another post provides details on energy efficiencies in biomass conversion to fuel.

GMO Pundit has also posts extensively on biodiesel from oilseeds such as canola and lupins - these posts are accessible via a blogsearch.

Interestingly, the economics of animals feeds and biofuels are intertwined in complex ways. Some meat Producers view the prospects of Biodiesel Boom as better news than Ethanol. On the other hand demand for corn to be used in biethanol will cause the price for corn based animal feed rise. (See later post biofuel sets corn markets on fire).



DJ FOCUS:World''s First Commercial Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
3:26 PM, February 8, 2006

CENTRAL CITY, Neb. (Dow Jones)--According to this story, opening of the world's first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant is slated for this fall in northern Spain, even though costs of producing alcohol fuel via the emerging technology are still estimated to be about 50%-100% higher than that for plants which use grain as a feedstock.

The story announces that Ontario-based SunOpta BioProcess Group (formerly Stake Technology), a division of SunOpta Inc. (STKL), said that plans for start-up of a wheat straw-to-ethanol plant near Salamanca, Spain, are proceeding on schedule.

This represents the first commercial cellulosic ethanol production plant on the planet, and is being supplied to Abener Energia S.A. of Seville, Spain, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Abengoa S.A. (ABG.MC). Abengoa is the largest ethanol producer in Europe, the second largest in the world, and operator of a research and development division in St. Louis.

The Spanish facility, which is scheduled to be operational in the fall of 2006, is located adjacent to a cereal grain-to-ethanol plant operated by Abengoa, which is currently coming on-line. Manufacturing of major equipment for the cellulosic module is currently being completed and will be shipped to site in coming weeks.
...
Small research facilities focused on cellulosic ethanol have intermittently been in operation or are in development in several U.S. states -- such as Louisiana, California, Idaho and Nebraska. The only other factory on earth that currently generates energy from the breakdown of plant fibers, rather than sugar, or sugar derived from grain starches, is a demonstration facility
operated by the Iogen Corporation in Ottawa, Canada, according to this story.

Industry experts estimate that the Iogen facility produces about 200,000 gallons of ethanol from straw annually, as opposed to the 54 million gallon capacity planned for the forthcoming Spanish plant.
...
Cellulosic ethanol production involves a highly technical three-step chemical process which begins by extracting the cellulose from biomass -- such as corn stalks, rice straw, wheat straw, switchgrass, corn fiber, soy fiber and the like -- which is basically glued together with a tough compound known as lignin.

To produce ethanol, the cellulose must first be "unglued" using a pre-treatment process, such as dilute acid hydrolysis, autohydrolysis, or ammonia fiber explosion. The cellulose is then converted to sugar using special enzymes costing 500% to 1,000% more than those commonly needed to process starch. The resultant sugar is then fermented into cellulosic ethanol utilizing
a genetically modified form of yeast.

Estimates concerning the cost of producing ethanol via this process vary widely.

"Most viewers see present cost of cellulose ethanol as around $3.50 per gallon - double cost from carbohydrate," said Harrison Cooper president of the Bountiful Applied Research Corporation in Bountiful, Utah. "There has been mention (that) cellulose enzyme/fermentation costs might be (reduced) to as low as $1.30, but this is based on hopeful conjecture."

Murray Burke, vice president and general manager of SunOpta's BioProcess Group, disagrees with those figures, estimating that modern grain alcohol plants being built today may have a breakeven as low as 90-95 cents per gallon, compared to a cost-of-production which likely ranges from $1.40-$1.60 per gallon for a commercial-scale cellulosic facility, such as the Spanish plant.
...
"Every single country in Europe is looking into this," said Burke. "Energy security, greenhouse gas emissions and an eventual limit on corn and grain-based ethanol supply are all contributing to the push for cellulosic ethanol. We are seeing unprecedented interest in our (cellulose) pretreatment technology in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia."

Although no economically viable method has yet been found to directly integrate the usage of corn residue, or stover, into the U.S. ethanol-making process, Cooper points out, "a study is under planning in Nebraska on making paper mill fiber from chemically pulped stover - a process known to be practical - with the waste biomass from pulping used as power plant fuel for both ethanol and pulping operations."

Cooper says if documented as a profitable enterprise, this approach should become attractive to corn-based grain ethanol producers as means of utilizing corn stalks -- which currently have little value, apart from low-quality livestock forage -- as an independently marketable product, providing a cheap fuel comparable to bagasse in Brazil.

Original Report By Gary Wulf; Dow Jones Newswires

See earlier post on Novozymes-Abengoa ventures
Iogen Corporation
Details about Iogen pretreatment process

Disruptive economic transitions created by technological innovation (and especially biofuel and biotechnology) are discussed extensively in another GMO Pundit post.

Excerpt follows:

Impacts of fuel ethanol on sugar markets:
From What's Happening to Agriculture, IPA Review, December 2005

World markets for sugar and starch commodities are now virtually certain to see a fundamentally different—and much cheaper—form of sugar enter markets in 2006. This impending technological disruption consists of cheap sugar from polymer cellulose and it merits close analysis by Australian rural industries.
Cellulosic polymer materials (also called biomass) are the principal carbohydrate component of straw and wood, and are abundantly available —for example, as wheat straw, corn stover, sugar cane bagasse, wood chips, paper pulp—at low cost. A recently demonstrated commercial capability for cheap conversion of cellulosic materials into sugars essentially
doubles the world supply of sugar from cereal crops and also enables woodchips and pasture grasses to be converted into more valuable sugar feed-stock streams. Thus, an economically disruptive technological transition is now occurring which, in the medium-term, is highly relevant to world sugar, starch and ethanol commodity markets, and one that can be used almost immediately to reduce ethanol biofuel costs.
For some 30 years or so now, it has been technically feasible but economically prohibitive to convert cellulose into sugar commodities. Thanks to astounding progress over the last three decades in molecular genetics and microbial biotechnology, this cost barrier has been broken.
The breakpoint in commercially feasible conversion of cellulosic materials into sugars was signalled by the April 2005 announcements made by a consortium which includes the Danish biotechnology company Novozymes, the US biotechnology company Genenecor, and the US National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL).
These announcements heralded a 30-fold reduction in enzyme catalyst cost in a biomass-to-ethanol project.
‘The project goal has been achieved: the cost of enzymes for biomass-based fuel ethanol production has been reduced
to USD 0.10-0.18 per gallon in laboratory trials, a 30-fold reduction since 2001. Enzymes are no longer the main economic barrier in the commercialisation of biomass [cellulose to ethanol conversion] technology’, said an April 2005 Danish stock exchange announcement.
The Spanish energy company Abengoa has subsequently announced that a 70-tonne-a-day ethanol fuel demonstration plant will be commissioned late in 2006 at the BcyL Cereal ethanol factory at Babilafuente, Spain, which will use the technology to convert wheat straw into fuel ethanol.
Steam explosion technology is an important straw pre-treatment stage in this process.
There is potential for further catalyst cost reductions in the process which could bring the cost down to the US$0.02 per gallon level or even lower. NREL has indicated that such progress is achievable by the continued application of well-tested biotechnology research strategies. Novozymes and Genencor are very well placed to exploit their long-acknowledged leadership in this area by extensive improvement of this technology.
(Genenor is actually an extremely successful industrial offshoot of the first ever genetic engineering company, Genetech.)
Innovation in biomass conversion is being applied in Brazil to achieve further improvements to efficiency in the production of Brazilian ethanol biofuel by the Dedini Rapid Hydrolysis process. In 1975, the average yield of Brazilian ethanol was only 2,000 litres per hectare of cane crop; by 1998, technological innovation had pushed this to 5,500 litres per hectare. With the new biomass conversion technologies, the sector now has the potential to achieve yields of 10,000 litres per hectare or better. The improved methods can also be used to increase ethanol output from mashed corn, as can be done in the US biofuel industry.
Already, Brazilian fuel ethanol has become a substantial part of international trade, and currently competes commercially on US fuel markets, even with the penalty of a 51 per cent US excise tax. This dominant global trade position in ethanol liquid-fuel capitalises on 30 years of previous technological improvement, including earlier introduction of higher yielding
cane varieties and numerous integrated changes to ethanol factories. The recent wave of ethanol fuel ventures in Australia cannot afford to ignore the reality of markets dominated by very cheap Brazilian ethanol and the prospects of even lower priced Brazilian and US ethanol in the near future.
Cereal straw and sugar cane bagasse are not the only cellulosic starting materials which can be converted to sugar using enzyme catalysts: wood and many other non-food crops can also be used, and forest industries in Canada and Scandinavia have particular interests in this area.

The growth generated by market demand for this now price-competitive technology is likely to be augmented further in those countries that place a premium on its high potential for reduction of net atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. All
biomass-based fuel ethanol starts out, of course, as carbon dioxide sequestered from the atmosphere. Fuels from petroleum and natural gas do not have this environmentally beneficial first step built in, because their carbon has not seen the atmosphere for millions of years. In this way, biofuel is neutral with respect to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a crucial distinction between it and fossil fuels.

See also:
Energy effciency of biomass ethanol
Australian advance in conversion of cane cellulose to bioethanol
Details of cellulose catalyst research by Genencor

Updates: NYT Notices Iogen, BIO Industry organisation briefs

Ethanol's promise
May 1, 2006
New York Times Via Agnet

Until recently, the only ethanol anyone had heard about was, according to this editorial, corn-based ethanol, a regional curiosity that accounts for about 3 percent of the nation's fuel and suffers from its association with the agribusiness lobby and with presidential candidates hustling support in the Iowa primaries. What the experts are talking about now, however, is cellulosic ethanol, derived from a range of crops, native grasses like switchgrass and even the waste components of farming and forestry -- in short, anything rich in cellulose. A Canadian company called Iogen, a leader in the field, makes its ethanol from wheat straw.
Like corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol can be used in automobiles, so it is appealing as an answer to oil dependency. And both forms of ethanol are inherently superior to gasoline in terms of reducing global warming emissions, since the carbon dioxide they absorb while growing helps offset the carbon dioxide they produce when burned in a car's engine. Cellulosic ethanol is in fact much more useful than corn ethanol on this score, because it requires far less energy to produce and thus emits fewer greenhouse gases.
The editorial says that daunting problems remain before cellulosic ethanol is available on a broad scale. The technology must be improved, farmers persuaded to cultivate cellulose-rich crops, commercial plants built. Getting all this up and running will require both private and public capital and sustained leadership. Iogen estimates that its first commercial plant, which it wants to build in Idaho, will cost $300 million. Mr. Bush has asked for only $150 million for research, development and production combined.
Ethanol will not by itself end our oil dependency or global warming. We also need far more efficient cars and more efficient transportation systems as part of a larger smart-growth strategy. But given enough financial support and political will, it could be a huge first step toward ending America's oil addiction.

BIO US Biotech Industry organisation noted Iogen's activities:

In April 2004, industrial biotechnology achieved a major milestone when Iogen Corp. made the first commercial shipment of bioethanol. Unlike conventional ethanol made from grain, bioethanol is made from cellulosic biomass, such as wheat straw, sugar-cane bagasse, and corn stovers and stalks left over after harvest. Iogen’s breakthrough uses recombinant DNA–produced enzymes to break apart wheat-straw cellulose to produce sugars that can be made into ethanol. Several other BIO member companies are developing similar technologies.



And Notes Other Enzyme Breakthroughs
Diversa Corporation has partnered with a consortium that includes DuPont, Deere & Co., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Michigan State University to develop a biorefinery that can produce ethanol and other products from the entire corn plant, integrating traditional grain-based ethanol production with cellulosic ethanol production from stalks and husks.
In 2005, Diversa successfully developed a suite of enzymes that has enabled the consortium to begin developing a demonstration facility for this “Integrated Corn-Based Biorefinery” concept. DuPont will also utilize the enzymes to produce a biobased plastic, “bio-PDO” at a facility in Loudon, Tennessee.
Dyadic International has developed an integrated technology platform (C1) which will enable researchers to identify, select and analyze novel enzymes best suited to convert biomass materials into biofuels. Dyadic has also developed enzymes for the textiles, pulp and paper, food and feed, and chemicals industries that greatly reduce waste while offering new and
enhanced products to a variety of markets.

The First Commercial Production
In 2004, Iogen Corporation became the first company to begin commercial production of cellulosic ethanol. Using biotech enzymes that convert wheat straw to clean burning ethanol, Iogen’s pilot plant in Ottawa, Canada, has an annual capacity of 260,000 gallons. Ethanol from the plant is sold at a nearby Shell gas station. In January 2006, Iogen and Shell announced plans to explore cellulosic ethanol production in Germany, and Iogen is seeking government assistance to construct the first commercial-scale cellulosic biorefinery in the US.

More Biorefineries
In August, 2005, Abengoa Bioenergy began construction of the world’s first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant. Upon completion in 2006, the plant is expected to process 70 tonnes of agricultural residues, such as wheat straw, each day, producing over 1 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually. Advances in cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation were key to enabling Abengoa to take their technology to market.
Abengoa has also received a $10 million DOE grant to develop a nextgeneration dry mill corn ethanol plant. This next-generation plant will be capable of producing ethanol from the entire corn kernel – both starch (the only portion currently utilized for ethanol) and the residual fiber (also known as dry distillers grains, or DDGs), which would require processing with
cellulase enzymes. The application of cellulosic technology could dramatically increase the ethanol yield of the nation’s over 100 existing ethanol facilities.
In 2005, Cargill announced plans for two 110-million-gallon bioethanol plants that use traditional feedstocks, in Nebraska and Minnesota, and began construction of a biodiesel plant in Mainz, Germany. Cargill is exploring incorporating cellulosic feedstocks into its existing refineries.

Enzyme, Bioethanol and Biobased Products Companies

Abengoa Bioenergy Corporation -- www.abengoa.com
BC International Corporation -- www.bcintlcorp.com
Codexis, Inc -- www.codexis.com
Diversa Corporation -- www.diversa.com
Dyadic International, Inc -- www.dyadic-group.com
Genencor International -- www.genencor.com
Iogen Corporation -- www.iogen.ca
NatureWorks, LLC -- www.natureworksllc.com
Tate & Lyle -- www.tate-lyle.co.uk

Codexis see:

Chevron funds UC-Davis biofuel research
Los Angeles Business from bizjournals - September 19, 2006

This item announces that Chevron Corp. will fund up to $25 million in research over the next five years at UC-Davis to develop renewable fuels from plant waste.

Chevron Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of San Ramon-based Chevron (NYSE: CVX), will support a broad range of projects focusing on converting renewable feedstocks available in California into transportation fuel.

"This will fit into a niche of energy research on biofuels and bioenergy that will enable us to enhance our programs," said Barry Klein, vice chancellor for research at UC-Davis. "We hope to make an impact on generating new sources of biofuels."

The research will focus on California's agricultural industry as a key source for the raw material to generate energy. Leftover rice straw, wheat straw, orchard tree prunings, nutshells, even grape skins - any carbon-based material that can be fermented - is a potential source of fuel. Parts of crops that are typically thrown away can be recycled, so to speak, into energy, Klein said.


September 2007 Update

Commercial cellulose ethanol moves by Abengoa in Kansas, Hydrolysis assets in Brazil