Special Report on Cellulosic Ethanol: in acid hydrolysis, BlueFire and Agresti take 19th century process into the 21st century

In acid hydrolysis, two projects have attracted attention in recent weeks.

BlueFire Ethanol announced a six-month delay in its Lancaster project, but said it is on track for its demonstration-scale Mecca project. The Mecca project received $40 million in DOE funds as one of four demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol supported by large-scale DOE grants. The company confirmed that disruption in the capital markets, as well as time spent overcoming an appeal against the company’s conditional use permit, combined with high materials prices in the 2nd half of the year, contributed to the Lancaster project delay.

Another entrant in the field using acid hydrolysis is Agresti Biofuels, which is developing waste-to-ethanol projects and is actively developing a 20 Mgy waste-to-ethanol plant for Pike County in the eastern Kentucky. The proposed Central Appalachian Ethanol plant will cost $200 million, and will occupy a 40-acre site next to the Pike County landfill. Construction is expected to begin in 2009, after the permitting process is completed.

At the heart of the Agresti process, a closed loop system based on a 2000 foot vertical shaft known as a Gravity Pressure Vessel, that produces no waste stream, 40 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass for less than $1 per gallon without subsidies, and uses a standard 1600 ton/day module that can be built for $200 million and uses waste, without expensive presorting, from a 250,000 population area.

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