By John Trotti

John Trotti

No topic is hotter these days—and that includes Global Warming—than energy security, and its principal subset, renewable energy. We all see it daily in the various news media and here at Forester in some form or other in each of our magazines—most indelibly, of course, in Distributed Energy—but persistently throughout its entire lifetime, here in MSW Management as well. So as I was considering what topic to pursue in this column, little wonder my thoughts kept returning to energy...not the why element—that’s a given—but who, how, and when?

Face it, those questions along with the better part of a five dollar bill are almost guaranteed to reward you with a cup of frothy wisdom at Starbucks, but they seem to lose steam on the way out the door, where they meet up with the challenges of our increasingly institutionalized world.

Extracting Energy From The Wastestream
I’m told there is more than enough energy value in our wastestream (marketable recyclables excluded) to power the homes of 50 million US families. Yet, at the moment, we who deal in waste don’t recover more than a fraction of the energy appetite of our own operations, despite the embarrassment of riches we hold in our hands—riches donated to us by people willing to pay us to do something about it. Does this make a whole lot of sense?

Probably not, but then what does...and where does it take us?
Right back to the who, how, and when dilemma...which is exactly where I was on Aug. 22, when a press release fluttered through the transom of my e-mail containing the following message:

Bluefire Ethanol, Inc. has identified the initial location in the United States for the commercialization of its cellulose ethanol technology and in cooperation with a publicly traded company, providing comprehensive waste and environmental services in North America, submitted a response to the U.S. Department of Energy’s request for applications to design, construct, build and operate an integrated biorefinery using cellulosic feedstock for the production of ethanol. The BlueFire biorefinery is proposed to be located at an existing landfill site in Southern California.

Is this for real? was my first response to the release, which went on to say that “...the biorefinery will process 700 tons of greenwaste and other cellulosic waste material per day into 24 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol per year.” Indeed, the project, whose location and host are nameless for the moment—is for real, and when you think about it, why not...or better still, what took so long?

While the name Bluefire Ethanol Inc. (Irvine, CA) will be new to most, the concentrated acid hydrolysis technology refined by Arkenol Inc., for which Bluefire is the North American licensee, should be familiar to those who have watched CTs over the years.

The use of acids to convert (“hydrolyze”) cellulose and hemicellulose into simple sugars (hexose and pentose, or “C6 and C5” sugars) has been around for more than a century, but were not able to compete with low cost petroleum products because of poor yields, high wastage, and the large volume of unmarketable byproducts...but times (and a few other things) change.

Guarantees, Promises, And Beliefs
I can guarantee you of a couple of things for sure: (1) That I don’t know whether concentrated acid hydrolysis is the optimum technology for the conversion of waste, or (2) whether ethanol is the best product that can be achieved.

But I can flat out promise you  I don’t care. Those are for others to decide and the marketplace to confirm or deny.

What I believe is that while the “better part of a five dollar bill” aspect referred to above is well covered by our seemingly insatiable appetite for energy, by a strong grassroots push in the direction of renewables, and a by mounting political will to provide funding for renewable energy programs, there are two additional factors that bode well for the linked future of CTs and waste: First is that a major player in the landfill world has decided it’s time to step up to the plate, and (2) that traditional economic concerns are knocked cockeyed in a situation where the public is willing to pay good money in the form of tip fees to get rid of the feedstocks for the operation.

It seems a lot like having a refinery in the middle of your oilfield...only here, people are paying you to operate it and then pay for the fuel you produce. 

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MSW - September/October 2006