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Iowa Could Land Another Cellulosic Ethanol Refinery
October 25, 2010
The Progressive Farmer –
Central Iowa could be the site of another cellulosic ethanol plant that would produce up to 50 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year, The Farmer reported. Two companies — DuPont and Danisco — have formed a joint venture and are considering several locations in Iowa and the Midwest to locate a biorefinery. The new project — dubbed “Project Blackhawk” would use corn cobs, husks and leaves to make ethanol on a commercial scale, using technology developed at a pilot plant in Tennessee. Although initial production will be between 25 million and 50 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol yearly, the project could be expanded to as much as 100 million gallons in the future. The companies will decide on a location by the end of 2010.
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Looks like Dupont is taking their Cellulosic ETOH refinery from Tennessee lab/pilot plants to commercial scale at Iowa or other site location by end of this year. Could remove lot of barriers – except perhaps for the high (1000 gallons) water use per gallon ETOH compared to (1 gallon) water per gallon gasoline production.
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Sorry – scale of water use was old & not right logic for the Cellulosic case.
Corn based ETOH uses 785 gal/gal ETOH produced (dry grind method/process) & without corn irrigation (~80% case for most corn growers) and the Actual ETOH proces uses about 3-6 gal/gal ETOH produced.
So for Cellulosic case the corn is grown for food market and cellulosic therefore would not be incremental demand but use of
the byproduct waste and so water consumption is not additive. The Cellulosic process is also more conserative (with recycle case) and only consumes about 1.9 – 3 gal/gal ETOH.
And current figures on gasoline production from crude with current high levels of recycle for water and the ratio is about 2-2.5 gal /gal gasoline. <See some these values in Arizona University PDF ~ 2007 @ http://www.swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V6_N5/feature4.pdf :>
So now the only hurrdle left is conflict on trying to increase MPG – since ETOH is much lower BTU content and lowers fuel by 3-5 MPG for every additional 3-5% of ETOH blended. And the damage car companies claim ETOH is doing to carburetors/jets & computer fuel use and offsetting their efforts for mechanical improvements in MPG.
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