New Energy Blue plans to break ground on its first cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in spring 2019
Type of post: NEWS.
In August 2016, the Blog reported the plans of
a company called New Energy Investors to build a cellulosic ethanol plant at
the Spiritwood Industrial Park near Jamestown. The biorefinery would based on
the Inbicon Biomass Refinery technology, developed by DONG Energy.
See: “Plans
for a new cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in North Dakota”, 3/8/2016.
It seems that New
Energy Investors passed the baton to New Energy Blue. This firm has
just announced that it will start the construction of the biorefinery by the
spring of 2019 (see press release,
24/9/2018). New Energy Spirit Biomass Refinery, registered
North Dakota special purpose company and wholly owned by New Energy Blue, will develop, build, own and operate the new
plant.
Location
|
Spiritwood
Industrial Park near Jamestown (North Dakota, USA).
|
Feedstock
and processing capacity
|
280,000
tons of locally harvested wheat straw, barley straw and corn stover.
|
Products
and production capacity
|
- 16 Mgal/year
of cellulosic ethanol.
- 109,000
tons of lignin pellets.
- Other
outputs: biogas for producing process steam and a potassium-rich nutrient for
fertilizing farm fields.
|
Economic
impact
|
- Over 400
construction jobs for 24 months.
- Over
100 full-time jobs (42 of them at the biorefinery).
- Over 15
M$ paid for biomass acquisition. Local farmers can see a windfall second cash
crop from the same harvest.
- Over 80
M$ in annual revenue, much of it paid back to the local community.
|
Timeline
|
- Break
ground: spring 2019.
- Duration of the construction phase: 20 to
22 months.
- Duration
of the commissioning process: 4 to 5 months.
-
Commercial operations: 2Q 2021.
- An EPC
contractor is expected to be selected within the next four to five months.
|
Figure 1. Model of the New Energy Spirit
Biomass Refinery (extracted from the website of New Energy Blue)
The cellulosic ethanol will be marketed to
California in order to receive the premium from its Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS)
program. It pays on the reduction of carbon emissions from production to
end-user taking conventional gasoline as baseline. New Energy Blue ethanol could eventually achieve a reduction of 130% comparing to the
baseline.
Thomas Corle, CEO of New Energy Blue, envisions a series of biorefineries throughout
the grain belts of USA and Canada, each producing 32 Mgal/year of cellulosic
ethanol and attracting escalating support from capital markets keen on catching
the next wave of renewable energy.
