A Regina company thinks it has solved the ethanol net energy debate.
HTC Purenergy is close to commercializing a technology that makes hydrogen from biofuel, providing a self-sufficient source of energy for the production of ethanol and biodiesel.
“If you can make your own energy, that’s the ideal thing,” said HTC senior vice-president Jeff Allison.
For years a debate has raged over whether biofuel is a net producer or net user of energy.
Scientists such as Cornell’s David Pimentel and the University of California, Berkeley’s Tad Patzek argue the energy output from ethanol is less than the fossil-fuel energy used to cultivate and process the crops.
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However, according to a 2006 review of more recent studies of modern ethanol plants conducted by other scientists at Berkeley, there is a net energy benefit in producing the alternative fuel.
Allison said he is convinced ethanol producers would provide a net energy benefit if they used HTC’s technology because it eliminates the need for using a nonrenewable fossil fuel at the ethanol plant.
The company’s process involves combining crude ethanol with HTC’s proprietary carbon dioxide-reforming catalyst to create hydrogen, mopping up about half of the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Allison said HTC knows the technology works because it has experimented with it in the lab for three years. The next step is to test the process in a demonstration plant to prove that it is more economical to use more wheat rather than natural gas to produce ethanol.
The company is in the final stages of raising the financing to build what it expects to be a $3 million plant housed at the University of Regina’s International Test Centre for CO2 Capture. It hopes the Saskatchewan government will provide the remaining money it needs to build the plant.
HTC is working with Saskatchewan biofuel companies Pound-Maker Agventures Ltd. and Milligan Biotech, which will allow HTC to test the technology at their facilities once it is perfected.
Allison said it could be an economic boon for biofuel companies, which would be able to add the HTC module onto their existing plants and control their input costs instead of relying on rising natural gas prices.
“It reduces the overall cost of producing bioproducts because you’re eliminating your requirements from outside heat sources like natural gas,” he said.
Biodiesel producers could be the biggest beneficiaries of the technology. HTC’s catalysts can convert glycerol, a largely worthless byproduct of the biodiesel manufacturing process, into a useable energy source for the plant.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, working with hydrogen would be no more dangerous than working with natural gas. The fuel has a bad reputation largely due to the Hindenburg disaster, in which a German zeppelin filled with hydrogen exploded in 1937, killing 36 people.
“If a balloon was filled with natural gas and you put a spark to it, it would blow up just the same as hydrogen would,” Allison said.
HTC has given itself a two-year deadline to commercialize its technology.
