In the weeks leading up to the publication of this issue of Biomass Magazine, the U.S. DOE released a 448-page update to the 2005 Billion-Ton study. The report affirmed that the U.S. has an enormous biomass resource ready to be converted into liquid fuels, thermal energy, power and chemicals. Interestingly, the variance in total biomass availability between the two studies was only 20,000 tons. Biomass availability in the U.S. is unlikely to emerge as a bottleneck for industry growth. Our country&rsquo;s farms and forests, municipal waste and food waste streams are producing vast streams of material, and we simply need to figure out how to effectively gather, prepare and convert it. While writing this month&rsquo;s features, our team was reminded again and again that the success of any biomass-to-energy effort is often determined by how the biomass is harvested and handled, well before it enters a conversion platform of any kind. In a long conversation I had with Richard Hess, a scientist at Idaho National Laboratory, he illuminated the corner the industry can back itself into if it doesn&rsquo;t get initial biomass handling right. He noted that once a biomass feedstock handling system is purchased and deployed, its owners feel committed to making it work. He asked, &ldquo;What if the system design or approach was all wrong to begin with?&rdquo; Hess told me that this pursuit of a flawed approach has happened, and continues to happen, in our space at a great expense of time and money to the companies working to write the next chapters in biomass conversion. Hess talked at great length about decoupling preparation from conversion. Coupling the two, he told me, is all but unheard of in other industries where material handling happens at the scale that it does in the biomass industry. The goal, Hess told me, is to deliver a biomass stream to a conversion platform on time, on spec and on budget. Anna Simet&rsquo;s page-22 feature, &ldquo;Chipping Away at a Standard,&rdquo; complements Hess&rsquo;s ideas perfectly. Simet&rsquo;s story takes Hess&rsquo;s assertion one step further and argues that the industry needs to not only produce conversion-ready materials, but it must also provide a framework for both buyers and sellers to efficiently share information about the relative quality of the biomass. The biomass is out there. The next step in the evolution of the industry is the perfecting, making these abundant streams conversion ready in a cost-effective manner.
&nbsp;
Author: Tim Portz Vice President of Content&nbsp; &amp; Executive Editor tportz@bbiinternational.com

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Our country's farms and forests, municipal waste and food waste streams are producing vast streams of material, and we simply need to figure out how to effectively gather, prepare and convert it. 

First Things First

For the first time ever, the National Advanced Biofuels Conference &amp; Expo was colocated with the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop &amp; Expo in 2016, a conference pairing that will become the norm for event organizer BBI International. The conferences were held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with sessions running June 21-22. NABCE included two tracks, with one focused entirely on cellulosic ethanol, and the second on biodiesel and other advanced biofuels. Track two, the focal point of this review, included presentations on biojet fuel, biogas and biodiesel. Four biojet fuel technology positions were represented in a panel titled &ldquo;Technologies Unlocking New Opportunity for Advanced Biofuels in Aviation Markets.&rdquo; Tony Barnette, sales support manager at Honeywell&rsquo;s UOP LLC said the recent Defense Logistics Agency&rsquo;s 76 MMgy award for fuel containing 10 percent renewable F-76 Naval Distillate was given to AltAir Fuels, a converted oil refinery turned biorefinery in Paramount, California, which started production this year. Barnette said AltAir has delivered 1.3 MMgy of its contract as of June. Barnette noted the International Air Transport Association&rsquo;s goals of cutting net emissions by 50 percent by 2050, and achieving fuel efficiency increases of 1.5 percent per year through 2020. &ldquo;Globally, there was an 80 billion-gallon demand for jet fuel in 2010,&rdquo; Barnette said, &ldquo;and this is growing at 3 to 3.5 percent per year. If biofuels can supply 6 percent of the jet fuel by 2020, this represents 7 billion gallons of renewable jet fuel and a reduction in carbon footprint by 5 percent.&rdquo; Barnette recounted at least 20 commercial demonstration flights from 2008-&rsquo;14. UOP&rsquo;s technology converts triglycerides and fatty acids to isoparaffins, long-chain molecules with a high cloud point, which are then isomerized and hydrocracked, followed by product separation. Bin Yang with Washington State University discussed biojet fuel from lignin. He said lignin from biomass is currently used for electricity and steam production, but through a process of depolymerization and defragmentation followed by catalytic upgrading, the material is suited for jet fuel feedstock. The challenges to this are appreciable, however, and include lignin&rsquo;s high molecular weight with uncertain reactivity; low oxidative and thermal stability of processed lignin; limited tools for quantitative characterization of conversion processes; mass transfer limits for catalytic processing; low catalytic selectivity; and low hydrocarbons yields. Simulated distillation showed lignin-derived biojet has a higher boiling point, Yang said, adding that analysis shows coproduction of jet fuel from waste lignin can dramatically improve the overall economic viability of an integrated process for corn ethanol production. The lignin can also be used to power the lignin-to-biojet process. Vertimass LLC President and CEO Charles Wyman presented on using ethanol as a platform to biojet, since it&rsquo;s relatively inexpensive and large-scale ethanol production is already in place. Wyman said Vertimass&rsquo; bolt-on technology has four issued patents and requires modest capital costs to install. The single-step conversion process uses a catalyst developed by Oakridge National Laboratory, for which Vertimass has exclusive rights. Ethanol and water are processed through the catalyst at 275-350 degrees Celsius at atmospheric pH and reaction conditions, and without addition of hydrogen, hydrocarbon blend stocks with high yield are obtained, Wyman said. This bolt-on technology can avoid use of molecular sieves and displace rectification at ethanol plants. He added that capital costs for the technology are similar to dehydration units. He said last year Vertimass received $2 million in U.S. DOE funds, which will be used to scale up the technology. Vertimass chose Technip to perform pilot plant scale-up runs of its process. The company plans to launch its first commercial construction within two years acting as licensor with potential ethanol producers as owners and operators. First, he said Vertimass must complete Series B funding. Gevo Agri-Energy President Chris Ryan rounded out the panel by discussing Gevo&rsquo;s isobutanol-to-biojet process. He said it starts with fermenting the mash into isobutanol instead of ethanol. Ryan said Gevo has been producing hydrocarbons from isobutanol since 2011 in Silsbee, Texas, where it has 25,000 hours of operational experience. The plant processes 60 pounds an hour of isobutanol to biojet fuel. Once isobutanol is produced, the company uses dehydration to get to isobutylene. Oligomerization of isobutylene makes a distribution of C8-C16 hydrocarbons followed by hydrogenation and distillation. He said with oil at $65 a barrel and $4 corn, the net price of Gevo&rsquo;s renewable jet fuel is competitive with petroleum-based jet fuel with a 20 percent return on investment. Biogas Biogas took center stage at NABCE during the breakout session titled &ldquo;How and Why Biogas Producers are Winning Market Share in Advanced Biofuel Markets.&rdquo; Digester Doc President Will Charlton said every digester is unique and individual, and each digester should be treated as such. Charlton said microbial enhancement is the act of bringing in nutrients and additives that allow the native populations to thrive in the environment they exist. This often also means introducing new populations that are more geared toward any issue the system might have. Charlton said a list of protocols used to test system health include mineral toxicity tests, pH and temperature ranges, fatty acid breakdown and solids content. Items that need to be monitored and checked in digesters, he said, begin with temperature. Then, an operator should find out what methanogens are prevalent in the digester and allow them to dictate the temperature zone within which the digester operates. Solids content must be determined, and if it&rsquo;s too high without the right mechanical accommodations or the right biology, this can be a problem. Finally, operating pH must be known as most methanogens&mdash;95 percent of them&mdash;prefer to operate between 6.8 and 7.8. He said mineral packages may be important, but noted that not enough may be as bad as too much. &ldquo;Run extensive and ongoing tests to see what&rsquo;s needed to find that balance,&rdquo; he said. Jeff Tocio, Pentair national sales manager, discussed his company&rsquo;s technology to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from biogas production. He said most biogas operations produce 55 percent biomethane (CH4) and 45 percent CO2. Pentair uses multimembrane technology to separate the gases. &ldquo;The discharge from the membrane, the retentate, contains mainly CH4 as the CO2 has been pushed through the membrane surface,&rdquo; Tocio said. &ldquo;The CO2-rich gas leaves the membrane on the low-pressure side of the membrane.&rdquo; He said that to separate the CO2 and CH4, the impurities must be removed with activated carbon. &ldquo;With a two-stage membrane system and a cryogenic system, no methane slip is achieved,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;along with the recovery of two valuable products&mdash;biomethane and 100 percent liquid CO2.&rdquo; Pentair&rsquo;s CO2 recovery system is a bolt-on technology that can be deployed at existing biogas plants, Tocio said. The company has 450 systems installed globally. The food-grade CO2 can be sold for greenhouses, fire extinguishers, welding gas, dry ice, refrigeration, and food and beverage applications. Tocio said typical upgrading costs from biogas to biomethane and liquid CO2 run about 14 to 18 cents per normal cubic meter (Nm3) of biogas, wherein one Nm3 of biogas gives 0.58 Nm natural gas and 0.7 kilograms of liquid CO2. Integrating biogas production at ethanol plants was the focus of a presentation by Lars Holm, CEO and managing director of Renew Energy A/S. In Renew Energy&rsquo;s biorefinery concept, residue streams from ethanol plants are converted to energy, clean water and fertilizer fractions. Energy is produced by anaerobic digestion of stillage using continuously stirred reactor tanks, and fertilizer products and clean water are produced in a post-nutrient recovery process. Both energy and clean water are utilized by the ethanol plant.&nbsp; Holm said high biogas production is secured through good temperature control, optimal digester mixing, feed management, and design and maintenance of the digester, all of which should lead to a stable digestion process with no shutdowns for 20 years. While Holm mentioned many challenges for aneorobic digestion of stillage, including low energy costs, animal feed competition, and a relatively high investment cost&mdash;up to $3 million per megawatt of power&mdash;the benefits of codigestion are evident. These include the potential for a tipping fee of the substrate, production of biogas, and the potential to form regional collaborative partnerships on waste management issues, to name a few. Jennifer Aurandt, R&amp;D program manager with Valicor Inc., also discussed the challenges for thin stillage digestion. The relatively long hydraulic retention time needed for feasible gas production combined with the stillage high-water content leads to vast requirements of digester size. Also, the high sulfur content in stillage can lead to inhibition of the anaerobic digestion process. High sulfur content leads to high concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the biogas and its high protein content could lead to ammonia inhibition of the process when used as a monosubstrate, she noted. Digestion of a monosubstrate leads to a lack of essential trace elements in the digester, she said, resulting in a malfunctioning process with low gas production and continuous process disorders. Valicor&rsquo;s Selective AD can help address those challenges, she noted. Valicor&rsquo;s commercial prospectus for a 40 MMgy ethanol plant using its Selective AD process can convert roughly 6 percent of its wetcake solids to biogas, producing more than 181,000 million Btu in a 200,000 to 400,000 gallon reactor with estimated capital costs at $2 million to $4 million.&nbsp; Biodiesel Biodiesel was represented on the big stage at NABCE as Anne Steckel, vice president of federal affairs at the National Biodiesel Board, participated in a general session panel with other biofuel leaders. &ldquo;One of the biodiesel industry&rsquo;s biggest strengths is feedstock diversity,&rdquo; Steckel said. &ldquo;Roughly 17 percent of our feedstock comes from corn oil extracted at ethanol plants.&rdquo; EPA has proposed a 100 million gallon increase in the federal renewable fuel standard&rsquo;s biomass-based diesel renewable volume obligation for 2018, up from 2 billion gallons in 2017. The NBB is calling on EPA to boost this volume so the domestic biodiesel industry, which Steckel said is only running at 60 percent, can produce greater volumes. Steckel also said she anticipates Congress will replace the $1 per gallon blender tax credit with a domestic production credit for next year, curbing $670 million in foreign production subsidies. Colocating biodiesel production at ethanol plants was the focus of a session featuring Bernie Hoffman with KCoe Isom, Jatrodiesel President Raj Mosali and Rabbi Abraham Juravel with the Orthodox Union. Hoffman said ethanol plants can stay relevant in the industry by incorporating bolt-on technologies to produce biodiesel. Mosali said biodiesel at ethanol plants makes sense because it&rsquo;s a big market and there is no blend wall for biodiesel. He added that the current 100 MMgy growth schedule in RFS could provide opportunity for 10 new 10 MMgy biodiesel plants per year. Juravel stressed the importance of kosher certification for any ethanol plants producing biodiesel&mdash;particularly when demulsifiers are used&mdash;to expand market opportunities for glycerin. Biodiesel technology enhancements was the focus of two sessions at NABCE. Industry pioneer and producer Russ Teall presented on Biodico&rsquo;s new 20 MMgy plant, Biodico Westside, in California&rsquo;s San Joaquin Valley, and its Zero Net Energy Farm project with Red Rock Ranch. Biodico was recently selected by the California Energy Commission to receive a $1.2 million grant to develop a ZNEF. He said the grant will run from 2016-&rsquo;18. Teall said Biodico Westside is entirely energy self-sufficient&mdash;the first such liquid biofuels plant. &ldquo;Using the systems developed for the plant, our intent is to make a 1,400-acre portion of Red Rock Ranch energy self-sufficient using solar cogeneration, wind, anaerobic digestion and gasification,&rdquo; Teall said. Kurt Holecek, CEO of Austria-based Energia Tech s.r.o., discussed expanding and enhancing biodiesel production on a budget. His company has built five large biodiesel plants on three continents. Holecek promoted continuous flow processing over batch, and said biodiesel economy of scale is best in the two-digit range (e.g., at least 10 MMgy). He said Energia Tech can convert a 4 MMgy biodiesel plant to 20 MMgy for just $476,000. However, the addition of methanol recovery, glycerin treatment, increased storage tanks, additional utilities, building improvements and engineering costs would boost the total cost of the expansion to roughly $4.5 million. Dehua Liu, a professor and director at Tsinghua University in China, presented on enzymatic biodiesel processing and the integrated production of 1,3 propanediol from glycerin. Liu said the lipase are easily deactivated and unstable in the presence of methanol and glycerin, so TU improved the process rather than the enzymes. He said TU&rsquo;s novel technology greatly eliminated the negative effect of methanol and glycerol on enzyme activity. TU&rsquo;s technology is in use at a 50,000-ton biodiesel plant in China. He said more than 40 patents have been filed with 20-plus granted for TU&rsquo;s glycerin-to-1,3 propanediol technique. University of Minnesota doctoral candidate and Superior Process Technologies Lab Manager Erik Anderson gave a technical presentation on a novel process for low-sulfur biodiesel conversion from scum. The process has been proven at a wastewater treatment facility in St. Paul, Minnesota. The &ldquo;white mud&rdquo; scum is heated to 150 degrees Fahrenheit,&nbsp; and the usable portions of the oil are liquefied, filtered, acid hydrolyzed to release metals and nonmetals, put through cosolvent extraction to improve separation, glycerolysis and finally reactive distillation. Anderson said nearly 22,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities in the U.S. could benefit from this process, saving money on landfilling and generating revenue through fuel production. Finally, Larry Sakin, CEO of FYT Fuels, presented on FYT Fuels&rsquo; patent for sodium glyceroxide as a replacement catalyst for sodium methoxide in base transesterification. Sakin said the catalyst is recoverable and the use of crude glycerin is just as effective as distilled product. He said the cost of sodium glyceroxide is one-tenth that of sodium methoxide, which could lead to increased profits of $600,000 to $1 million per year at a 10 MMgy biodiesel plant, with capex costs of only $300,000. Author: Ron Kotrba Senior Editor, Biomass Magazine 218-745-8347 rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

LEADERS GATHER: Conventional and advanced biofuel leaders gathered on stage at the 2016 National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo. From left, Tim Portz, BBI; Brian Jennings, ACE; Geoff Cooper, RFA; Anne Steckel, NBB; and Brooke Coleman, ABBC. 

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Biomass Magazine reviews sessions from the 2016 National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo 
held this summer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Biojet, Biogas &  Biodiesel in Review

For advanced biofuels under the Obama administration, what started out with a boom in 2008 ended with a whimper in 2016. When the president was elected, the economy was flat on its back in the midst of the Great Recession, and the administration burst onto the scene with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, providing $38 billion to the U.S. DOE to develop sustainable energy resources. A small portion of that money was specifically dedicated to the advanced biofuels industry, which was essentially in its infancy. As the nascent industry began to develop, companies hoping to deliver the next generation of biofuels came to Washington intending to participate in this push for renewable energy. In particular, these companies focused on the biorefining grants offered by the DOE&rsquo;s Bioenergy Technologies Office. At great expense, dozens of companies sought these grants: hiring counsel, putting together a myriad of paper submissions, and lining up political support for their projects. By 2010, BETO had awarded approximately 19 grants, ranging from $25 million to $50 million and totaling approximately $564 million of government investment in these pilot and demonstration plants for groundbreaking technologies. Furthermore, the DOE awarded several billion dollars of loan guarantees to help build commercial facilities and utilized the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to make long-term investments in high-risk, high-reward technologies. Simultaneously, the U.S. EPA was working furiously to complete the regulations to implement the renewable fuel standard 2 program. Although the program was established in 2007 by the Bush administration, the EPA was still proceeding through the rulemaking progress to draft and implement these regulations. The 2007 program called for 36 billion gallons by 2022, with 21 billion of these gallons meant to be advanced and cellulosic fuels. The final rules were released in July 2010, and the program began in full stride. The industry and the administration have learned much in the past eight years about what has been successful, and the challenges that remain for this sector of the biofuels industry. Clearly, the industry needs more certainty from federal programs to be successful moving forward. While the federal government&rsquo;s efforts to support the financing of pilot projects and commercial facilities in 2009 and 2010 created significant momentum for the advanced biofuels industry, a large portion of this momentum was lost when the renewable volume obligations (RVO) were not set in a timely matter for almost three years. The industry has also been hurt by the legislative uncertainty facing the tax code. Short-term extenders, which are on and off, are simply not enough to give capital markets the confidence necessary to encourage capital improvements for existing industries, much less the development of an industry at its outset. Moreover, the federal government can and should do more to improve the terms of federal loan guarantees. All of these are critical lessons for the next president and the next Congress. Before examining the specifics of existing programs, however, the new administration and our country must first recognize the benefit and true need of advanced biofuels moving forward. The government and the American people have played a critical role in the development of every new energy source for the world. We must continue to lead the investment and development of advanced biofuels to help our country and countries around the world have fossil fuel alternatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide us with a balanced energy portfolio. As we come to the end of the Obama administration, do not forget to push hard to make sure the EPA completes its final RVO, ensuring that the RFS is back on track. Impress upon members of Congress the need to extend the blenders credit for biodiesel and the alternative fuels and second-generation credits. Encourage the EPA to get its biointermediate regulation out before the fall. While there is much to be done, it seems like so little relative to where we began eight years ago. Finally, as we enter the final two months of this election season, I urge you to get involved. Make sure you tell politicians of your investments to date. Make sure you tell them how many jobs you have created. Make sure you tell them how lengthy and difficult the process has been just to get to this point. Make sure you tell them how these fuels are absolutely essential for the world moving forward: for reducing CO2 emissions and creating a more sustainable environment; to power our airplanes, large ocean vessels, big trucks and engines; and for developing new feedstocks and utilizing and reducing municipal waste. Author: Michael McAdams President, Advanced Biofuels Association michael.mcadams@hklaw.com 202-469-5140

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For advanced biofuels under the Obama administration, what started out with a boom in 2008 ended with a whimper in 2016.

Advanced Biofuels at End of Obama Administration

Mas Energy is proof that with the right expertise and experience, a small team of individuals can make big things happen. The Georgia-based company, focused on renewable and clean energy projects, and partner Republic Services, just brought online a 24.5-MW, three-landfill biogas-to-energy project in the metro Atlanta area. Mostly involved in small- and medium-scale biomass, biogas and combined-heat-and-power (CHP) projects&mdash;for example, a 6.W-MW CHP system that services Coca-Cola&rsquo;s Atlanta Syrup Plant&mdash;Mas Energy typically takes on the entire spectrum of development responsibilities, from initial development to to commercialization and operations, according to Michael Hall, principal and chief development officer, &ldquo;The majority of our team is made up of engineers with business or finance backgrounds,&rdquo; he tells Biomass Magazine. Its most recently completed landfill gas-to-energy project consists of Republic Services Buford, Griffin and Winder landfills, all located in the metro Atlanta area. The Winder and Griffin sites each host three GE Jenbacher engines and Buford has five, all supplied by Nixon Energy, which is responsible for daily operations and maintenance. &ldquo;The uniqueness about these projects, and what ties them all together, are that all three are identical in design, with the exception of one site having five engines,&rdquo; Hall says. &ldquo;We went above and beyond to standardize our project design to be efficient with spare parts and operations and maintenance&mdash;we spent some extra capital to make sure we have a very sustainable project long-term.&rdquo; Hall points out that the offtake agreement with Georgia Power was separated into smaller, but same-term power purchase agreements to accommodate each of the sites. &ldquo;We negotiated all of the project terms in parallel, and constructed all sites in parallel,&rdquo; he says. On the permitting process, Mas Energy knows the ropes in Georgia, where Hall says regulators are &ldquo;very pro-business, but also take appropriate actions for protecting the environment and community. They don&rsquo;t cut corners, but they are very responsive,&rdquo; he says, adding that from application submittal to permit awarding, it took about 100 days. One strategy for expediting the process, according to Hall, is that Mas Energy self-elects to install post-combustion treatment to ensure a smoother permitting process. &ldquo;We permitted these projects as what are called Synthetic Minors, which means we install equipment to keep emission levels below major permit thresholds for the city of Atlanta,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Places like California have stricter emissions policies and more challenging processes, but we have a good working relationship with the Georgia Environmental Protection Department, and we understand their permitting process well.&rdquo; As for future projects in the landfill gas market, Hall says it&rsquo;s slowed from the pace the industry was growing at five or six years ago, as a result of depressed natural gas prices, but there are still some bright spots, such as high-Btu projects. &ldquo;That market seems to be very active at the moment,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re yet to develop a project like that, but we know others who are very active in that market sector. We&rsquo;re just looking for the right opportunities.&rdquo; Author: Anna Simet Managing Editor, Biomass Magazine asimet@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4962

At the Richland Creek Landfill in Buford, Georgia, this gas condition system dehydrates and cleans captured landfill gas prior to combustion in engine generator sets. 

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Mas Energy simultaneously completed three landfill-gas-to-energy systems in metro Atlanta.

Mas-tering Landfill Gas Multiples

The rate at which small- and industrial-scale biomass thermal or combined-heat-and-power (CHP) systems are being installed in the U.S. has slowed a bit in the wake of the global oil price depression, but use is still on the rise as schools, universities, hospitals and others continue to choose biomass thermal as a replacement for outdated and inefficient oil boilers. This is particularly true in the Northeast U.S., where, for many years, there has been a growing movement to adopt, expand, incentivize and educate the public of the benefits of modern wood heat. Coincidentally, the region is also home to the most heating oil-addicted states. New biomass heating system installations are often paired with operators who may not have experience using wood fuel. When exploring locally available options, a user might choose to use whole tree chips as fuel. Or, they may opt to use bole chips. Or microchips, or semi-dry chips. Or precision dry chips. Or screened chips, hog fuel, grindings, clean chips or dirty chips. The list goes on. With widely varying terminology, definitions and fuel quality are also likely to widely vary, a problem that some industry stakeholders are working hard to resolve. Burlington, Vermont-based Biomass Energy Resource Center, a nonprofit focused on advancing the use of community-scale biomass energy, is heading up a major initiative to do just that&mdash;develop and adopt a U.S. wood chip standard much like has been done in Europe.&nbsp; &ldquo;We have done a fair amount of work on this topic in the past, just because we feel that the industry will benefit tremendously from doing this,&rdquo; says Adam Sherman, BERC senior consultant. A national woodchip standard would nicely compliment an ongoing trend away from highly customized systems to more standardized, mass-produced biomass boilers, Sherman says, while also fundamentally addressing the fact that wood chip fuel quality in the past &ldquo;has been highly anecdotal, and highly subjective in terminology.&rdquo; Funded by a U.S. Forest Service Wood Education and Resource Center Grant, other partners working directly on the initiative include Innovative Natural Resource Solutions, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, and the Biomass Thermal Energy Council. After some delay in acquiring the grant money, the team is finally moving forward, says Charlie Neibling, partner with INRS. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to be relying heavily on in-kind support of participants on an advisory committee and many others who we hope will take interest in this project as we proceed,&rdquo; he says. Outreach has already begun, and a variety of perspectives are desired and expected. &ldquo;A need for such a standard may not have dawned on many people&mdash;hopefully, we&rsquo;re ahead of the curve with this,&rdquo; Neibling says. &ldquo;I believe that biomass heat and CHP holds tremendous promise in this country. It has hit a bit of a road bump with what happened with low fossil heating fuel prices and other issues, but in the long-term, especially if our government gets it right with carbon accounting, we have tremendous opportunity, and not just with chips but all manner and forms of biomass in heat and CHP.&rdquo; Going Mainstream If a wood heat is to be adopted and deployed as a mainstream energy choice, there must be a push to move it from its narrow niche status into a much more mainstream choice, according to Neibling. &ldquo;It has to be clean, and it has to be efficient and operate with high reliability and consistent, predictable performance,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It has to be as close as possible to what you can do with oil, propane and natural gas today, and it has to be easy for people to transition.&rdquo; Good combustion and good performance are key, and both are products of well-engineered boilers tight to fuel specification, as well as using fuel that consistently meets that specification. &ldquo;Day in and day out, week in and week out, the owner, operator, manufacturer, installer and maintainer of that boiler have to know that system is going to operate as advertised, and that ultimately, the regulators have to know that as well,&rdquo; Neibling says. The problem is that there is no widely adopted wood chip fuel standard today, even though every other heating fuel&mdash;even wood pellets, of late&mdash;is governed by quality standards. &ldquo;There are European and national standards, but they aren&rsquo;t widely known or adopted,&rdquo; Neibling says. &ldquo;They had somewhat limited involvement of North American interests in their development, and we think it&rsquo;s time we take a run at this in America.&rdquo; The wood chip heating sector was mainly large-scale wood chip systems in earlier years, and it was commonplace for manufacturers to say their equipment could be engineered to burn anything, Sherman points out. &ldquo;That was probably a true statement, but as you scale down and do smaller projects in a less-customized way, you need equipment that can yield predictable, reliable performance and emissions&mdash;that&rsquo;s what this national standard is,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Someone might say, &lsquo;this is designed to burn clean chips,&rsquo; and a supplier might say &lsquo;well, I have hog fuel.&rsquo; They&rsquo;re talking to each other and using terms that they may not know what they mean, the boundaries or parameters. This will get away from that.&rdquo; So what would a wood chip standard look like? It would include specifications including chip size, length, width, depth, moisture content, chip energy content and density, acceptable percent overs and unders, fines, existence of nonwood contaminants, and species. &ldquo;The terminology will allow us all to operate off a common vocabulary,&rdquo; Neibling says. Sherman gives the example of users calling their fuel &ldquo;paper grade&rdquo; chips. &ldquo;Historically, that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;ve been called, and at one time they may have been produced to that spec because they were actually used for papermaking,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But if 90 percent of those chips are going into the wood heating market, they should probably be called something different than paper grade chips. We&rsquo;ve started looking at grades, A through D, a classification system that addresses these issues and will put specific boundaries on the allowable ranges for each of the quality parameters.&rdquo; As more European-designed boilers make their way into the North American market, Sherman says there has been more recognition of a lack of fuel standards. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s often a surprise that there isn&rsquo;t greater clarity on fuel quality, because that&rsquo;s the norm in Europe, where they have different gradations based on individual quality parameters,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;For ash, they have A1, A2, etc. Then they have particle size gradations, and moisture content...here, there may be a move to simplify it a bit and roll up key quality parameters&mdash;for example, if a chip meets X, Y and Z, it&rsquo;s a grade A.&rdquo; &nbsp;It&rsquo;s essential to not only develop a chip standard that is technically accurate, but one that will be understood and used, Sherman says. &ldquo;It should bridge the gap between fuel suppliers and knowing what equipment and materials they can pass through a chipper or grinder, or series of screens, and how they can transport, store and handle material to yield a certain grade of chip. They need to not only understand the technical parameters of each grade, but how to effectively produce them.&rdquo; Conversely, engineers, energy experts, and vendors of the combustion and material handling equipment integrated at the facilities that burn that fuel need to understand how to design the systems that work with these different grades of chips, he adds. &ldquo;It has to have function on both fronts, and I think the stakeholder engagement process and going through the whole ANSI-accredited process will yield a quality technical document, but also development of some ancillary guidance to make sure it has usefulness to both fuel suppliers and users of the fuel.&rdquo; The well-recognized and credible standard-setting agency, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers will be leading efforts in putting together the technical documents. The group is accredited by the American National Standards Institute, and has 14 different areas in which it has developed a U.S. position on the International Organization of Standardization. One of them is solid biofuels, or Technical Committee 238. Driving Engagement &ldquo;For a national ANSI standard for wood chips directly combusted in boilers, we will facilitate the effort just like we have for other groups that have come to us wanting do a standard that fits into one of our standardization areas,&rdquo; says Scott Cedarquist, director of standards and technical activities at ASABE. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll bring together a group to write a document according to certain rules and format, based upon consensus that has been reached.&rdquo; Cedarquist points out that not all stakeholders have to vote the same way as to what&rsquo;s included in the document, but &ldquo;most have to be headed in the same direction. There is a comment resolution process, and if there are objections to some components, they have to be dealt with. At the end, we will have a final document for publishing, one that meets requirements that ANSI accredits us to follow, and audits every five years. There are many steps, and our staff will help shepherd this group through it. A lot of our members are already involved in ISO work on other renewable energy initiatives.&rdquo; Stakeholder engagement is crucial in the process, Cedarquist emphasizes. &ldquo;What makes a strong standard are these different perspectives pulled together, and that&rsquo;s what we do in this process. I think the vision of the leaders on this is to be really all-inclusive, and the challenge could just be the number of comments we get, and the process of synthesizing all of them down to what&rsquo;s included in the final document.&rdquo; Input from individuals working directly in the space, such as Jon Baker, operations manager of Cousineau Forest Products, will be sought. Baker has been in the chip supplying business for 20 years, and his company handles up to one million tons of chips each year, selling to pulp and paper mills, commercial biomass plants and wood pellet manufacturer. Stakeholder Perspective &ldquo;We started in 1996, and we have a facility here in New Hampshire where we have truck scales, trailer tippers, chippers and screening, we can manufacture and store different types of chips at this facility, and we also broker chips from external suppliers as well,&rdquo; Baker says. The company has its roots in selling chips to pulp mills, but in 2001, began selling chips to schools in Vermont. &ldquo;CHP units were going up everywhere, and we started providing to them&mdash;this last heating season we serviced 30 CHP units in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont with about 40,000 tons of chips. We take care of the University of Maine at Farmington and Colby College, some government county complexes, jails,&nbsp; nursing homes, some factories and private businesses&hellip;from places that use as little as 250 tons per year to places that use 15,000 tons per year.&rdquo; &nbsp;Much of the orders come from Cousineau&rsquo;s plant, but the company purchases from external suppliers&mdash;sawmills, logging companies or chipping facilities&mdash;if the customer is too far away, but still takes care of trucking and quality control. &ldquo;With so many pulp and paper mills closing, this [biomass heat] has been where the opportunity has been over these past few years. It&rsquo;s good work, it&rsquo;s local, and the margins are a bit better than what we did with the paper mill&mdash;it&rsquo;s an area of growth for our company.&rdquo; There are, however, distinct differences in quality and labor when it comes to a pulp mill chip, compared to one that might be used at a school. &ldquo;The pulp mill has to come from wood that has been debarked, the chips have to be screened, the fines removed and the oversized resized or removed, we do make those,&rdquo; Baker says. &ldquo;For the schools, we have a whole range&mdash;it depends on the boiler system or type of material handling. We have schools and colleges that we can take the chips right out of the woods from a timber harvest, right off the chipper, and others we have to bring to our facility and refine and screen and make a certain size. Generally speaking, they don&rsquo;t need to be as perfect as the pulp quality chip.&rdquo; On a wood chip standard, Baker agrees it would be helpful. &ldquo;Depending on what boiler manufacturer is putting the system in, or what type of material handling they have, there is quite a different between systems on what type of quality they can handle&mdash;it&rsquo;s mostly in the material handling,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Most of the time, the boiler will burn it if delivered, but there can be all kinds of issues with the material handling system&mdash;the auger systems, conveyors. If there was a standard that everyone followed, perhaps it would take some of those variables out of the equation.&rdquo; It may be challenging, however, for some smaller suppliers, in some instances potentially edging them out of a marketshare. &ldquo;For example, there might be some logging companies that have a contract with a greenhouse or public school in their community, a local spot market they would like to be involved in. If they were too stringent, that could be a barrier to them. If they&rsquo;re a logger and have a chipper on the landing, there&rsquo;s only so much they can do. So, it could be an issue for some folks. That would be a concern of mine, if it prevented some small businesses from participating.&rdquo; Over the years, Baker adds, he has had the opportunity to provide some input in the design phase on similar initiatives. &ldquo;I have always tried to stress that when they put these systems in, they have to have material handling systems robust enough to handle varying quality, so more suppliers cab participate,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It helps keeps the [system] owner&rsquo;s cost down, because if they need a perfect chip, they have to pay for that. It&rsquo;s also nice to have options when you&rsquo;re buying fuel, to not be restricted, and to be able buy what&rsquo;s readily available in the community and not reach out 100 miles, because the local folks can&rsquo;t make what you can burn. It makes sense on both ends, the suppliers&rsquo; and buyers&rsquo;.&rdquo; Sherman says with development of the standard, the intention is to also provide some ancillary, how-to guidance for chip suppliers. &ldquo;This would say, for example, if you want to do a grade A chip, you would have to debark, along with the material handling and feedstock sourcing details required to yield that quality.&rdquo; On the other side of the equation are boiler suppliers, another important stakeholder group to engage during the standards-making process. According Bede Wellford, Veissmann Manufacturing Co. renewable sales manager, the initiative is much needed. &ldquo;My very simple and straightforward answer is absolutely yes,&rdquo; he says. Viessmann currently sells two lines of wood chip boilers in the U.S.&mdash;one has the ability to burn up to 30 to 35 percent moisture chips, and the other up to 50 percent moisture, Wellford says. &ldquo;So there&rsquo;s an incentive to be able to standardize and reliably purchase so-called &lsquo;dry&rsquo; chips,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s just a piece of it, moisture content. Another component is, if you look at our technical or installation and operation manuals, we provide a complete set of specs. The reason for that is that it&rsquo;s very important for the operation of the boiler.&rdquo; Mechanical dimensions of chip fuel are also significant, according to Wellford. &ldquo;An auger will move a matchbook-size chip all day long and be very happy, but when you feed it a two-foot-long, inch- and-a-half diameter stick, your chances are 50-50 that it&rsquo;s going to lodge somewhere and jam the auger,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had this experience personally with the very first wood chip boiler that I was involved in commissioning&mdash;it had a very robust wedge floor, and the chips got to the first auger with no problem, no matter what they looked like, but when I walked in there I found all of these two-foot-long, two-inch diameter sticks, and big chunks. That can cause problems, and it did. After that, they imposed supplier discipline.&rdquo; But in another case at a local high school, a paper-quality chip has been delivered from day one, and there has never been an issue. &ldquo;Being able to specify the quality of the chips, mechanically, is critical,&rdquo; Wellford says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s what a wood chip standard would do.&rdquo; On the notion that some boilers &ldquo;can burn anything,&rdquo; Wellford says the idea, which is losing its luster amidst the push for a more modern wood heating industry, is &ldquo;certainly not true of our boilers&mdash;we&rsquo;re very specific about what can and can&rsquo;t be burned. The quality of the fuel is very important to the quality of the combustion, and the character of the emissions. So, if you burn anything, you can also get anything.&rdquo; Neibling and Sherman hold similar opinions. &ldquo;Europeans concluded long ago that if this technology is to really take hold in the marketplace, we&rsquo;ve got to move away from this mentality,&rdquo; Neibling says. And there, the standards are &ldquo;very cut and dry, and people don&rsquo;t have problems,&rdquo; Wellford adds. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the motivation for us as a boiler supplier, to support this.&rdquo; The standards team hopes to have them wrapped up by the end of 2017. In the meantime, a significant effort will be made to engage the entire supply chain in the development process, and that includes not only boiler manufacturers and fuel producers, but supply chain intermediators, fuel processers, and consumers, who, in order for the sector to gain more ground, must start looking at wood heat in the same manner they do other traditional means of heating. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a major market barrier, and honing in on and giving both the reality and perception of reliability, security and confidence when consumers make the investment in this technology&mdash;that they will get X, Y and Z, and they bank on that, because they have standardized fuel,&rdquo; Sherman adds. &ldquo;This will build market confidence, and break down those lingering barriers to making biomass energy more mainstream.&rdquo;
To find out more about this initiative, visit <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.woodchipstandard.org&amp;d=CwMFAg&amp;c=IaXKzPzLOvtE1b6FJBWbw2EjBgJ76D4Vv5FmxREy6Ro&amp;r=C6YHupAgRHNpbkwAfa549XI6LmCZkj3B7trVhR0ZdOg&amp;m=ClGz_GOLexXxwdCRou2vjPoPKOTjRFhoMKYRaee_rj8&amp;s=bzhTZW7Tba3cAdY6c-Fzk2HNIH520TD7_v2oUp2SLQw&amp;e=">www.woodchipstandard.org</a>. 
Author: Anna Simet Managing Editor, Biomass Magazine asimet@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4961

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A U.S. wood chip standard will provide benefits across the supply chain, enabling the biomass thermal sector to gain more ground in the country's heating fuel market.

Chipping Away at a Standard

For those who have been involved in growing the biomass heating sector, we have long faced the double challenge of explaining why both our fuel source and its usage matter. Overcoming the blank stares that the word &ldquo;biomass&rdquo; often elicits is the first challenge. The second is explaining that heating and cooling comprise nearly 40 percent of our national energy consumption, yet there&rsquo;s very little concerted policy or environmental focus on reducing the carbon footprint from all of that thermal energy. Today, I can report that, little by little, this is starting to change.&nbsp; Just a few weeks ago, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council released its updated mission and vision statement. BTEC was founded in 2009, precisely because conversations about thermal energy didn&rsquo;t include biomass, and conversations about biomass didn&rsquo;t include thermal energy. This isn&rsquo;t to throw shade at biofuels, biomass power, or other forms of thermal energy; it reflects a blind spot, one that still persists today, but is becoming smaller. One of the bolder statements in the vision is that &ldquo;by 2025, the use of sustainable wood and agricultural biomass for thermal (heating and cooling) and combined-heat-and-power (CHP) is a mainstream energy choice.&rdquo; But we will only have a chance to achieve that nine-year goal if &ldquo;policies at the local, state, regional and federal levels support thermal and CHP from biomass equally with respect to other renewable sources of energy.&rdquo; That type of equal treatment is key, and we are now starting to see steps taken to make that vision a reality. For example, Yale University&rsquo;s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies recently launched an initiative to encourage the growth of renewable thermal technologies, including air- and ground-source heat pumps, biomass heating and district heating and cooling, and solar thermal. The great differences between how these technologies operate means that there is still much work to be done to create useful standardized definitions, financing models, and practices that work for all of them. Nonetheless, this is the important work that will need to be done in order for policies such as New Hampshire&rsquo;s Thermal Renewable Energy Credit system to become truly common. Finally, it is important to look into the future for how we can continue to expand public understanding of renewable heating with biomass. We should focus on rural areas where biomass adoption can provide desperately needed jobs and fuel price stability to low-income households. For example, the National Association of Counties recently passed a resolution supportive of biomass at its annual conference. The resolution, put forward by Tom Hyde, commissioner of Columbia County, Washington, states &ldquo;NACo supports and encourages the further use, including government policies which foster the development of, woody biomass energy sources like wood chips and wood pellets, because they are reliable, renewable, and carbon neutral, consistent with established and well-supported science.&rdquo; The biomass thermal industry has plenty of ready made allies, and biomass heating provides stable, long-term, direct jobs related to fuel handing, processing, and delivery, long after the initial installation, something that most other renewable thermal technologies cannot boast. In addition, for policy buzz areas like reliability, resiliency, and CHP microgrids, biomass provides a unique opportunity among renewables, being a dispatchable technology in a space still dominated by natural gas. With a reinvigorated vision for what we can contribute, BTEC invites our industry partners and allied renewable thermal technologies to make those climate and economic benefits a reality. &nbsp; &nbsp; Author: Ben Bell-Walker Biomass Thermal Energy Council, Technical Affairs 202-596-3974 Ben.bell-walker@biomassthermal.org

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With a reinvigorated vision for what we can contribute, BTEC invites our industry partners and allied renewable thermal technologies to make those climate and economic benefits a reality.

Biomass Key Player as Renewable Thermal Gains Steam

Afuel pathway management platform is being designed for ethanol producers, corn growers, pellet producers and utilities to capitalize on the potential benefits of using crop residue as densified biomass fuel for cofiring at power plants. Partnering in this endeavor the past five years are Trestle Energy LLC, a low-carbon fuel company that works with Midwestern ethanol producers, and Larksen LLC, a biomass company that provides agricultural residues to Midwestern power plants. After demonstrating its small-scale viability and receiving favorable carbon intensity (CI) ratings from both the California Air Resources Board and the British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines, the joint initiative is in a position to focus on commercializing the new approach, but it may be some time before the process becomes commercially feasible. As a fuel supplier under low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) programs in California and British Columbia, Trestle is the owner of this coproduct pathway that has the potential of reducing an ethanol plant&rsquo;s CI rating, as demonstrated by CARB&rsquo;s and BC&rsquo;s pathway approvals. Trestle has been speaking to those involved in the ethanol industry about this opportunity. To implement this pathway, Trestle partnered with Larksen, which has historically collaborated with biomass suppliers and coal plants. Jamie Rhodes, president of the joint initiative, says the companies were founded in 2012 to develop decarbonization pathways for commercialization, with Trestle&rsquo;s first fuel pathways targeting the potential that crop residues have to decarbonize activities for, in this instance, power and liquid fuel suppliers. Since its founding, the partnership has embarked on the lengthy process of working through data, models, reporting requirements and other verification steps necessary to make commercialization possible, and it currently has a pathway petition pending with the U.S. EPA. A demonstration project was launched in Iowa at the end of 2012 and continued through September 2013 to help support the fuel applications to California and British Columbia. &ldquo;It was really helpful in validating the assumptions that were built into our model, both the technical and economic assumptions,&rdquo; Rhodes says. The joint project integrates two supply chains&mdash;one for the grain delivered to the ethanol plant where it&rsquo;s made into ethanol and delivered to the fuel market, and the other for crop residues used as a fuel, in the corm of pellets, for cofiring at power plants. The latter has long been recognized for its potential, but &ldquo;has been aspirational up to this point because the economics are just not attractive,&rdquo; Rhodes says. Although the economics have been hard to pencil, the process allows the opportunity for both sides of the supply chain to reap emissions reduction benefits. &ldquo;By making pellets a coproduct of ethanol, the financial benefits of low-carbon fuels can make biomass power a cost-effective option for coal plants to use in meeting their own compliance requirements,&rdquo; Rhodes says. He adds that the pathway creates economic development opportunities across the agricultural sector, as farmers are able to generate new products and revenue by harvesting their crop residues and selling them to a pellet mill to process and deliver to the power plant. The fuel pathway is intended to open up LCFS markets domestically and abroad as well. &ldquo;LCFS markets are one of the few policy tools we have that can drive investments into low-carbon fuel production,&rdquo; Rhodes says. &ldquo;Our pathway shows that ethanol can be one of the ways we deliver low-carbon fuels. There are lots of winners under LCFS programs&mdash;grain ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, renewable natural gas&mdash;a whole host of opportunities to deliver low-carbon fuel.&rdquo; Larksen worked with Iowa-based Cedar Falls Utilities for the demonstration-scale project, which became part of a broader set of test burns that the utility had been working on for nearly a decade. CFU had already been testing the feasibility of various types of densified (cubed or pelletized) biomass as fuel for electricity production in one of its generating units. Rhodes explains that persuading utilities like CFU to open its doors to biomass fuel pellets is one of the limiting factors for producing low-carbon ethanol with Trestle&rsquo;s fuel pathway. &ldquo;Utilities are understandably conservative and reticent to do something different that might impact their operations,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;As a biofuel industry, we should be supporting their regulators, giving them credit for taking in biomass pellets as a way to meet their compliance requirements. They should see a benefit because they are doing a lot of heavy lifting at their facility to let us in the door.&rdquo; Supplying much of the fuel-handling, densifying and conveying equipment for Trestle and Larksen&rsquo;s demonstration effort was Warren &amp; Baerg Manufacturing Inc. They were a natural fit, as they had some limited involvement helping the utility with biomass test burns prior to teaming up for the demonstration. Warren &amp; Baerg got its start in the hay and animal feed industry, providing equipment for cubing, grinding and handling alfalfa. &ldquo;When alfalfa prices would rise, less costly crop residues came into the animal feed side of the spectrum,&rdquo; says Randy Baerg, president of the company. Baerg says this is when the company began getting accustomed to handling corn stover and other biomass residues, and now its equipment has a few different uses in the biomass industry. Spurred by climbing fuel prices in the early 1980s, the company began supplying equipment to the waste industry to densify various materials like low-grade recyclables (paper, cardboard, plastics), as well as wood, straw and stover. In recent years, the company&rsquo;s grinding, metering and densification equipment has been applicable for cellulosic ethanol production as well. Other than Warren &amp; Baerg&rsquo;s equipment, Larksen has considered a wide range of pelleting technologies and found that the commercialization model can be applied to essentially any technology. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been in discussion with a variety of pellet mill manufacturers, as well as folks who are looking at torrefaction and biochar,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I think all of those technologies are interesting, and there may be opportunities for each of them.&rdquo; As a starting point, Rhodes says, they tried to minimize technology risk and energy requirements. For this reason, their default configuration for deployment, subject to the fuel specifications of the coal plant, utilizes equipment like Warren &amp; Baerg&rsquo;s, which&nbsp; was originally developed to manufacture feeding cubes from alfalfa and hay. One of the differences between pellets and the stover cubes that his company&rsquo;s densifying equipment creates, Baerg says, is the reduced cost in grinding. He says wood pellets work much better for the pellet stove and clean wood market, but cubes work well for industrial biomass applications due to the reduced operating cost. Larksen used a mobile unit for the demonstration project with most of Warren &amp; Baerg&rsquo;s equipment mounted on a 50-foot truck trailer. &ldquo;Basically, it&rsquo;s the complete metering, feeding, cubing system. The additional piece that&rsquo;s needed separate from the unit is some grinding equipment to run the corn stover through,&rdquo; Baerg says. Rhodes conceptualizes a few different options for future commercial fuel processing, but the mobility of the demo unit was an added benefit for this phase. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re assuming that most projects would start with permanently installed equipment, like a pellet mill, and that the corn stalk bales would be brought to a centralized facility where they would be processed and loaded into rail cars for delivery to the coal plant,&rdquo; Rhodes says. &ldquo;But, the nice thing about the equipment we used for demonstration is you can operate it on a mobile basis&mdash;move it around to different sites where you have storage on the field&rsquo;s edge and then, instead of having to haul bales as far, you can run the cuber right on the field&rsquo;s edge and then load and haul the pellets in trailers.&rdquo; As for what works best, Rhodes says, &ldquo;It depends on the logistics and feed-handling system at the coal plant.&rdquo; He adds that the approach they&rsquo;re taking is to work with the coal plant managers and operators to find out what format is needed&nbsp; for their boilers, feed-handling systems and overall logistics supply chain. &ldquo;Larksen worked with us and the fuel user to make the minimal modifications needed,&rdquo; Baerg says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s always one of the main concerns&mdash;whatever fuel they&rsquo;re running, which is largely coal, they want the densified biomass product to come in and feed and operate well in that same equipment.&rdquo; Cedar Falls receives coal delivery by rail with a particular handling and receiving system for coal coming out of the rail cars. Besides hauling the material to a central processing facility, it can also be transported to smaller, decentralized facilities that are spread out through farming communities. Rhodes says they&rsquo;re expecting to use this more distributed model, comparable to the grain elevator model, with a number of facilities available for local farmers to bring their corn stalks to for densification and then delivery to the coal plant. Another advantage to a distributed network of facilities is that the equipment that&rsquo;s been used thus far is widely known in the agricultural sector. &ldquo;The maintenance and management of the technology is fairly straightforward and robust, which makes it particularly suitable for use in a distributed network and a broader system of facilities,&rdquo; Rhodes says. Larksen worked with Warren &amp; Baerg to create a custom set of dies to meet the fuel specifications of the utility&rsquo;s boilers. What was discovered to burn best was a large-format round pellet about one inch to an inch and a quarter in size, with 15 percent moisture or less. Rhodes says the pellets Larksen supplied for the test burns rated around 7,000 to 8,000 Btu per pound, which puts the fuel on par with low-rank coal, and within the design range of most coal plants. He says every facility will differ as to how much biomass it cofires with coal, but, in general, a large coal plant can burn 5 to 10 percent without too many changes to the plant&rsquo;s fuel-handling system. Of course, moving from demonstration to commercial scale depends on a number of factors, including, among others, a utility&rsquo;s willingness to cofire and the government&rsquo;s ruling of biomass under carbon-reduction legislation like the Clean Power Plan. &ldquo;I think when you look at the CPP, although they haven&rsquo;t come out with definitive rules for how biomass and biofuels will be treated from a carbon accounting perspective, the existing rules hold significant opportunities for coal plants to cofire biomass,&rdquo; Rhodes says. He adds that some utilities are turning to natural gas, which exposes rate payers to the volatility of these markets. Others are switching to wind, but this creates some management problems with intermittency of supply and the capital-intensive nature of conversions. &ldquo;I would like to think utilities are pursuing a portfolio approach&mdash;not locking themselves into any one technology&mdash;and I hope the federal government supports that,&rdquo; Rhodes says. Although this fuel pathway involves utilities, ethanol plants could use corn stalk pellets directly at the plant to reduce their CI, Rhodes says. However, many plants are now using natural gas and would need to determine if installing a biomass combined-heat-and-power unit is an efficient option for them. For the time being, Rhodes and his team are optimistic about the initiative&rsquo;s journey toward commercialization. &ldquo;We have a whole series of test burning opportunities that could launch for 2017 harvest,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Since we received the approval, we&rsquo;ve been speaking with utilities, mainly in the western half of the Midwest, looking at opportunities to commercialize.&rdquo; Author: Katie Fletcher Associate Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4920 kfletcher@bbiinternational.com

Large-Format Pellet: Densified corn stover was used for a biomass cofiring demonstration project, and one of the benefits of using the cube is its 
similarity to the bulk density weight of coal. Larksen used the one-inch to one-and-a-quarter-inch rou

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Trial by Train: As part of the demonstration project, Jamie Rhodesâ€™s team at 
Larksen spoke with Iowa Northern Railroad and identified a transload facility 
convenient for it to process the corn stover, and load it directly into rail cars 
for deli

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Demo Equipment: Warren & Baerg Manufacturing provided the grinding, screening, densification and fuel-feeding equipment for Larksen and Trestle 
Energyâ€™s demonstration project that involves the sustainable harvesting of corn stover to cofire as a d

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A tag-team effort combining biofuels and biomass expertise aims to commercialize a fuel pathway with the potential to benefit all links in the supply chain. 

A Densified Decarbonization Strategy

Low crude oil prices have driven the cost of heating oil in the U.S. below the cost of wood pellets for the equivalent energy in most locations. The impact on the heating pellet sector is very challenging in the Northeast, which is disproportionally reliant on heating oil compared to the rest of the U.S. At current prices, heating oil is about $200 cheaper per year. The gap has come down in recent months as pellet prices have dropped. But low heating oil prices combined with a relatively warm 2015-'16 winter have significantly dampened demand for premium wood pellets. Inventory levels remain high. Until crude oil prices go above about $65 per barrel, it is likely that the premium wood pellet market demand will continue to have dampened demand, and downward pressure on the retail prices for pellets.&nbsp;&nbsp; It is quite possible that some of the existing pellet mills will be unable to generate breakeven cash flows under these conditions. Smaller, independent family-owned mills may not have the resources to weather these challenges. If a pellet mill is for sale, how can the buyer or seller determine its market value? There are three basic valuation methods for determining the value of an existing pellet plant.&nbsp; All three require that the participants have a broad perspective of the value of plant&rsquo;s assets, its productive capability, and the current and future markets for wood fiber and for pellets. The three methods are based on: 1) the cost of a new facility of the same size; 2) the historic and expected future cash flows; 3) the net asset value of the plant. Method 1: The value of an existing plant, in most cases, is less than the cost of building a new facility. The cost of a new, same-sized facility in the same market should set an upper bound on the value.&nbsp; In very general terms, as a typical benchmark, the expected cost for a new plant with a nameplate of 90,000 tons per year (TPY) that is expected to run for 85 percent of the hours in a year (7,446 hours) and thus actually producing 76,500 TPY, costs roughly $23.8 million, keeping in mind that every plant is different and may have different cost structures. Method 2: The next step in a valuation exercise requires a cash flow analysis. The level of free cash flow is often measured by EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Existing operations may have historical information that provides the financial data needed for a cash flow analysis. Some plants that have experienced recent equipment upgrades and operations optimization, or have been running below their normal operating levels due to the recent market challenges, may not have trailing financial data that is fully relevant to a valuation cash flow analysis. Keeping in mind that every project is different, for the hypothetical 90,000 TPY plant, expected EBITDA using a typical cash flow analysis is $1.69 million in 2017. A typical negotiated valuation will be a multiple of that value. Multiples of 4.5 times to 6.5 times are typical. The riskier or more uncertain the future cash flows are, the lower the multiple.&nbsp; If the hypothetical project above were valued at six times the expected EBITDA of 2017, then the selling price would be $9.6 million. For forward-looking valuations, the terms of the deal may include an earnout.&nbsp; An earnout is a contractual provision stating that the seller of a business will receive additional compensation in the future, if the business achieves certain financial goals. For the example above, the closing price may be $7 million with an earnout of $2.6 million at the end of 2017, if EBITDA exceeds an agreed- upon hurdle.&nbsp; Method 3: The buyer may also want to perform a balance sheet or net asset value (NAV) assessment of the project. The balance sheet or book value of the assets are the original cost of the assets minus the accumulated depreciation. Accumulated depreciation is an accounting metric that often has little to do with the actual market value of an asset.&nbsp; A well-maintained asset will hold its market value, and is often worth more than book value. The NAV is the book value of the assets minus the balance sheet liabilities. While a balance sheet valuation can provide some perspective, it will typically yield valuations that are lower than the market value of the project. In most cases, the cash flow analysis should provide the central point for the negotiation, the greenfield valuation should provide an upper bound, and the balance sheet analysis a lower bound. Author: William Strauss President, FutureMetrics Inc.&nbsp; Williamstrauss@futuremetrics.com &nbsp;207 824-6702

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Low crude oil prices have driven the cost of heating oil in the U.S. below the cost of wood pellets for the equivalent energy in most locations.

Determining Value  of Existing Pellet Plants

In Iowa, corn stover bales sit unprotected in vast piles, exposed to sun and rain, until they are picked off the pile and carried by a forklift to a bale receiving machine. They are then shredded and milled, and passed immediately into pretreatment for conversion into cellulosic ethanol. In Minnesota, urban wood waste is shredded, stored in piles in a woodyard, loaded onto trucks and delivered to a downtown heat-and-power facility for feeding into a boiler.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These approaches, characterized by few, if any, additional efforts to better prepare the feedstock for conversion, are common throughout the biomass-to-energy industry. According to researchers at the nation&rsquo;s national laboratories, this low-tech approach must evolve if the biomass-to-energy industry is going to significantly increase its contributions to the nation&rsquo;s power, heat and fuel portfolios. This approach, where biomass handling, sizing and drying all occur at the conversion facility, is referred to as a direct couple, and researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, among others, are urging the industry to move away from a practice they say carries too much operational risk. &ldquo;A conventional system that you see the guys building today are mostly passive systems, with very little active control in them at all including active moisture management,&rdquo; says Richard Hess, director of the the Idaho National Laboratory Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy&nbsp; Program Office. &ldquo;The grinder is directly coupled to the pretreater. If the grinder plugs and shuts down, it shuts the whole plant down.&rdquo; In other industries that handle vast quantities of solid materials, Hess notes, it is rare that&nbsp; preprocessing and conversion are coupled to the degree that they currently are at many biomass-to-energy facilities. &ldquo;If you look at the Budweiser plant out here, its receiving station is five miles away, and all their malt formulations are done there,&rdquo; Hess says. &ldquo;Once that is done, a train car rolls out and drops it all in the malt plant. It&rsquo;s completely decoupled.&rdquo; Hess recognizes that biorefineries, heat plants, and biomass power plants are all capable of particle size reduction, but he and others are calling for more measures, preferably happening at some remove from the conversion facility. &ldquo;Taking a corn stover bale, grinding it up and changing it from an 8- pound-per-cubic foot rat&rsquo;s nest to a 2-pound-per-cubic foot rat&rsquo;s nest that still won&rsquo;t flow is not an acceptable level of decoupling,&rdquo; says Hess.&nbsp; &ldquo;This material still won&rsquo;t work in the next process.&rdquo; Commercial Relevance Hess&rsquo;s assertions are an extension of an approach that the U.S. DOE has been championing for years. Most recently, the concept received more attention and articulation in the 2016 Billion-Ton Report released by the DOE in July. In chapter 6 of the report, &ldquo;To the Biorefinery: Delivered Forestland and Agricultural Resources,&rdquo; the authors call for increased innovation along the biomass feedstock supply chain, noting that current feedstock systems have &ldquo;few to no active control strategies.&rdquo; The report calls for a feedstock streams that transform &ldquo;raw feedstocks that are aerobically unstable and highly variable into a high-density, flowable format that can be traded as a commodity.&rdquo;&nbsp; For Hess and his colleagues at the DOE, the solution is to create a series of regional biomass depots where raw biomass streams of many kinds can be received, sized and upgraded for downstream conversion. The resulting material, often referred to as an intermediate, will be a conversion-ready material that can flow seamlessly through the material handling equipment at biorefineries, biomass power facilities or district heating installations. &ldquo;The biomass depot is really a business model to implement a concept, but the fundamental concept is we&rsquo;re moving from a passive feedstock supply system to an active one,&rdquo; Hess explains. &ldquo;What is active in that feedstock supply system is very feedstock and regionally specific. We can list many things from moisture, all the way down to quality control, blending or leaching.&rdquo; &nbsp;Hess says that the processes the depots would be capable of performing would vary by region, owing to the varied biomass streams available throughout the country. The active controls required to prepare corn stover for conversion into cellulosic ethanol will likely vary greatly from the steps necessary to make forest residues ready for a power plant cofiring biomass.&nbsp; &ldquo;The point is, the materials leaving a biomass depot will be conversion-ready,&rdquo; he stresses. Value-Added Upgrading For Hess, the vision of a biomass depot goes beyond merely getting biomass streams into a conversion-ready product that will flow easily into and around conversion facilities. The promise of a biomass depot, Hess notes, is really beginning to drive some increased value into biomass by increasing the ease of its later conversion. &ldquo;We need to get beyond beating on things with hammers and start looking at different types of preprocessing treatments,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Kinetic energy is really the lowest, poorest way to tear stuff apart. If you start coming in and putting a little heat here and a little bit of pressure there, your finesse and ability to take things apart into a better and more uniform product is much improved.&rdquo; Hess says that value-added upgrading, like the biomass depot concept, will vary based on the feedstock and the ultimate downstream uses of the material. &ldquo;Mild torrefaction approaches that don&rsquo;t go all the way to torrefaction but more closely resemble coffee roasting can do significant things to reduce the grinding energy, for instance,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If you can start to apply those processes on a fractional basis, then you can apply those treatments to the different issues and you can get a much better product.&rdquo; The continued evolution of the biomass industry hinges on the evolution of our ability to better preprocess the feedstock streams it intends to convert. &ldquo;Right now, we&rsquo;re just using a hammer to take apart a complex composite,&rdquo; Hess adds. &ldquo;When you do that, your quality control over the deconstruction of that product, and the particle-size distribution, is just very broad and very random. That creates a lot of challenges when you start talking about heat transfer and the processes that the biomass will undergo in the various conversion reactors these streams will end up in.&rdquo; Author: Tim Portz Executive Editor, Biomass Magazine tportz@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4969

BEYOND KINETICS: Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory are working to better understand preprocessing approaches that will add value to biomass streams by upgrading them in a manner that makes their later conversion more efficient. 

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National laboratories are making a strong argument that the industry's approach to biomass handling and preparation needs a paradigm shift.

The Odd Decouple

The final version of the U.S. EPA&rsquo;s Clean Power Plan was introduced one year ago. While the final plan included some promising language about biomass, declaring its renewable attributes and recognizing its potential to &ldquo;control increases of CO2 in the atmosphere,&rdquo; it still left open the question of how a state could include biomass power in its State Implementation Plan, for which EPA requires each state to submit an outline of its steps to meet a carbon reduction target set by the agency. The lack of certainty for biomass has plenty of troubling implications. As the Scientific Advisory Board panel enters its sixth year of discussions, there is little hope for a conclusion on the horizon. The major worry is that, by not explicitly defining how a state may incorporate biomass in its plan, the EPA may discourage states from doing so, in order to avoid additional scrutiny. Now, while the U.S. Supreme Court has placed a hold on the Clean Power Plan pending litigation, is a good time to urge the EPA to make a decision on how to treat biomass, and stick to it. The lack of certainty affects not only the drafting of state plans, but also other, lesser-known aspects of the Clean Power Plan. Along with the final draft of the plan, the EPA released its Clean Energy Incentive Program, a credit system for states to incentivize new renewable energy generation projects before the Clean Power Plan is scheduled to fully go into effect. Originally only available for wind and solar projects, in June, the EPA unveiled a new version of the plan that allows for the inclusion of other baseload technologies like hydropower and geothermal, while still omitting biomass, biogas and waste-to-energy technologies. The rationale we have heard for this is that only &ldquo;zero-carbon-emitting&rdquo; technologies may partake in the program, while biomass and similar technologies like biogas and waste-to-energy are considered &ldquo;low-carbon-emitting.&rdquo; From an industry perspective, it is disheartening that, even though the EPA has stated clearly that the use of residues and byproducts for biomass power may play a role in atmospheric carbon reduction, for the purposes of this program that does not apply. It also goes against the EPA&rsquo;s stated intention of the Clean Power Plan, which is to allow states the flexibility to meet carbon standards on their own terms. If a state wanted to prioritize new biomass facilities because of an abundance of fuel and a need for reliable baseload power, it is currently not permitted to use CEIP incentives to do that.&nbsp; We understand that biogenic carbon accounting is a difficult undertaking that must factor in many variables, and we don&rsquo;t envy the EPA&rsquo;s task of evaluating how to do this. Our hope is that this difficulty is addressed as soon as possible, ideally before states must submit carbon reduction plan. The exclusion of biomass from the Clean Energy Incentive Program must not give the impression that the EPA does not support the use of biomass as a carbon reduction compliance strategy.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Author: Bob Cleaves President, Biomass Power Association bob@usabiomass.org www.usabiomass.org

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The exclusion of biomass from the Clean Energy Incentive Program must not give the impression that the EPA does not support the use of biomass as a carbon reduction compliance strategy.  
 

Biomass in Clean Energy Incentive Program

UBC recognized for Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility The International District Energy Association recently presented its 2016 IDEA Innovation Award to the University of British Columbia for its Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility, a component of the university&rsquo;s &ldquo;campus as a living lab&rdquo; initiative that brings together academics, researchers, facility operators, students and&nbsp; industrial technology providers to collaborate on solutions to some of the world&rsquo;s most challenging sustainability issues.&nbsp; Completed in 2012, BRDF produces heat and power for a densely populated community that includes residential and student housing, childcare centers, operational facilities, restaurants and academic buildings. Using a unique and innovative process, the campus district energy system takes raw synthetic gas (syngas) produced from sustainable biomass, and cleans and conditions it to make an engine-grade quality fuel gas which then fuels a steam boiler and a GE Jenbacher reciprocating engine to generate heat and electricity.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sappi, Valmet to construct renewable chemical plant&nbsp; Sappi Ltd., a global producer of dissolving wood pulp and graphics, specialty and packaging papers, has entered into an agreement with Valmet for the construction of a second-generation sugar extraction demonstration plant to explore and optimize the extraction of biorenewable chemicals.&nbsp; The plant will be close to industrial size and will be located at Sappi&rsquo;s Ngodwana Mill in South Africa. Start-up of the new plant is scheduled for the beginning of 2017. DuPont, Dow stockholders approve merger DuPont and The Dow Chemical Co. announced that, at their respective special meetings of stockholders held in July, stockholders of both companies have voted to approve all stockholder proposals necessary to complete the merger of equals transaction&mdash;a key milestone in the process to merge the two companies and subsequently pursue the intended spins of three highly focused, independent companies. The companies expect the merger transaction to close in the second half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals. Biomass Systems Supply named Twinheat distributor Chico-California-based Biomass Systems Supply announced it has been named the exclusive distributor for Twinheat Biomass Boilers in the U.S. For more than 35 years, Twinheat, a Danish manufacturing company, has been developing and manufacturing biofuel burner systems and fully automatic silo systems for both industrial plants and private customers. Twinheat has more than 13,000 installations across the globe, offering systems that range from 10 to 250 kW. PHG Energy names CEO Gregory L. Bafalis has been selected as the new CEO of PHG Energy, a privately held Tennessee company focusing on waste-to-energy and solar technologies in the renewable marketplace.&nbsp; Bafalis has 30 years of leadership experience in the clean technology and energy fields, ranging from Fortune 500 Companies to starting his own private equity-backed renewable energy company in Houston, Texas, to running a Silicon Valley clean tech startup in the algae space.&nbsp; With project development, construction, financing and operations experience in 17 countries during his career, Bafalis has successfully closed over $2 billion in project financings and raised over $250 million in venture capital and private equity funding for a wide array of startup companies.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Wheelabrator moves corporate headquarters Wheelabrator Technologies, the second largest U.S. provider of clean energy from everyday residential and business waste, has relocated its U.S. corporate headquarters to Pease International Tradeport in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The office move aligned with Wheelabrator&rsquo;s unveiling of its new corporate vision, values and website. Drax Biomass facilities earn SBP certifications for 2 pellet plants The first Sustainable Biomass Partnership certificates issued by SCS Global Services, a leading global third-party certifier, were recently presented to Drax Biomass Inc. for its Morehouse BioEnergy pellet plant, located near Bastrop, Lousiana, and its Amite BioEnergy wood pellet manufacturing facility, located in Gloster, Mississippi. Each facility is equipped to produce up to 450,000 metric tons of wood pellets per year. The wood is Southern Yellow Pine sourced primarily from nearby privately owned working forests that have supported the regions&rsquo; forest-based economies for many decades.&nbsp; Thinnings, low-value roundwood, and harvesting residues are gathered and stored, then debarked and chipped.&nbsp; Woodchips are screened for size consistency, then dried and further processed into compressed pellets of uniform moisture, ash content and calorific value. The assessment by SCS included a comprehensive evaluation of each stage of the sourcing and manufacturing process, as well as an audit of Drax Biomass&rsquo;s Baton Rouge Transit storage and shipping facility. Orbital joins ABC CUI Global Inc. has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Orbital Gas Systems North America, has joined the American Biogas Council as a full member. Orbital has been an industry leader in biogas quality measurement for more than 10 years in Europe and was instrumental in developing the first commercially viable biomethane to grid installation in the U.K. Using its proprietary GasPT analyzers, Orbital has commercialized a cost-effective, more efficient, quicker and more accurate method of ensuring that biogas meets the criteria necessary for injection into the natural gas grid systems of the U.K. and in other countries. Rivertop Renewables sodium glucarate&nbsp; listed on EPA SCIL Rivertop Renewables, a Montana-based novel chemicals company, announced that sodium glucarate produced by its oxidation technology has been listed on the U.S. EPA&rsquo;s Safer Chemicals Ingredients List. Chemicals on the SCIL have been certified by the EPA as safer than traditional chemical ingredients, helping formulators secure the Safer Choice label for end products sold to industry and consumers. Rivertop&rsquo;s product, manufactured at DTI in Danville, Virginia, is the first chemical with corrosion inhibiting properties to secure full approval for the SCIL. Emerson automation aids waste-to-energy project in Poland&nbsp; Emerson Process Management, a global business of Emerson, has helped ensure the successful startup and operation of a waste-to-energy plant in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The municipal waste incineration facility, operated by Miedzygminny Kompleks Unieskkodliwiania Opdadow ProNatura, will generate 100,000 MWh of electricity per year&mdash;enough to power 50,000 homes&mdash;from 180,000 metric tons of household waste.

September 2016

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

First Things First

Advanced Biofuels at End of Obama Administration

Biomass Key Player as Renewable Thermal Gains Steam

Determining Value of Existing Pellet Plants

Biomass in Clean Energy Incentive Program

Featured

Chipping Away at a Standard

Departments

Biojet, Biogas & Biodiesel in Review

Mas-tering Landfill Gas Multiples

A Densified Decarbonization Strategy

The Odd Decouple

September 2016.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

First Things First

Advanced Biofuels at End of Obama Administration

Biomass Key Player as Renewable Thermal Gains Steam

Determining Value of Existing Pellet Plants

Biomass in Clean Energy Incentive Program

Featured

Chipping Away at a Standard

Departments

Biojet, Biogas & Biodiesel in Review

Mas-tering Landfill Gas Multiples

A Densified Decarbonization Strategy

The Odd Decouple

September 2016