ADVANCED BIOFUEL¦
Dedicated Feedstock Forerunner Chemtex’s Project Alpha targets multiple energy crops BY SUSANNE RETKA SCHILL
P
roject Alpha in North Carolina is going to commercially test a broad range of purpose-grown energy crops. Chemtex International Inc. received a $99 million conditional loan guarantee from the USDA a year ago, along with a $3.9 million grant from the USDA through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, to support the establishment of more than 4,000 acres of miscanthus and switchgrass across 11 counties in North Carolina to help supply the new facility. “The Chemtex project in Clinton, N.C., will use a multifeedstock strategy including switchgrass, high biomass sorghum and arundo donax, as well as select hardwood tree species, miscanthus and Bermuda grass residuals,” says Mark Conlon, vice president of sector development for the Biofuels Center of North Carolina. Chemtex’s planned 20 MMgy cellulosic ethanol facility will require between 20,000 and 30,000 acres of energy crops. “That’s considerably less than the corn acres that would be required for a facility of that size,” Conlon points out. A corresponding 20 MMgy corn ethanol plant based on Iowa average corn yield would need more than 54,000 acres, he says, and in the South, where yields can run half that of prime Corn Belt corn crops, considerably more. Chemtex will be the first cellulosic ethanol plant to rely on a mixture of purpose-grown energy crops. Most plants in various stages of development are planning to use nondedicated feedstocks, or a combination of the two. For example, two plants under construction in Iowa, one by the Poet/DSM partnership in Emmetsburg and the other by DuPont in Nevada, are planning to use corn stover. Abengoa Bioenergy’s
plant in Hugoton, Kan., will use mixed feedstocks including straw, corn stover and purpose-grown switchgrass. Enerkem Inc.’s nearly complete plant in Alberta is using municipal solid waste (MSW), as are several others in earlier development stages. Zeachem in Oregon is utilizing hybrid poplar and wheat straw, and Ineos New Planet BioEnergy LLC, located next to a landfill, is using mixed vegetative and wood waste at startup, with plans to include MSW in the future. “The Chemtex biomass mixed-feedstock, supply-chain strategy is unique,” Conlon says. “It provides a greater level of flexibility in dealing with unpredictable supply chain iterations and reduces overall inventory costs, in that harvest can be spread out over a greater number of months. It’s a very well-thought-out, cost-efficient strategy where eastern North Carolina farmers gain profitable market options with the new Chemtex demand for energy crops.” Creating a 30,000-acre supply chain to supply a biorefinery that hasn’t begun construction yet—using a brand new conversion technology—is no small task when using crops that have never been grown before. But as Chemtex and others are showing, the new technologies work, and North Carolina is providing an example of how the farmer side can be developed. Travis Hedrick, director of operations for Repreve Renewables LLC, says BCAP is a very important part of signing up farmers to try miscanthus. “BCAP is absolutely helping with the cost and it’s a useful program—it shows support from the USDA.” Due to budget wranglings in Washington, the final
SEPTEMBER 2013 | BIOMASS MAGAZINE 39