e d i to r ’s
NOTE
For the Sake of Full Disclosure …
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NN wouldn’t report on a Time Warner business deal without telling its viewers that the media giant is its parent company. Fox News wouldn’t run a story on billionaire Rupert Murdoch without informing its audience that the cable news channel is owned by News Corp., the media empire that Murdoch runs. Ownership disclosures are business as usual in the media world. They allow journalists to report on news about their parent company, or businesses owned by their parent company, without violating ethical codes. BBI International, the company that owns Biomass Magazine, is certainly no News Corp.—not yet anyway—but it’s a fast-growing company with 120 employees and operations in three countries. BBI is uniquely integrated in the biofuels and biomass industries, operating in three key areas: media, events and project development, the last category being largely occupied with ethanol plant development. With BBI engaged in a variety of projects globally, it would be difficult, perhaps imprudent, for our media group to avoid publishing stories about the company’s project development activities. Indeed, this month’s page 20 cover story, “All Roads Lead to Rome and Rice,” by Senior Staff Writer Ron Kotrba does just that, queuing our readers in on a process design and engineering contract that BBI landed with California-based cellulosic ethanol developer Colusa Biomass Corp. California rice farmers produce nearly 20 percent of all the rice grown in the United States, and “they relish the thought of turning their troublesome crop waste into money,” Kotrba writes. That’s sounds like a pipedream to U.S. rice farmers, who currently pay to have rice straw removed from their fields. You see, no one wants the stuff too badly. Rice straw contains silica, which is as tough on bovine molars as it is on farm equipment. Leaving the straw on the ground isn’t as simple as it sounds, and torching it in the field is against the law in California. Years ago, the people at Colusa recognized the opportunity hidden in this challenge, envisioning a full-scale biorefinery that could produce ethanol and sodium silicate from rice residues. Ramping up its efforts in late 2007, Colusa signed on BBI. Now the team is evaluating sites in California and Arkansas, the latter of which would require the processing of rice hulls rather than rice straw. BBI will spend 2008 developing the process technology that will turn these ag residues into ethanol, which should yield the data required to take the system commercial in 2009. The end result will be a 12 MMgy, $50 million facility. There’s a bunch of difficult steps between here and there, of course, and time will tell how BBI will help Colusa to navigate around the technology gaps that currently exist. Figuring out a way to “double-pretreat” the feedstock before fermentation is the first challenge. If they can do that—liberating that hemicellulose—then the next step is to find a way to proficiently ferment five-carbon sugars. Once those milestones are met, the hard work begins: raising 100 percent equity to get the plant built. Watching it all develop should be fascinating. We’ll provide updates along the way, with proper disclosures included, of course.
Tom Bryan Editorial Director tbryan@bbibiofuels.com
6 BIOMASS MAGAZINE 2|2008