There’s a logjam slowing the flow of investment into cellulosic ethanol plants.
But once that logjam is broken, money should flood into projects to create ethanol from wood chips, orange peels and straw, says an American ethanol expert.
“Nobody wants to build the first plant or the second plant or the third plant, because they’re going to lose money,” said Ross Korves of the U.S. ProExporter Network during the Grain World conference.
“But everybody wants to build the fourth plant and the fifth plant and the sixth plant and the seventh plant. Money is lined up to come into cellulosic ethanol.”
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Cellulosic ethanol is made not from expensive materials like grains and oilseeds, but by what is normally considered waste material: wheat straw; wood chips and citrus fruit peels.
No one has discovered how to make ethanol from these common waste materials at a profitable price, but research money is surging into the sector.
Just last week the U.S. Department of Energy chose six companies, including Canada’s Iogen, to share up to $385 million US in funding over four years to develop cellulosic ethanol.
Iogen has proposed building a plant near Idaho Falls, Idaho, that would produce 18 million gallons of ethanol per year.
Korves said there is a lot of political pressure behind the development of cellulosic ethanol from states that aren’t now benefiting from the biofuel boom.
“If you’re a senator from Georgia, you’re not happy that Midwest people got all the money,” said Korves.
“They look at ethanol as a Midwest program, the benefit being to the Midwest.”
But if ethanol production could spread into the forestry sector, ethanol would become even more politically popular.
“They want this in their part of the country,” said Korves, who is from corn-rich Illinois.
Grains and oilseeds are comparatively easy to turn into ethanol and diesel fuel. Humans for thousands of years have fermented grains to produce alcohol, of which ethanol is a form. And the world’s first diesel fuels came from oilseed crops.
But cellulosic ethanol is a more tricky proposition. Cellulose is a tough substance. The ethanol processes proposed for today’s agricultural waste materials typically rely on enzymes to break down the cellulose so that it can be processed, much like the way cattle and other ruminant stomachs operate.
These enzyme applications haven’t been perfected, but a few years of government and university funding should solve the issue.
“The race for cellulosic ethanol has begun,” said Korves.
“Cellulosic ethanol is the next big energy play.”
