Agriculture and Forestry
Bioenergy
Renewable Energy

Grand Opening of Second U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant in as Many Months

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October 17, 2014

On October 17, Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Abengoa CEO Manuel Sanchez Ortega gathered to celebrate the grand opening of Abengoa’s commercial-scale advanced cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, KS. The cellulosic industry has had a lot to celebrate lately: Abengoa’s facility is the second U.S. cellulosic ethanol refinery to open in the last two months, with Poet-DSM’s Project Liberty having opened in September in Emmetsburg, IA, and DuPont is putting the finishing touches on their cellulosic facility in Nevada, IA. For an industry whose detractors have long derided its ‘phantom fuels’, the arrival of cellulosic ethanol was a long time coming. This is a watershed moment for the growing bioeconomy – signaling the transition of biofuels beyond the ‘corn belt’ to diverse regions of the United States and into an expanding array of bioproducts, such as plastics, chemicals and jet fuel.

Cellulosic ethanol is produced from agricultural residue — primarily, at this time, from corn stover (leaves, stalks and husks), which is removed in a sustainable manner after the harvest. Producing ethanol from cellulosic, non-edible plant matter is more challenging than producing it from feedstocks like cornstarch, but it is now making quick progress, thanks to advances in enzymes and catalyst technologies. Corn stover is now being used to produce cellulosic ethanol at commercial levels at these two new facilities, and other feedstocks, such as perennial grasses, cover crops, and organic wastes, are being turned into ethanol in demonstration volumes.

With crop yields per acre increasing, the sheer volume of residues left on fields actually presents a problem to today’s farmers. According to John Pieper, the Stover Feedstock Workstream Leader for DuPont Industrial Biosciences, “the more corn we produce by increasing yield, the more corn stover we’re producing, and the grower has to do something with it, and for many growers that means tilling it back into the ground.” While tilling can incorporate these materials into the soil – it’s far from ideal. The practice of tilling destroys the soil structure and microorganisms that are so critical to soil health. Instead, a portion of the agricultural residues can be removed from the soil in conjunction with no-till practices, boosting soil health by allowing sunlight and water to properly infiltrate the soil.

Abengoa finished construction of the Hugoton plant in August and is expected to produce up to 25 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year by processing 1,000 tons of agricultural waste a day from local farms. They expect to pay local farmers $17 million a year for agricultural wastes, mostly corn stover but also wheat straw, milo stubble and switchgrass. The plant will be self-sustaining, using waste energy from the process to produce 21 megawatts of electricity to power the facility as well as the surrounding community.

The plant also represents a significant public-private partnership, with Abengoa having received $132.4 million in loans and $97 million in grants from the Department of Energy. According to Manuel Sanchez Ortega, CEO of Abengoa, "The Hugoton plant opening is the result of 10 years of technical development, roughly 40,000 hours of pilot and demonstration plant operation, and the support of the DOE … [It also] further demonstrates our longstanding commitment to providing sustainable energy alternatives in the United States. This would have been simply impossible without the establishment of the Renewal Fuel Standard (RFS)."

With the future of renewable fuels shaky in the United States due to uncertainties surrounding the RFS, many of these companies are looking elsewhere to expand their businesses. On October 16, DuPont announced a memorandum of understanding with the government of Macedonia to license DuPont’s cellulosic ethanol technology. If renewable fuel opponents succeed in their quest to repeal the RFS – the ultimate irony would occur. The rest of the world would enjoy the fruits of American ingenuity and tax dollars in the form of advanced renewable fuels, while U.S. consumers would continue to fuel up their cars on dirty, expensive and unhealthy petroleum.

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