Detroit's empty lots, with some home grown high technology innovation, may help juice up Michigan's flagging biodiesel industry in next year. As in the remainder of the country, biodiesel production in Michigan ground to a halt during the past couple of years thanks to high feedstock costs, comparatively low petrol costs and a short lived lapse in Fed. contributions. But as oil costs rise, analysts and refiners hope 2011 will mark a new start for the industry with discoveries in non-food feedstocks and refining technologies. Congress passed a mandate earlier in the year requiring the utilising of eight hundred million gallons of biomass-based diesel in 2011 and one bn.
Michigan has 4 commercial biodiesel refineries, none being making fuel at this time because the cost of soy oil, the feedstock of preference makes it cost-prohibitive. However, Bryan Ritchie with Michigan State University's Bioeconomy Network asserts the cycle of public interest in biodiesel use is related to gas pump costs. "Since the '70s, increased gas prices equaled increased interest in biofuels," he announced. "Then gas costs go back down and everything grinds to a halt. Now that diesel fuel is up, we'll see the cycle ramp up again." regardless of the decline in production, or maybe due to it, Michigan producers and analysts are on the lookout for workable feedstock alternate choices to soy oil together with cleaner, better paths to produce biodiesel. Two extraordinarily different but related projects are continuing in metro Detroit -- one at the grass-roots level, the other extremely hi-tech. Pennycress, a standard weed, has for a while been looked at as a biofuel feedstock. Jim Padilla, owner of the Power Alternative, an idled biodiesel refinery in Warren, Mich, sees an extra potential for the plant. Padilla recounted the crops might be grown on empty land in central Detroit and would serve a twin purpose -- manufacturing fine quality biodiesel and remediating land tarnished with heavy metals. Pennycress naturally soaks up heavy metals as it grows, Padilla claims, thru a technique known as phytoremediation. Because Detroit was once home to a couple of lead smelters, lots of the empty land is polluted. By growing pennycress for biodiesel, over time the sites would be cleaned up.
As for viability, Padilla explains it would most probably must be financed, but would be significantly cheaper than other remediation options.
"The alternative is to dig and haul [the tarnished soil] and move it somewhere else," related Padilla, whose dad, a previous president of Ford Motor Co, is chair of the board of the Power Alternative. "That cost is about $250,000 per acre. You can spend it there or you can phytoremediate, create roles, clean it up, make biomass for power and produce biodiesel." To explore the chances, Padilla has started collaborating with local setups the College of Detroit-Mercy and Michigan State School , which was just awarded $2.9 million for biofuels research by the U.S.
Another promising project occurring in Detroit is at startup NextCAT, The project involves a new class of biodiesel catalysts developed at the Nationwide Biofuels Energy Lab at close by Wayne State College and approved to NextCAT for exploitation. According to Charles Salley, Head honcho of NextCat, the catalysts target moderate- to high- free greasy acid ( FFA ) feedstocks , for example waste grease, instead of dearer low-FFA feedstocks , for example soy oil. "The challenge is that first generation biodiesel plants are made for soy, but the cost of soy is still too high," Salley asserted. "My conjecture is that over the long run, feedstocks will have moderate to high FFAs, and we think our catalysts are the best hope. But the interesting news is our catalysts will work with low-FFA feedstocks, too." Salley also noted that thanks to the chemical makeup of the catalysts, they have longer helpful lives and are more easy to separate from the refined product.
Therefore the refining process is shorter and more cost effective, and the final product and spinoffs are cleaner. Take glycerin, a side-effect of biodiesel refining that is employed in the production of pharmaceuticals, foods, private care products and antifreeze. Current glycerin produced is considered crude grade and needs processing to become a serviceable product. Salley related the new catalysts help produce a cleaner grade of glycerin, making it a more valuable derivative. NextCAT is expecting to launch a pilot soon, followed by a demonstration at an existing biodiesel refinery by the end of 2011.
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