Switchgrass from Panhandle plot going to new plant

As Oklahoma-based scientists study the economic viability of using switchgrass as a component of ethanol, they already know where their first full crop will end up.
    About 35 miles from a 1,000-acre switchgrass field in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Abengoa Bioenergy Corp. — the North American division of a company based in Spain — plans to soon begin construction on a biorefinery in southwestern Kansas that will be among the first of its kind in the U.S.
    Thomas Robb, the manager of institutional relations for Abengoa, said the biorefinery likely will open by mid 2011 — around the time the switchgrass plot will be ready for its first full harvest.
    “We wouldn’t be here if that refinery wasn’t going in up the road,” said Wadell Altom, a senior vice president and agricultural division director for the Ardmore-based Noble Foundation, which is leading the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center project.
    Abengoa formally announced the $300 million project in August 2007, after it received a $76.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help develop one of the nation’s first cellulosic ethanol plants. Five other companies received similar grants.
    Cellulose, the main ingredient in a plant cell’s walls, is the most common organic compound in the world. The Abengoa biorefinery will use biochemical and thermochemical processes to convert biomass such as switchgrass, corn stalks and wheat straw for use in ethanol.
    Robb said the company has done research into cellulosic ethanol production “for a number of years” and has a pilot plant in York, Neb.
    Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association for the ethanol industry, said such technology “works at the demonstration level. What all of these companies are looking at is taking it from producing a few million gallons a year to the commercial scale.”
    The demand for ethanol continues to outpace production, according to the RFA, which estimated ethanol demand at 630,000 barrels a day in June. Meanwhile, the 171 American ethanol refineries produced about 585,000 barrels a day during the same month, according to the Energy Information Administration.
    Robb said the Abengoa biorefinery will include technology to convert both starch-based and cellulosic products for ethanol use. Initial plans call for it to produce 88 million gallons of ethanol from cereal grains, including corn, and 13 million to 14 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol, he said.
    “Long term, there’s going to become a point where starched technology won’t support continued expansion of ethanol production,” he said. “That’s where the cellulosic technology will start to happen.”
    Robb predicted that within five to 10 years, such technology could become an industry standard, an assertion supported by Hartwig.
    “If you look at the sheer quantity of biomass available across this country, the potential to produce 50, 60, 80 billion gallons a year is real. It’s just going to take some time for us to get there,” Hartwig said.
    “Unfortunately there are no magic beans we can throw out there and have this thing happen overnight. ... But there will be a day when cellulosic ethanol produces more in a yearly volume than we get from corn, because of today’s technology.”
    Robb said Abengoa decided on the “hybrid” biorefinery concept, producing both starch-based and cellulosic ethanol, to reduce the company’s risk in the project.
    “The technology we’re using on the cellulosic material has never been done in the commercial field before,” he said. “Until you do it and find out what all the tweaks are that need to happen, what all the ’uh-ohs’ are, and correct those, it’s very high risk.”
    But companies like Abengoa should be commended for taking such risks, said Blake Simmons, the vice president for deconstruction at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, Calif.
    Facilities like the Abengoa biorefinery “are what’s needed to show the path forward,” Simmons said. “You can hypothesize about cellulosic biofuels for a long time. It’s another matter to actually get out and do it.”