| Cellulosic ethanol: the savior of the North American forestry Industry? |
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| Written by Bill Bradshaw | ||
| Thursday, 07 June 2007 | ||
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 RossMacLachlan, President of Lignol Energy Inc., That’s the view voiced by the president of Vancouver-based Lignol Energy Corporation, Ross MacLachlan, as well as a number of others who say cellulosic ethanol is the new sustainable fuel for the 21st century and forestry groups should jump on the cellulosic bandwagon now to revive their industry.
Because Lignol’s technology can create high-value-added products, the company plans, where practical, to retrofit existing pulp mills or build a series of cellulosic ethanol plants in forestry communities in Canada with one or more technology partners. The next big thing? MacLachlan’s evangelistic reasoning that cellulosic ethanol will be the fuel of the future is supported by such luminaries as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, former CNN chief Ted Turner, Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson and former U.S. vice-president, Al Gore. All are among the growing supporters or investors in cellulosic ethanol. In fact, during a recent interview on climate change, Gore declared: “Cellulosic ethanol…is going to be a huge new source of energy, particularly for the transportation sector…I think it is going to play a huge role.” Even big oil is sizing up cellulosic ethanol with such corporations as Royal Dutch Shell, Suncor Energy and Chevron getting involved. Big time investment houses such as Goldman Sachs are also joining the cellulosic ethanol “green gold rush.” Why the Lignol process? Lignol’s proprietary technology can not only produce biofuel necessary for the transportation industry, but a variety of biochemical co-products as well. The main co-products from the process are lignin and furfural, which are important intermediate chemicals in a number of commercial applications. In fact, the Lignin Institute, a non-profit group, describes lignin as “having uses in hundreds of applications, impacting on many facets of our daily lives.” Because of the marketable by-products, the cost to produce such products as cellulosic ethanol makes it highly competitive with other fuels. The Lignin Institute also forecasts that global markets for lignin are estimated in the near term at $2-billion. Up until the development of the Lignol process to extract lignin in a pure form, the major stumbling block has been the low purity of available commercial lignin from the pulp and paper industry. One of the more intriguing applications for the Lignol process is the ability to process trees infested by the mountain pine beetle to create commercial grade cellulosic ethanol. In British Columbia, for example, the pine beetle infestation has impacted more than 80,000 square kilometres of forest land. Some foresters predict over a billon cubic metres of pine will have been killed by the beetles by 2013, the equivalent of a billion telephone poles. Jack Saddler, professor of Forest Products Biotechnology at the University of British Columbia says harvesting the dead trees for biofuel may provide a cost-effective cellulosic ethanol product. He points out that if only 25 per cent of the mountain pine beetle dead wood was converted to ethanol, it could supply between five and ten years worth of British Columbia’s gasoline requirements. From a clean energy perspective, the U.S. government’s Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratories has determined that using cellulosic ethanol as both a transportation fuel and as a fuel to generate electricity cuts greenhouse-gas emissions by between 80 to 90 percent, while corn-based ethanol reduces emissions by only 20 to 30 percent. Then, too, no modifications need to be made to automobiles to use cellulosic ethanol as automobiles in North America must by law be made to operate on a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline and vehicles can actually run better because ethanol-blended fuels remove deposits and clean out fuel lines. Originally, Lignol acquired its technology from a General Electric corporation which was then commercialized for wood-pulp applications by a Repap Enterprises company. Collectively more than $100-million has been invested. Lignol’s scientists have modified the pre-treatment process and are currently integrating it into its cellulose to ethanol technology. Lignol’s next step is to build its first commercially viable cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant. If sufficient funding support is received from federal and provincial governments, Lignol believes it could meet a target for construction next year. This will require a combination of federal government and private sector funding. Once finalized, construction of a demonstration plant would begin immediately. It will then move quickly towards the development of a series of plants with the objective of becoming one of North America’s lowest cost biofuel producers. |
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