Brass: Constructing a stage for ethanol creation

As its biorefinery demonstration plant churns toward one day generating automobile fuel from grass, Genera Energy is beginning construction of what will effectively be the staging grounds for that process.

This week the company, spun out from the University of Tennessee and funded with state and federal dollars, will break ground on what it’s calling the Biomass Innovation Park. The park will be sited adjacent to the demonstration biorefinery being built in partnership with Dupont Danisco as part of the company’s efforts to make ethanol from plants — first corn cobs and ultimately switchgrass.

The new facility will include a processing center for switchgrass shipped from nearby farms to be chopped and pre-treated in preparation for distillation into ethanol. The complex also will include silos for switchgrass storage, office space and a couple of acres for growing demonstration crops, said Kelly Tiller, president and CEO of Genera Energy. There also may be greenhouses for growing new varieties of plants.

“We want this to be a place where people can come and see the entire process,” she said. “We’re still finalizing budget versus what we’ll actually be able to build out.”

Construction is to be complete by the end of the calendar year — hopefully in time to accommodate the switchgrass to be harvested in late fall by local farmers as part of the demonstration process.

The park will be built with enough flexibility to test various methods of biomass preparation and storage, serving as a center for research and development for the feedstock side of the business. The park will be built with $4 million in state funds, which remain from about $70 million the state contributed toward bioenergy initiatives including the biorefinery, and about $5 million in Department of Energy money awarded Genera for switchgrass-related projects. Genera also is seeking private funding to help build certain portions of the facility, Tiller said, although no final deals have been made.

Ultimately, multiple processing facilities could end up serving a commercial-sized ethanol production plant, Kelly said.

“The real purpose of that is to scale up this process to work out all of the issues and kinks that are required to significantly expand the scale of what’s commercially viable,” she said. “We could site a number of these close to where the material is being grown.”

As for the biorefinery, which went into production last December, “they’re making very good progress,” Tiller said. “We’re really pleased with all of the data that’s coming out of the facility.”

In fact, she said, Dupont Danisco, which has long indicated its interest in building a commercial switchgrass-based ethanol production facility in East Tennessee, is moving closer to firm plans for the project, mentioning the plans several weeks ago at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. Officials with the company will attend Thursday’s groundbreaking.

This latest stage of the state’s foray into the biomass industry is getting attention from other companies exploring bioenergy as well, Tiller said.

“I would say it’s all early stage,” she said. “I don’t want to mislead you and say we’ll have some major announcement. … We are positioned and we have a lot of interest right now in the industry.”

Larisa Brass is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

source: knoxnews