Urban Mining: Biofuels and municipal solid waste, in review
Urban waste: It’s nasty, here, inevitable and aggregated.
The feedstocks are available at fixed, affordable prices and in long-term supply contracts from credit-worthy entities. Everyone loves the idea.
So, where are the gallons? The Digest investigates.
We reported earlier this week on a project underway for the Hampton Roads, Virginia area that will, if successful, might generate as much attention for the town as the first battle between ironclad ships, the Monitor and CSS Virginia, has done since it occurred off Hampton Roads in 1862.
The vision? A consortium of companies is putting together a $600 million integrated waste processing and recycling project that will see municipal, used tire, construction, electronic and solid waste processed so there is zero waste in the end. Part of the project will include biofuel production that should be up and running two years after the initial e-waste facility is developed.
The members of the consortia? eCyclingUSA, Jobenomics, Waterway Recycling LLC and ARCON America, with ARCON aiming to take on the biofuels part of the equation. No tipping fees, no landfills, no worries. Now, eCycling is no slouch, operating 65 sites elsewhere around the world, but does not have a project in the US.
They call it “Urban Mining,” which is to say, claiming all that value out of all that waste. The project itself is dubbed the “Hampton Roads Urban Mining Center” and has a goal of setting up e-waste operations within a year, with biofuels operations as soon as 2017.
As far as the timing, we’ll see. The Southeastern Public Service Authority, which generally marshals the waste in that neck of the woods, has a contract with Wheelabrator Technologies through 2018, which takes in 400,000 tons of trash per year and, via incineration, reduces that to steam, then electricity, and ends up with 200,000 tons of ash that heads for the landfill.
What’s not to love about a project like that? Well, as Ed Hamrick cautioned in the Digest: “On the surface it looks easy – get a municipality to pay you to take the MSW, make ethanol from it, and pay someone to put what’s left over into their waste dump. It’s not that simple.”
The realities of using MSW
As Ed Hamrick detailed in the Digest, the promise is there: “More than two billion tons of MSW produced worldwide every year, with more than 250 million tons per year produced in the USA every year. Disposal of MSW is a thousand year old industry and there’s an efficient and well-established system for collecting it, transporting it and disposing of it. There’s a steady supply of MSW year-round. People pay money for disposing it.”
Why not incinerate MSW or use anaerobic digesters?
Hamrick cautions: “There’s one big problem – food waste is wet and is 80% water. The physics of water are unyielding – it’s very expensive to cause water to go from liquid water to water vapor. It costs about $5 per ton of water to heat water to boiling, and another $15 per ton of water to make water go from a liquid to water vapor, so it’s expensive to burn something that’s wet. No sane person would buy MSW to make money from burning it.”
“Toronto, Canada has people put their food waste and other organics in blue bags which get picked up every two weeks, get pulped using BTA pulpers, and processed with anaerobic digestion. But both incineration nor anaerobic digestion run at a loss.
So, what’s a solution?
Harick advises: “A solution needs to be located near existing transfer stations. This minimizes transportation costs and uses existing infrastructure. When the wind blows, the smell can’t annoy the neighbors. It has to be profitable without subsidies, since subsidies go away. It can’t emit any toxins into the environment. It can’t dump dirty water into the sewers.
“The physics of water are at the root of a solution – using hot (but not boiling) water to simultaneously kill microorganisms, pulp food waste and pulp waste paper. Microorganisms die when heated in water at 70 C (158 F) for 30 minutes. Food waste softens at 85 C and above. Paper forms a pulp most efficiently above 60 C (140 F).
“Our solution for separating carbohydrates from MSW? MSW is pulped with process water in a heated drum pulper. The [resulting] pulp contains sugar and starch from food waste and paper fibers from waste paper. A screen with additional process water separates out clean recyclables. A hydropulper removes sand, grit and glass fragments from the pulp. A dewatering device separates paper fibers from the pulp. The remaining pulp is added to the process water. The process water is treated with alpha-amylase enzymes to convert starch to sugar. The overflow of the process water is a sugar and starch solution that reaches an equilibrium concentration. No water is added in this process and commercially available drum pulpers, screens, hydropulpers and dewatering equipment can be used.
What are the trends?
Financing or the lack thereof
Last month, we reported that the proposed Enerkem MSW-to-ethanol plant in Pontotoc remains delayed, five years after the project was still announced. The company says it still has ever intention of developing the project that is based on its 10 million gallon per year facility in Edmonton, Alberta. Several million dollars have been invested in the project so far, with several permits ready to be issued and others awaiting application, but the company is still working to secure financing for the project. The Edmonton facility began commissioning in December but fuel production is not expected to start until this spring.
Projects, projects everywhere
We reported that in Thailand, Phuket’s Provincial Administration Organization is seeking $22.6 million to build a waste-to-biofuel facility that would use the entire island’s MSW as feedstock. Funding for the project will be sought from the national Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
We also heard from Spain that a new company using MSW as feedstock to produce biodiesel and biochar will set up shop in Ribera de Ebro. The company will submit its application for permission by the end of the month, with renovation of an existing building to start in the spring so that biodiesel production can begin by the summer.
Abengoa has been hard at work back in its home country of Spain, too. Lately, Abengoa is looking to launch its MSW-to-ethanol technology at commercial scale by processing the entire city waste produced in Seville. The facility will produce 28 million liters of biofuel per year from half a million metric tons of waste. Construction cost for the plant is expected at around 120 million euros, will have 165 permanent employees and 600 construction workers during the 28 months of the project.
In Iowa, we reported back in December that Iowa City was looking to start negotiations with Fiberight to set up MSW-to-ethanol production. The City held an RFP earlier this year and Fiberight was the only company to respond. The company says it can reduce the amount of waste going into the landfill by 80%.
On a broader, statewide note, the Iowa economic development authority awarded EcoEngineers a grant last October to conduct a waste-to-energy feasibility study for the state, look at technical and economic feasibility of biogas and other processes for producing energy from agricultural, livestock and industrial wastes as well as and MSW. Biogas can produce RINs under the RFS if used as transportation fuel.
Over in Surrey, BC, Canada, in the Vancouver suburbs, Iris Solutions, Plenary Harvest Surrey and Urbaser S.A. have been shortlisted from an original group of 11 companies to invest in, build and operate the city of Surrey’s $60 million residential kitchen and yard waste into renewable fuel project. The fuel is destined to power the city’s garbage collection vehicles.
What’s up with Aviation fuels?
Solena Fuels has been the most active here, though we await their first commercial plant in the UK, with British Airways as a partner. Most recently, Solena has been in discussions with city authorities in Chennai to use the city’s 5,000 tons of MSW per day to produce 120 million liters of aviation biofuel and 45 million liters of diesel per year. The facility would cost $450 million to build with an eight year ROI. Solena’s technology is syngas-based using plasma reactors to treat the feedstock.
Also in the realm of aviation biofuels, Fulcrum BioEnergy has successfully demonstrated the conversion of municipal solid waste (MSW) into jet and diesel fuels. This demonstrated process adds fuel diversity to Fulcrum’s products and complements its previously demonstrated MSW to ethanol process. Fulcrum’s ability to produce drop-in fuels from MSW opens up an 80 billion gallon-per-year fuel market and expands its customer base for its national development program.
What’s the latest with the 10 Waste to Fuels Monsters?
1. INEOS Bio
INEOS Bio announced that its Indian River BioEnergy Center at Vero Beach is now producing cellulosic ethanol at commercial scale — and registered its first RINs from that production earlier this year.
This is the first commercial-scale production in the world using INEOS Bio’s breakthrough gasification and fermentation technology for conversion of biomass waste into bioethanol and renewable power.
The Center cost more than $130 million and created more than 400 direct construction, engineering and manufacturing jobs during its development. The project sourced more than 90% of the equipment from U.S. manufacturers, creating or retaining jobs in more than 10 states. The Center has 65 full- time employees and provides $4 million annually in payroll to the local community.
2. Enerkem
Enerkem completed construction and is in the commissioning phase at its first commercial facility in Edmonton. It will use the City of Edmonton’s non recyclable and non compostable waste to produce 10 million gallons of renewable fuels and chemicals, and will create more than 30 permanent jobs, in addition to 200 jobs during construction. The City of Edmonton and Enerkem Alberta Biofuels have signed a 25-year agreement to convert 100,000 tonnes of the City’s municipal solid waste into biofuels annually. The garbage to be used cannot be recycled or composted.
3. Fulcrum BioEnergy
A year ago, Fulcrum BioEnergy announced that it had successfully secured commitments and was proceeding toward closing $175 million in financing to fund construction of its first municipal solid waste to low-carbon fuels plant, the Sierra BioFuels Plant. The project was expected to be completed in 2015 — but we haven’t seen that closing just yet.
The Company expects these improvements will dramatically reduce its operating cost to produce renewable fuel to less than $0.75 per gallon at Sierra, down from approximately $1.25 per gallon as previously disclosed. The cost of production at future Fulcrum plants is now expected to be less than $0.50 per gallon, down from $0.70 per gallon as previously disclosed.
On capital expenditure for the first commercial plant, “we are still looking at $180 million [as overall project cost],” the company said.
4. Abengoa BioEnergy
Last year, Abengoa inaugurated its demonstration waste-to-biofuels plant, with a capacity to treat 25,000 tons of municipal solid waste from which it will obtain up to 1.5 million liters (400,000 gallons per year) of ethanol.
The demonstration plant, located in Babilafuente (Salamanca, Spain) uses waste-to-biofuels technology developed by Abengoa to produce second-generation biofuels from MSW using a fermentation and enzymatic hydrolysis treatment. During the transformation process, the organic matter is treated in various ways to produce organic fiber that is rich in cellulose and hemicellulose, which is subsequently converted into ethanol.
5. Solena Fuels
Solena’s Integrated Biomass-Gas to Liquid “IBGTL” solution is based on a Fischer-Tropsch platform coupled with Solena’s proprietary high temperature plasma gasification technology to produce sustainable fuels from low carbon-bearing organic waste.
The company has several projects in development in India (highlighted above), and with Lufthansa, Qantas and Turkish Airlines.
The British Airways project. In 2010, British Airways announced its GreenSky London project — and in November 2012 the airline announced its binding offtake and investment commitment to GreenSky London. GreenSky London will transform tonnes of municipal waste – normally sent to landfills – into Bio-SPK, Green FT Diesel and Green FT Naphtha.
6. Fiberight
The company has landed a $25 million USDA loan guarantee, spent $7 million on its Virginia-based pilot, and raised $25 million in equity. Now, the company is aiming at a project in Blairstown, Iowa – especially after the Iowa town found that closure costs associated with its current landfill were higher than expected, prompting the town to redouble efforts to vet various technologies that can reduce the city’s landfilling problems.
7. Earth Energy Renewables
Last week, former Terrabon CTO Cesar Granda told the Digest: “We are in the early stages of a new company, Earth Energy Renewables, which bought out all the Terrabon assets, data and IP from the bankruptcy and kept a few of the key employers in payroll . Our focus is to ramp up with chemicals first producing acids and ketones, before we move on to fuels again, which we are still enthusiastic about. We are in fund raising mode at the moment, but research and progress is continuing at the lab and pilot plant level.”
As of last year, EER had exceeded its goal of producing 70 gallons of renewable gasoline per ton of MSW using its patented acid fermentation technology.
8. Coskata
Yep, you may have heard they have abandoned biomass for natgas. Not exactly. They’ve always been feedstock flexible, and now they have prioritized natural gas owing to the low prices for gas and the attractive funding options.
Accordingly, the company now plans to utilize natural gas as its exclusive feedstock for its first several commercial-scale projects. Now – keep in mind, Coskata was already utilizing natural gas for around one-third of its feedstock needs in its previously planned first commercial project in Alabama. What is notable here is the switch to an all-gas strategy.
9. BioenNW
In 2011, we profiled an innovative $10.4 million bioenergy project which will see five European countries working together to develop bioenergy initiatives that will significantly reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill, has been officially launched in the West Midlands.
BioenNW (Bioenergy North West) is focused on promoting the use of green bioenergy power facilities fuelled by waste materials across five regions of North West Europe: West Midlands (UK), Eindhoven (The Netherlands), Ile-de-France (France), North Reine Westphalia (Germany) and Wallonia (Belgium).
10. Greenwood Fuels
The Greenwood Energy renewable fuel manufacturing facility in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with an annual production capacity of approximately 150,000 tons, has been in operation since 2009 — and forms the basis of the solution that Ed Hamrick detailed above.
“The most cost-effective way to pulp waste paper is using a drum pulper,” Ed Hamrick told the Digest . “A drum pulper is a large rotating drum, usually at least 2.4 m (8 feet) in diameter and at least 20 m (65 feet) long. These are used all over the world to take waste paper.”
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