In Louisiana, reports surfaced in Alexandria’s TownTalk online paper that Sundrop Fuels has struck an agreement to sell the 1200-acre site where it once planned to build its $450 million, 50 million gallon capacity first commercial plant to produce green gasoline from woody biomass. The company selected the site, the former location of the Cowboy […]
Hydrotreating, catalytic cracking, pyrolysis, metathesis, supercritical, and catalytic reforming. It’s the big new wave heading for biofuels and biobased chemicals at scale. The secret word in the bioeconomy for 2014 starts with a C. Carbon? Chemicals? Cellulosic? Close, but guess again. Yep, it’s cracking. That is, breaking down the biobased feedstock with heat, pressure and […]
Louisiana — it’s as hot as cayenne pepper in biofuels capacity development, but there are cautionary tales hidden in the sauce. When it comes to the first generation of ethanol and biodiesel-based biofuels, Louisiana didn’t figure much into the calculations — to date, there’s just the 5 million gallon (per year) Oswalt Bioenergy biodiesel plant […]
Brent Crude trades this past week at a transorbital $109 per barrel (West Texas Intermediate at a suborbital, if high, $85). It puts the conventional wisdom that biofuels are too infrastructure incompatible and too costly to the test. Are they? Let’s look today at progress in developing infrastructure-compatible, drop-in advanced biofuels that cost less than […]
In Louisiana, Sundrop Fuels Inc. will begin construction early next year on its first commercial plant. The company has begun to hire plant managers and plans to begin training entry-level and other staff positions in late 2013, as construction is expected to be complete in 2014. The $450 million plant will produce synthetic gasoline north […]
Wondering where biofuels are going in a world of low-cost natural gas and titanic battles over renewable fuel standards? We look at the latest on gas-biomass hybrids, and even further down the line at 5 pathways that may emerge as winners. In April, we took a look at falling natural gas prices and the bio-based […]
If the long-term is green, and the present is based on carbon-intense “black” technologies – the near term is going to be shades of olive, and technologies that combine green and black may be the big winners. Today, 5 strategies at the nexus of green and black, exemplars of the Olive Economy A couple of […]
Gasoline – the 20th century’s Wonder Fuel, bashed for years over price, source and emissions – ready for a comeback, courtesy of 5 bio-based revolutionaries? In the rush to replace fossil (e.g. ancient algae) gasoline over emissions, and energy security concerns, most of the focus has fallen on technologies that replace the fuel or the […]
In Louisiana, LSU held a forum regarding the use of waste wood products for biofuels after Sundrop Fuels of Colorado recently announced their plans to build a woody biomass and natural gas biofuels plant in Alexandria. Due to the recent recession, tree farms have seen their land value dip tremendously and view biofuels as a […]
In Louisiana, Colorado-based Sundrop Fuels is buying about 1,200 acres near Alexandria for its first gasification plant to produce 50 million gallons per year of green gasoline from forest waste that is expected to cost between $450 million and $500 million. The company expects to produce 1 billion gallons of its fuel annually by 2020.
