Out of the Garbage Can and Into the Fire

- by Mike Ewall

So-called “waste-to-ener­gy” (WTE) is usu­al­ly a euphemism for trash incin­er­a­tion, dis­pos­ing of waste while mak­ing mod­est amounts of elec­tric­i­ty and some­times steam for heat­ing pur­pos­es. Now, waste-to-fuels (WTF?) — turn­ing waste into liq­uid fuels for trans­porta­tion — is start­ing to emerge as a sub­set of WTE.

Not­ing their acronym prob­lem, the indus­try has redubbed itself from “W2F” to “waste con­ver­sion.” These waste con­ver­sion facil­i­ties would turn such things as trash, sewage sludge, tires, plas­tics, organ­ic wastes, or agri­cul­tur­al wastes into liq­uid fuels such as ethanol, diesel fuel or oth­er fuels and chemicals.

Fif­teen years ago, sev­er­al com­pa­nies tried to get into the trash-to-ethanol busi­ness, but couldn’t get off the ground. One com­pa­ny pres­i­dent told us that every­one want­ed to be the first to invest in the sec­ond facil­i­ty. It didn’t help that the lead­ing com­pa­ny in the field, Pen­cor-Masa­da Oxynol, got as far as get­ting per­mits for a facil­i­ty in Mid­dle­town, NY to turn trash and sewage sludge into ethanol, then finan­cial­ly collapsed.

In the past few years a resur­gence of pro­pos­als, spurred by gov­ern­ment incen­tives, is start­ing to gain ground. The indus­try is hold­ing annu­al “waste con­ver­sion” con­fer­ences, and the chem­i­cal indus­try trade asso­ci­a­tion giant, the Amer­i­can Chem­istry Coun­cil, is push­ing any sort of “plas­tics-to-ener­gy” tech­nolo­gies that it can, even dar­ing to call it “renew­able.”

The Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste to Bio­fu­els and Bio-Prod­ucts Sum­mit held on Octo­ber 6–7, 2014 and Feb­ru­ary 20–21, 2013 in Orlan­do, Flori­da, is tout­ed by its host, Advanced Bio­fu­els USA, as a place to “receive lead­ing waste and bio­fu­els mar­ket intel­li­gence and analy­sis from the very best in the business.”

The annu­al con­fer­ence is an infor­ma­tion­al and net­work­ing smor­gas­bord geared towards help­ing indus­try play­ers “pen­e­trate the high ener­gy val­ue of the munic­i­pal sol­id waste stream.” The con­fer­ence is attend­ed by bio­fu­els and chem­i­cals pro­duc­ers, devel­op­ers, and stake­hold­ers, investors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and multi­na­tion­al con­sumer prod­uct companies.

If you ever want­ed to know what was going on behind the scenes in the emerg­ing waste-to-fuels indus­try, your wish has been granted.

Dri­ving that Train

Bio­fu­els are pro­ject­ed to increase 127% over the next decade, accord­ing to pro­jec­tions from Mike Hart, CEO of Sier­ra Ener­gy Corp. The U.S. con­sumed rough­ly 212 bil­lion gal­lons of liq­uid fuels in 2011 and 1 bil­lion tons of waste mate­ri­als would amount to about 65 bil­lion gal­lons, one-third of the total demand, accord­ing to Bri­an Duff, Chief Engi­neer of the Bioen­er­gy Tech­nolo­gies Office, U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE).

Mack­in­non Lawrence, research ana­lyst with Pike Research, pre­dicts 47 bil­lion gal­lons of waste-to-fuels per year by 2022, which would make up 50% of the U.S. government’s bio­fu­els man­date. The glob­al mar­ket for waste-to-ener­gy tech­nolo­gies could reach $29.2 bil­lion by 2022.

If this seems like pie-in-the-sky opti­mism intend­ed to con­vince investors to pony up the big bucks for this dubi­ous tech­nol­o­gy, you may be right. But nev­er under­es­ti­mate the pow­er of tax­pay­er-fund­ed gov­ern­ment handouts.

The Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act of 2007 expand­ed the Renew­able Fuel Stan­dard (RFS) that requires blend­ing ethanol into con­ven­tion­al gaso­line stocks.  The require­ment was expand­ed from 9 bil­lion gal­lons in 2008 to 36 bil­lion gal­lons by 2022, with most of that increase being from advanced bio­fu­els, such as cel­lu­losic ethanol and waste-based fuels.

EPA pro­pos­als for RFS 2014 involved 15.21 bil­lion gal­lons of renew­able fuels (ethanol and non-ethanol), 2.2 bil­lion gal­lons of advanced bio­fu­els (munic­i­pal sol­id waste, i.e. trash), 1.28 bil­lion gal­lons of bio­mass-based diesel, and 17 mil­lion gal­lons of cel­lu­losic ethanol (plants and trees).

A short, but by no means com­plete, list of tax­pay­er mon­ey fund­ing bio­fu­els, includ­ing trash to fuels, involve grants and loan guar­an­tees from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy, includ­ing the Inte­grat­ed Biore­finer­ies Grant Pro­gram, and USDA’s Rur­al Ener­gy for Amer­i­ca Pro­gram.

Mean­while, the U.S government’s 1603 pro­gram pro­vides devel­op­ers of “renew­able” ener­gy, includ­ing bio­fu­els, “cash pay­ments in lieu of invest­ment tax cred­its.” The alter­na­tive fuel mix­ture cred­it is the “prod­uct of 50 cents and the num­ber of gal­lons of alter­na­tive fuel…in pro­duc­ing any alter­na­tive fuel mix­ture for sale or use in a trade or business.”

War is anoth­er dri­ver of bio­fu­els, more specif­i­cal­ly the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD), which uses 300,000 bar­rels of oil per day (5 bil­lion gal­lons per year), 80% of what’s con­sumed by the entire U.S. gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to Duff from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. DOD spent $13.4 bil­lion on ener­gy in 2009, with 56% of the agency’s ener­gy con­sump­tion in con­sist­ing of avi­a­tion fuel.

The Air Force is shoot­ing to fuel half its air­craft with 50% alter­na­tive fuels by 2016, while the Navy wants to cut its petro­le­um use in half by then.

When it comes to indus­try and con­sumer use, cars, trucks, ships and trains con­sumed 212 bil­lion gal­lons in 2011, with gas at 131 bil­lion gal­lons, diesel at 3.849 mil­lion gallons.

22 bil­lion gal­lons of jet fuel was burned in 2011. Com­mer­cial air­planes must now be able to reduce green­house gas emis­sions to fly into the Euro­pean Union or be forced to pur­chase allowances, accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Energy.

All of the above ensure a future for trash to fuels.

How it Works

Things aren’t as far along as the munic­i­pal sol­id waste (trash) to bio­fu­els indus­try had hoped they’d be by now. How­ev­er, there are sev­er­al patent­ed process­es for pro­duc­ing fuel in exis­tence with plans for more, lab scale demon­stra­tion units and pilot plants under devel­op­ment, and a few oper­a­tional pilot plants.

How­ev­er, none have “scaled up the tech­nol­o­gy to a size that allows for a pro­cess­ing of MSW equi­table to that of a small land­fill (75 tons MSW/day) or larg­er,” accord­ing to Doug Maine and Paul War­ley of Deloitte Finan­cial Advi­so­ry Services.

Here’s a break­down of some of the cel­lu­losic ethanol tech­nolo­gies used to turn plas­tics and organ­ic mate­ri­als into fuels:

·      Bio­log­i­cal approach (cel­lu­lol­y­sis):

o   Acid hydrol­y­sis – a con­cen­trat­ed acid is used to break down organ­ic mat­ter before fer­ment­ing it into ethanol

o   Enzy­mat­ic hydrol­y­sis – enzymes, microbes or fun­gi are used to break down organ­ic mat­ter before fer­men­ta­tion. Genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered enzymes are increas­ing­ly sought for this task.

·      Ther­mo­chem­i­cal approach (gasification/pyrolysis):

o   High tem­per­a­tures and pres­sure are used to turn the mate­ri­als into a gas called “syn­gas” and a sol­id slag residue akin to incin­er­a­tor ash. Usu­al­ly this is fol­lowed by burn­ing the gas, in which case, the facil­i­ty would be con­sid­ered to be an incin­er­a­tor. How­ev­er, for mak­ing liq­uid fuels, this “syn­gas” is then con­vert­ed into liq­uid fuels, either through a fer­men­ta­tion process or a gas-to-liq­uids process known as Fischer-Tropsch.

Ther­mos­e­lect is one of many com­pa­nies pur­su­ing waste-to-fuels. They’ve been quite con­tro­ver­sial, hav­ing been fought off in Cal­i­for­nia and hav­ing one of their trash gasi­fi­ca­tion incin­er­a­tors shut down for finan­cial and tech­ni­cal rea­sons in Ger­many. Their tech­nol­o­gy involves an indus­tri­al chem­i­cal process using high tem­per­a­ture gasi­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy. The EPA defines gasi­fi­ca­tion as the con­ver­sion of “car­bon-con­tain­ing materials…into car­bon monox­ide and hydro­gen gas.” This gas can then be “con­vert­ed into usable prod­ucts such as hydro­gen, steam, elec­tric­i­ty, ammo­nia, and oth­er chemicals.”

Ther­mos­e­lect also uses pyrol­y­sis, a process that takes haz­ardous organ­ic mate­ri­als and con­verts them into “gaseous com­po­nents, small quan­ti­ties of liq­uid, and a sol­id residue (coke) con­tain­ing fixed car­bon and ash,” accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Reme­di­a­tion Tech­nolo­gies Roundtable.

Ther­mos­e­lect com­bines waste com­paction using auto­mo­bile press­es, pyrol­y­sis, gasi­fi­ca­tion, and a water and gas clean­ing sys­tem typ­i­cal­ly used in chem­i­cal plants, with the gaseous end prod­uct used to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty or to man­u­fac­ture fuels, accord­ing to James J. Binder, of Frank Campbell.

Gasi­fi­ca­tion “expands feed­stock pos­si­bil­i­ties” to include munic­i­pal sol­id waste, med­ical waste, auto­mo­tive shred­der residues, and haz­ardous waste, accord­ing to Sier­ra Ener­gy Corp’s Mike Hart.

Waste to syn­gas tech­nolo­gies can make use of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered E. coli bac­te­ria, accord­ing to Damien Per­ri­man of Geno­mat­i­ca Sus­tain­able Chemicals.

The merg­er between Butyl­fu­el and Green Bio­log­ics in 2001 result­ed in pro­duc­tion of n‑butanol by fer­men­ta­tion, which is a direct drop in for petro­le­um based butanol, said Joel Stone of Green Biologics.

Oth­er process­es include Elec­trochaea, which involves nat­ur­al gas and a reverse com­bus­tion engine based on bio­log­i­cal cat­a­lyst and CO2, accord­ing to Duke Lea­hey of Nidus Part­ners. There is a cur­rent­ly a 2‑megawatt demon­stra­tion project in oper­a­tion in Denmark.

Ther­maquat­i­ca is a tech­nol­o­gy that pro­duces chem­i­cal feed­stocks and liq­uid fuels from non-oil raw mate­ri­als, which is thought to be low­er cost than oth­er methods.

Khosla Ven­tures has a gas fer­men­ta­tion tech­nol­o­gy that “cap­tures CO-rich gas­es and con­verts the car­bon to fuels and chem­i­cals,” said Jared Gon­sky, LanzaTech.

Most major air­lines have signed onto Sole­na Fuels’ plat­form to pur­chase “sus­tain­able,” fuels to be used as a drop-in sub­sti­tute for oil man­u­fac­tured using the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process, which involves the “con­ver­sion of syn­the­sis gas, a mix­ture of hydro­gen and car­bon monox­ide, into a mix­ture of high-val­ue hydro­car­bons and their derivatives…and some by-prod­ucts such as water and CO2,” accord­ing to the 2010 study Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis.

Sole­na is con­vert­ing bio­mass using gasi­fi­ca­tion fol­lowed by Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch gas-to-liq­uids technology.

Ther­mal depoly­mer­iza­tion is yet anoth­er process that seeks to turn “any­thing into oil” in a pyrol­y­sis process that has been used by (now-bank­rupt) Chang­ing World Tech­nolo­gies. They had a com­mer­cial plant pro­cess­ing turkey guts in Carthage, Mis­souri, which was shut down for odor prob­lems at one point. They’ve also test­ed a wide range of wastes and fuels in a pilot plant in Philadelphia.

Fuel ‘Er Up

The world’s munic­i­pal sol­id waste (MSW) feed­stock is large enough to dis­place oil, crowed Jim Macias Ful­crum Bioen­er­gy. Yet this is eas­i­er said than done, with fuel prepa­ra­tion being one of the main chal­lenges, vary­ing as it does from loca­tion to loca­tion, region to region and some­times sea­son­al­ly, accord­ing to Jeff Wolfe of VecoPlan.

MSW tends to be gen­er­at­ed in much high­er quan­ti­ties in the rich­er parts of the world. The U.S. is in first place at 685,000 tons per day, with Chi­na in sec­ond place at 521,000 tons. One ton of trash is poten­tial­ly forty-two gal­lons of fuel, said Sier­ra Ener­gy Corp’s Mike Hart.

Advanced fuel feed­stocks range from MSW to veg­etable oils, for­est and agri­cul­tur­al byprod­ucts, fats, oils and algae-based oils, accord­ing to Doug Main and Paul War­ley of Deloitte Finan­cial Advi­so­ry Services.

Mois­ture con­tent is always a con­cern, and stor­age and the way waste is picked up and han­dled can make a “notice­able dif­fer­ence” in mois­ture per­cent­age, which is par­tial­ly based on whether or not organ­ics remain in the waste, said Wolfe.

Addi­tion­al­ly, MSW often has haz­ardous mate­ri­als, includ­ing bat­ter­ies, mer­cury ther­mome­ters, and lead paint, accord­ing to Jim Macias of Ful­crum Bioenergy.

Sug­ars are key to “supe­ri­or per­for­mance,” accord­ing to Joel Stone of Green Bio­log­ics, which include molasses, corn stover, hard­wood pulp, and sug­ar cane.

Diver­sion, which includes recy­cling, com­post­ing, and con­ver­sion is up 400% since 1985, while land­fill vol­umes are down 2%, said Roy John­ston, Waste Man­age­ment, Inc. Land­fill vol­ume declined 4% between 2005–2010 alone while total waste gen­er­a­tion has declined for the first time since 1960. At 4.43 lbs/person/day, per capi­ta MSW is below 1990 lev­els, said Johnston.

On the Ground

In 2012, Fiberight com­mis­sioned a “first of its kind” inte­grat­ed plant to con­vert MSW into cel­lu­losic ethanol in Blairstown, Iowa, accord­ing to Craig Stu­art Paul, Fiberight. Delays have result­ed in the facil­i­ty still not break­ing ground, as of Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Fiberight also aims to build plants in Ham­p­den, ME and Elkridge, MD, and aims to pro­duce 700 mil­lion gal­lons of ethanol from trash over ten years.

Ful­crum Bioen­er­gy has a project under con­struc­tion in Reno, NV to pro­duce 10 mil­lion gal­lons of diesel fuel from trash using a ther­mo­chem­i­cal process and Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch gas-to-liq­uids tech­nol­o­gy.  They also have plans for plants in Den­ver, Toron­to, San Fran­cis­co, and Van­cou­ver, and “feed­stock con­trol” at 19 sites around the U.S. A demo facil­i­ty in Durham, North Car­oli­na used gasi­fi­ca­tion to pro­duce ethanol jet fuel and diesel, accord­ing to Jim Macias, Ful­crum Bioen­er­gy president.

INEOS’s Indi­an Riv­er Bioen­er­gy Cen­terin Vero Beach, Flori­da is one of the newest plants to try to turn trash into ethanol. They aim to pro­duce 8 mil­lion gal­lons of advanced bio­fu­els per year from a vari­ety of feed­stocks includ­ing trees and crops. 

Demon­strat­ing in Sacra­men­to, CA since 2009, Renew­able Ener­gy Test­ing Cen­ter has a com­mer­cial pro­to­type gasifier.

At the Sacra­men­to Air­port waste to diesel via Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process net­ted 42 gal­lons of diesel, accord­ing to Mike Hart from Sier­ra Ener­gy Corp.

In Dec 2012, over 2,000 tons of bio-based 1,4‑butanediol (BDO) was pro­duced in a five week cam­paign, accord­ing to Damien Per­ri­man of Geno­mat­i­ca Sus­tain­able Chemicals.

Enerkem has a full-scale trash-to-ethanol facil­i­ty using gasi­fi­ca­tion that is soon to start tri­al test­ing in Edmon­ton, Alber­ta. It would be the “first indus­tri­al scale waste-to-bio­fu­els facil­i­ty in the world to turn house­hold garbage into bio­fu­els and biochemicals.”

Enerkem’s Pon­to­toc, Mis­sis­sip­pi trash-to-ethanol pro­pos­al is select­ed to receive fund­ing from the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) and Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA), while Varennes, Que­bec is plan­ning the inte­gra­tion of an exist­ing, first-gen­er­a­tion ethanol plant and a new cel­lu­losic ethanol facil­i­ty, said Tim Cesarek of Enerkem. The Pon­to­toc project is appar­ent­ly stalled because the waste dis­pos­al cost can’t com­pete with cheap land­fill­ing in the area.

Lim­i­ta­tions

The indus­try has a lot of mon­ey avail­able and impe­tus to make it suc­cess­ful, yet even insid­ers admit there are many obsta­cles and lim­i­ta­tions stand­ing in the way.

Main con­cerns, accord­ing to Mike Hart of Sier­ra Ener­gy Corp, include haz­ardous ash pol­lu­tants, diox­ins, low elec­tri­cal effi­cien­cy, and “pub­lic outrage.”

Gasi­fi­ca­tion lim­i­ta­tions include scal­a­bil­i­ty issue and the high start up cost for com­plex parts, accord­ing to Hart, which reduces profitability. 

In order to get facil­i­ties off the ground, com­plex part­ner­ships are required, accord­ing to Mack­in­non Lawrence of Pike Research. Addi­tion­al chal­lenges include waste com­po­si­tion being high­ly var­ied coun­try-to-coun­try and con­ver­sion process­es not yet proven at scale.

Fur­ther, get­ting the per­mits for plants to deal with waste isn’t easy and involves a great deal of review, along with polit­i­cal input and pub­lic discussions.

MSW is the least homoge­nous of all bio­mass feed­stocks and can con­tain haz­ardous mate­ri­als, which can cre­ate harm­ful com­pounds when gasi­fied, said Jared Gon­sky, LanzaTech.

Duff of the Depart­ment of Ener­gy said that the main obsta­cles for bio­fu­els, includ­ing MSW to fuels, aren’t mat­ters of tech­nol­o­gy but finances. It’s been very dif­fi­cult to obtain pri­vate sec­tor debt financ­ing, which is tied direct­ly into a lack of fed­er­al ener­gy policies.

Com­mer­cial banks have lim­it­ed fund­ing after the Great Reces­sion and there is a great deal of risk for investors to get involved.

Investors have a ten­den­cy to stay in the com­fort zone and let oth­ers go first. It’s nec­es­sary to get buy in from rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, includ­ing elect­ed offi­cials, said Char­lie Reighart, Recy­cling & Waste Pre­ven­tion Man­ag­er, Bal­ti­more Coun­ty, Maryland.

Addi­tion­al­ly, anoth­er chal­lenge is “volatile oil prices that cre­ate a mov­ing tar­get for price com­pet­i­tive­ness,” accord­ing to Doug Main and Paul War­ley of Deloitte Finan­cial Advi­so­ry Services.