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Hybrid Poplar,Switchgrass, miscanthus are changing the world!!!

D

dipper

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My good buddy Ian Klein is a scientist for a company called Spereo Energy. He just made Forbes magazine top 30 under 30 who are revolutionizing industry.
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ehde45ekmdk/ian-klein-27/

His company is basically devolping technology to extract a different type of ethanol from bio mass like wood chips, switchgrass, and miscanthus. It isn't the same kind of ethanol from corn, which is costly and intensive to produce. We are so proud of him and his opportunity to really change the world.
http://www.speroenergy.com/about

He loves talking about switchgrass, hybrid poplar, and miscanthus. I thought some of you guys might find this stuff interesting because this is the same stuff all of us our working with on our pieces of dirt, and the inpact these plants might have. They really might change our world, in the not to distant future.

These guys aren't a bunch of pot smoking hippies either, this is the real deal.
 
Congrats to your young friend, that's a pretty impressive list to be a part of. The improved cultivars used for energy production are really something. Here are a couple pics from Blade Energy's Bioenergy Group. These have been out a while as well.

Sorghum:images.jpg pic03006_lw.jpg

Pretty impressive screening, but spendy!

They also have some great looking improved switchgrass varieties that might be interesting to try.
 
Impressive to say the least.
 
It would be pretty cool to have about a 5 row screen of that 12'+ tall soghum/sudan for a road screen. I wonder how it would hold up to weather, fairly good I would suppose, it wouldn't be worth much as biofuel if it were to lodge and be unprofitable to harvest? That also makes me think of what the nitrogen requirements are to get it that tall in one growing season.:eek: The crop residue the following spring would be huge. I would think in a food plot screen setting, it would have to be gathered and disposed of or chopped a couple times to make it small enough to decompose quickly and not affect the subsequent crop. One thing a guy could do with all that stalk residue would be to collect it into large "mats" and use them to "build up" swampy areas, much like hay bales are used in that type of setting.
 
Good lord! You can hide an elephant with that stuff! You would have to nearly be able to sit there and watch that stuff grow!
 
Impressive and very promising for future energy. Gas prices will not stay low forever!
 
Something that just stuck me - even though these plants are "renewable" - with that sort of biomass produced and the rate that the soil could be depleted and or the amount of soil amendments needed is something to think about. Not trying to rain an the parade, but typically nothing is for free. Many synthetic N fertilizers are petroleum based products as it is. I know corn can be expensive and difficult to grow and be hard on the soil - wondering how that sorghum compares as it relates to inputs vs outputs and soil health.
 
That point makes me wonder if any research in the use of alders for biofuels is being done? Alders fix their own nitrogen and are fairly fast growing, so I would think that they would be as suitable as hybrid poplar for that type of use. There is current research in both poplar and willow that suggests that they will produce some level of nitrogen fixation due to a symbiotic relationship they share with some types of endophytic bacterium. Of course the P, K, and other nutrients would still have to be in order to produce a quality crop, but they are usually much cheaper than N.
 
It was just a thought. when I saw that sorghum my first thought was - Wow look at that height! And my second was - I bet that takes a lot of nitrogen! My third was - that looks expensive!

Don't get me wrong I am all for alternative fuels - the more plotting and habitat work I do the more I see a bigger picture of things and not just the end result. Lots of folks want the end result, but are unaware or unwilling to put forth the resources to get there.
 
j-bird said:
Lots of folks want the end result, but are unaware or unwilling to put forth the resources to get there.
Click to expand...
Very profound and true statement right there j-bird!
 
You guys are exactly right that energy is coming from the soil. I've talked with Ian about how efficient these types of plants are at taking from the soil. He obviously has no background in soil fertility and such. I've never asked him what type of bi product there would be after they get their energy resource. This Bi product could be amended back into the soil.
I'm pretty sure the process revolves around lignin. I'm not sure exactly what that is.
Anything to distance ourselves from those rag heads is good for me.
 
Yep - that's me - a profound stinker!!!!
 
Can you lean a ladder stand on that stuff?
 
Dipper, hats off to your buddy. I have been working with companies who are trying to develop cellulosic based ethanol for over 15 years now and the industry has major challenges because they cannot get to a viable business model. Last I heard, based on the known business models, gas needs to be $7-$9/gal to support the cost of producing biomass ethanol. Lots of smart people trying to solve incredibly difficult issues.

Mother nature has spent millions of years developing the lignin (a polymer which binds the fibers) to protect the cellulose fibers and has done a pretty good job. Pulp & Paper mills have spent over 150 years learning how to separate the two ... just look at the capital investment at any Pulp mill. Most of the biomass folks are looking for a silver bullet that the Pulp folks have not found. The cellulose contains the starch which is similar to the starch in a corn grain. Both go into a liquefaction process converting the starch to a sugar and then to an ethanol ... essentially a distillery. The major hurdle for biomass, is the pre-treatment process (which is not required for grain ethanol) attempting to separate the cellulose & lignin. This is an acid process requiring high heat addition.

We work with many of these tech companies and most fall apart when they try to go from producing ethanol in a test tube lab environment, to trying to build a functioning pilot plant to convince invertors of a viable process. The cost of machinery on the pre-treatment side is unbelievable as ph levels are 1-2. Imagine using metallurgy that costs 8-10 times that of 316 Stainless Steel :eek:

Many other issues ... what happens to the soil when crops are being grown purely for biomass sometimes harvested 2-3 times a year, and none of that biomass is returned to the soil? How do they transport biomass to the processing centers ... fuel costs to transport grass is a major issue. Without Govt subsidies, the industry would collapse.

Given that some feel that grain ethanol requires more energy to produce than it can deliver ... one questions the sanity of biomass ... as it requires even more energy.
 
dipper said:
You guys are exactly right that energy is coming from the soil. I've talked with Ian about how efficient these types of plants are at taking from the soil. He obviously has no background in soil fertility and such. I've never asked him what type of bi product there would be after they get their energy resource. This Bi product could be amended back into the soil.
I'm pretty sure the process revolves around lignin. I'm not sure exactly what that is.
Anything to distance ourselves from those rag heads is good for me.
Click to expand...
Lignin is the "toughest" portion of the types of fiber in a plant like that, then cellulose and hemi-cellulose. All those fibers break down into sugars at varying rates and to varying degrees. I wonder if the byproduct would be much more than organic material??? I also wonder if crop rotation could offset the losses to the soil in growing crops for these purposes.
 
I remember reading something about how lignin has tons of different uses. Everybody here should enjoy this, lignin is used in the nose jammer hunting product:
http://nosejammer.com/the-science/overview
Lignin is used to make artificial vanilla, so you make a product with vanilla and say it comes from trees ;)


I have a cousin that was the project manager for a 100 MW biomass plant in Florida. I think it was going to be wood powered, but I have not talked to my that cousin for a while and don't remember much of the details.
 
Tree Spud said:
The cost of machinery on the pre-treatment side is unbelievable as ph levels are 1-2. Imagine using metallurgy that costs 8-10 times that of 316 Stainless Steel :eek:
Click to expand...
I have worked with 316/316L SS my whole adult life and if that is the case, there is no way you are making something like that financially viable on a large scale. If they are going to move forward with these biofuels, they have to find some completely new and innovative technology to overcome the shortfalls of the current lignin separation process.
 
wiscwhip said:
I have worked with 316/316L SS my whole adult life and if that is the case, there is no way you are making something like that financially viable on a large scale. If they are going to move forward with these biofuels, they have to find some completely new and innovative technology to overcome the shortfalls of the current lignin separation process.
Click to expand...

Are you familiar with metals such as titanium, zirconium, & zeron? When we get prices quotes from our suppliers, the price is only valid for 3-5 days because of volatility.

The other issues these biomass tech companies are making, is an over estimate of the processing of the stock slurry % they can actually pump & process. They are basing biz models on 30-40% fiber stock slurry with the cellulose. Most pulp mills target their production for medium density stock slurry at 10% and are ecstatic if they can process at 12-14%. Note that 13% pulp stock slurry is dense enough that you may be able to walk across.

The learning curve is a tough one ...
 
We dabbled in titanium on a few projects in the past, but I had not worked on them personally. Monel and Hastelloy are the most "exotic" stuff I was around. 3-5 days is crazy, you better hope your quotes or your contract verbiage take that volatility in to account, wow! That would never work on any of the estimates I do, the engineers drag their feet for weeks after we give them a number and then the project owner expects you to honor your 3 month old quote when they decide to give you the work. :mad:
 
I can't remember if we covered this in an earlier thread but I was wondering, what do you guys who are talking about metals do for a living?
 
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