Gulf Ethanol opens R&D facility in Texas for cellulosic ethanol preprocessor studies

In Texas, Gulf Ethanol opened a new R&D facility in support of its cellulosic ethanol preprocessor design work. The company said that it would test corn and sorghum as feedstocks for its cellulosic process, and the preprocessor R&D would focus on measuring energy inputs required to reduce biomass to a fine powder suitable for an enzymatic process.

Texas background

• Global Alternative Fuels has secured $20 million in financing from the North American Development Bank for its 5 Mgy biodiesel plant in El Paso. The $26.6 million project represents the first renewable energy loan green-lighted by NADBank, which is capitalized by the US and Mexican governments for environmental projects, primarily to date for wastewater treatment and landfill projects. The Global Alternative Fuels plant will eventually expand to 25 Mgy in capacity.

• Researchers at Texas A&M have adapted a process used in West Virginia to turn the state’s lignite reserves into crude oil. The researchers say that the micro-reactors they have developed also can reduce the time needed to produce biodiesel by at least 80 percent, costs a fraction of the outlay required for existing biodiesel plants, and uses machinery that it no larger than a suitcase. The researchers said that they could produce heavy crude oil at $30 per barrel.

• The largest and most spectacular biodiesel complex in the world opened July 4 when Willie’s Place, featuring BioWIllie biodiesel blends, debuted with a private Willie Nelson concert near Waco. The complex opens at Carl’s Corner, a celebrated Texas truck stop, with a series of free concerts all week.

• Researchers at Rice University have uncovered a process to convert glycerine, produced during biodiesel trans-esterification, into valuable feedstocks such as succinate. Succinate is a feedstock for deicers and several non-toxic solvents, and is traditionally produced from crude oil. The researchers say that they have identified a strain of e.coli that produces up to 100 times as much succinate as conventional e.coli. The team had previously uncovered a means to convert glycerine to ethanol at a cost 40 percent below the cost of producing ethanol from corn.

This year, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources is cracking down on glycerine dumping, which is fouling state waterways. Biodiesel producers have been dumping glycerine in recent months due to low prices for the alcohol, which is costly to purify for sale in the commodity markets. A biodiesel producer was indicted in January for dumping glycerine into Belle Fountain Ditch in the state’s Bootheel region, leading to a wipeout of 25,000 fish and a colony of protected fat pocketbook mussels.

Glycol Biotechnologies, a Texas firm founded by Rice University researchers that has developed a technology that converts glycerine into ethanol, will begin producing ethanol at a pilot plant in Houston by mid 2008. The company uses a strain of E. coli for its process.

Glycerine is a 10 percent by-product of biodiesel production, and the boom in biodiesel has resulted in a glycerine glut and depressed the finances of the biodiesel plants who make it. According to one of the company’s co-founders, they have received unsolicited queries from producers representing more than half of biodiesel production.

• GreenHunter Energy has commenced operations at its 105 Mgy biodiesel plant, which the company said was the nation’s largest. The company’s operations on the Houston Ship Channel include terminal operations and generators that will produce all the electricity needed for the project as well as providing power back to the grid. The company said that it will utilize tallow and jatropha among other feedstocks.

• An in-depth article in the Houston Chronicle said that Governor Rick Perry of Texas proceeded with an ethanol waiver request to the EPA after Texas A&M researchers had presented a report concluding that a waiver would not relieve pressure on corn prices. The article added  that Governor Perry wrote to 22 other Republican governors asking them to join him in calling for a waiver, but received no support. The Chronicle said that Bo Pilgrim met with Governor Perry on March 25 for the first time regarding the ethanol waiver, made the $100,000 donation on March 31st, and Governor Perry called for the waiver on April 25th.The original report of the donation was made by the Dallas News.

It was previously reported in Biofuels Digest that a $100,000 donation by Pilgrim’s Pride co-founder Bo Pilgrim to the Republican National Governors Conference, chaired by Governor Rick Perry of Texas, was closely followed by Governor Perry’s request for an ethanol waiver.

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