BP Becomes Leader in Cellulosic Ethanol Investment, Adds $22.5M to Verenium
On Wednesday, BP anounced a joint venture with Verenium to build the world’s largest cellulosic ethanol facility. BP’s total investment—now $112.5 million—will be the largest by an oil company in advanced, non-food-based biofuels.
The Florida-based plant would be 25 times larger than Verenium’s existing (and operational) cellulosic ethanol facility in Louisiana, which began operation earlier this month and is expected to produce 60+ million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year when at full capacity. This new, larger facility is schedule to break ground in 2010 and commece operations in 2012.
“This next stage in our relationship with Verenium demonstrates our real commitment to making cellulosic ethanol a reality in the U.S. fuels market in the near term. BP and Verenium together have the technological know-how, engineering capability and market expertise required to demonstrate that we can deliver better, more sustainable biofuels, more quickly.”
-Sue Ellerbusch, President of BP Biofuels North America
Last August, we reported that Verenium (click for earlier post) claims to have the edge in cellulosic ethanol production through genetic engineering of the microbes required to turn the cellulosic material (switchgrass, wood chips, sugarcane bagasse, miscanthus) into ethanol.
[via: Biofuels Digest]Photo Credit: fredthompson via Flickr under Creative Commons License
I it good to know that BP is takeing some steps to produce renewable fuel.
Cellulosic ethanol is unfolding right now, and this is liquid fuel that replaces foreign oil right now. Reuters reports that the U.S. is currently producing about 3 million gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol (CE) at pilot plants. CE Pilot plants will grow to 83.5 million gallons per year by 2011. Full blown commercial CE refineries that are planned and-or under construction will produce 225.5 million gallons by 2011. (Search: TABLE-Open and planned US cellulosic ethanol plants) This probably does not include every single project, as some are confidential and proprietary. And new projects are being announced on a regular basis.
Using miscanthus, you can get an average of 25 tons per acre per year, and you can get 120 gallons of ethanol per ton or more. That would be 3,000 gallons per acre per year. For algae, the yield is 100 tons per acre, roughly 12,000 gallons or more per acre per year. This is using a 96% starch variety of algae.
HETEROTROPHIC algae grows in the dark, and multiplies rapidly when fed sugars or biomass. This technology is being developed by Solazyme and others. East Kentucky University and General Atomics are leveraging local biomass by feeding it to heterotrophic algae grown in vats. Researchers claim that heterotrophic algae can reach densities in the dark that are 1,000 times higher than strains of algae that must be grown in the light.
Since heterotrophic algae can be grown in the dark in tanks, you can stack them 100 feet deep underground or stack them 100 feet high above ground. Stack it in a high rise. Grow it using no additional land: in gray water in your basement, on your roof, under your back yard, or under a parking lot. Grow it on a barge. Take local sugars derived from corn or sweet sorghum or biomass or food and paper waste or sewage, and leverage the sugars to multiply algae hundreds of times. That is going to be your massive source of cellulose for ethanol, biodiesel, or for whatever fuel you want to synthesize.
Corn ethanol refineries are going to be equipped with cellulosic ethanol capability. Heterotrophic algae will be grown in tanks on the waste products and sugars. This will multiply the ethanol output many times. Take all the corn sugar that is now going straight to ethanol, and instead, feed it to heterotrophic algae in tanks. At only 50X, that would be upwards of half a trillion gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. Or grow a variety of algae that would give you ethanol, biodiesel, and high protein feed.
Check this out:
TABLE-Open and planned US cellulosic ethanol plants
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1952406520090219