New Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Fires Up in Iowa

After 10 years of R&D, seven years of feedstock procurement, and two hectic years of hyper-construction, the $275 million Project Liberty cellulosic ethanol plant finally started doing its job: liberating sugars. It's D-Day in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

Standing in a vast auditorium, where you could hear the plant's machinery thrumming Stars and Stripes Forever in the background, thousands of employees applauded as Jeff Broin, the CEO of Poet, and co-partner Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM, cut the ribbons binding a ceremonial bale of corn residue. Then the two CEO's took turns speaking about the significance of the moment (watch the complete opening celebration). "When we turned to this venture," said Poet chairman Jeff Broin, "there were naysayers who said 'you'll never get enough biomass' or 'you'll never be cost-competitive.' Some called it fantasy fuel. Today, it's real." To make Broin's fantasy real, much of Poet's R&D was done at a pilot-scale skunk works in Scotland, South Dakota, that produces 20,000 gallons of ethanol a year from cellulosic feedstock. Any knowledge gleaned from the pilot was incorporated into the Emmetsburg design (watch Poet-DSM construction video). "This isn't simply opening a new plant, it's a transformative moment," said Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM, reported FuelFix. "Today we're witnessing the start of the shift of the fossil age to the bio-renewable age."

Built-in benefits

Although Poet already owns 27 traditional corn ethanol pants, including one plant sharing the same site as the new cellulosic refinery, it's a milestone to be able to finally make ethanol from corn waste - primarily corncobs - and take the food-versus-fuel debate off the table in at least one plant. It also comes with a big drop in greenhouse gases. The government figures that lifecycle emissions for cellulosic ethanol are anywhere from 60 to 80 percent lower than gasoline, which is far more than traditional ethanol.

Emissions reductions have been built into the plant design, where the feedstock undergoes pre-treatment to soften the hard biomass, and then hydrolysis and fermentation break the cellulose down into sugars, the remaining lignin is separated and sent to an anaerobic digester to produce biogas that powers both ethanol plants. Biodegradable liquids from the distillers also undergo anaerobic digestion to produce even more biogas.

300,000 tons of stover

According to the Sioux City Journal, the joint project between Poet, the largest ethanol producer in the US, and Royal DSM, which provided the enzymes and yeast, should pump out 25 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year. To feed this voracious demand, Poet has contracts with farmers over a 35-mile radius to deliver 770 tons of biomass daily, paying them $65 to $75 for every dry ton (watch a Poet-DSM video). Since the plant requires 300,000 tons of stover annually, it was a potential logistics nightmare. So before the plant even opened, the company spent three years figuring out how to handle and store the deluge of corn waste. Poet-DSM's drive for cost reductions was so systems-oriented that they worked with equipment manufacturers to improve and speed up baling methods. As a matter of fact, one Minnesota farmer, Eric Woodford, worked for a decade on equipment to make the job rapid enough to significantly cut costs. He patented the device in 2008, called it the powered windguard, and it's now used by many of the program's famers.

At least 70 trucks a day deliver corn waste to feed the plant's continuous fermentation process. Once stacked and stored, bales are moved to the nearby biomass building as they're needed so that machines can remove the twine or wrap, which, rather than being thrown away, is burned in a boiler to make steam for the power and starch plants. Fully shredded, the corn waste is fed into the pretreatment system to break down the sugars inside. Poet-DSM cellulosic ethanol sells for about 60 to 70 cents more than corn ethanol, which is currently around $2.20 a gallon, but the price will drop as yeasts and enzymes improve yields. Poet's Broin also said the plant should hit sales of $250 million in 2020 from its cellulosic ethanol and licensing, assuming support for biofuels from the US government's Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

Diminished expectations

The RFS - considered a necessary fiscal incentive - was updated by Congress in 2007, requiring that percentages of cellulosic biofuels, traditional biofuel, biodiesel, and advanced biofuels be mixed into the fuel supply. An additional goal was to increase the percentage each year to drive the technology improvements. But, instead, the RFS stumbled, when the industry hit a series of technological roadblocks. Mastering cellulosic technology was much more difficult than advertised, revealing a serious disconnect between the rosy scenarios from CEO's and the actual results from engineers struggling with the finicky chemistry. Eventually Washington bureaucrats couldn't ignore reality, and the delusional numbers for 2010 and 2011 were reined in. Finally the mandate dropped to zero for 2012. Even though the EPA had tried to scale the quotas back up to 6 million gallons in 2013, reality limped in at 800,000 gallons. Currently the goal for 2014 is 17 million gallons, and that's because of the new plants like Emmetsburg coming online. The United States' only other cellulosic ethanol plant, which started up in 2013 in Vero Beach, Florida, is producing around 8 million gallons a year through a gasification process that uses municipal waste like lawn and wood products. It's followed up by a microbial biocatalyst. Barring last-minute delays, several other cellulosic ethanol plants should follow. Abengoa Bioenergy will start up its 25-million-gallon plant in Hugoton, Kansas, this year. DuPont is in the middle of building a plant in Nevada, Iowa, that will pump 30 million gallons a year at full capacity.

A strategic investment

Eventually, Poet-DSM intends to adopt its cellulosic technology at its other 26 corn ethanol plants, while also licensing it to other producers around the world. Poet's Broin said that the project could expand to as much as 1 billion gallons from the Poet ethanol fleet alone. Assuming the continued adoption rate of cellulosic ethanol, Poet-DSM says it can achieve sales of about $250 million from ethanol sales and license income by 2020.DSM feels the same way, "This is a strategic investment,"said Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM,"applying our proprietary technology to convert agricultural residue on a commercial scale and allowing it to be replicated at other facilities globally as we are ramping up our cellulosic ethanol licensing business."

Is cellulosic ethanol a short-term bridge fuel to biobutanol?

Images: Poet-DSM