BlueFire Renewables Signs 15-Year Feedstock Supply Contract for Cellulosic Ethanol Facility
27 September 2010
Cellulosic biofuels company BlueFire Renewables, Inc. has signed a contract with Cooper Marine & Timberlands (CMT) to provide feedstock for BlueFire’s planned cellulosic ethanol facility in Fulton, MS for a period of up to 15 years.
Under the agreement, CMT will supply BlueFire’s Fulton, Mississippi project with all of the feedstock required to produce approximately 19-million gallons of ethanol per year from locally sourced cellulosic materials such as wood chips, forest residual chips, pre-commercial thinnings and urban wood waste such as construction waste, storm debris, land clearing; or manufactured wood waste from furniture manufacturing.
Coupled with our recently-announced off-take agreement with Tenaska BioFuels, LLC, the key input and output contracts required for financing are now resolved.
—Arnold Klann, CEO of BlueFire Renewables, Inc.
Under the Agreement, CMT will pursue a least-cost strategy for feedstock supply made possible by the project site’s proximity to feedstock sources and the flexibility of BlueFire’s process to use a wide spectrum of cellulosic waste materials in pure or mixed forms.
Cooper Marine Timberlands (CMT), with several chip mills in operation in Mississippi and Alabama, is a member company of Cooper/T. Smith, one of America’s oldest and largest stevedoring and maritime related firms with operations on all three US coasts and foreign operations in Central and South America.
They secured their inputs now secure the output contracts. We need 1000 of these operations to begin to reduce imported oil significantly, one step at a time.
Posted by: SJC | 27 September 2010 at 12:56 PM
Even with 1000 of them, they'd displace about 1/7 of US gasoline consumption by volume (considerably less by energy).
Cellulosic fuels promoters have a history of over-promising and under-delivering (see Robert Rapier's notes about Range Fuels, and all the hype Vinod Khosla put into it). The inputs other than biomass are not referred to in this article, and the EROEI of even corn ethanol is quite close to 1:1 (often lower, if David Murphy's analysis is correct). Such efforts have to be seen as assistance only; the bulk of any solution has to come from something else.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 27 September 2010 at 01:16 PM
There might be some grants & loan guarantees involved here but at least there aren't going to be any long term federal subsidies as there are with corn farmers.
Posted by: ejj | 27 September 2010 at 02:35 PM
Hey, it's what everybody's been shouting for these last five or ten years. Cellulosic is a BRAND NEW commercial venture - even though it utilizes a process not unlike the old backwoods still.
This is a good step forward. Why be concerned about replacement volumes when the technology has not even been demonstrated? ANY cellulosic alcohol is better than none since it all replaces some portion of gasoline.
Remember? Gasoline? The troublemaker?
Posted by: Reel$$ | 27 September 2010 at 05:56 PM
[1] Cellulosic ethanol gets a $1.01/gallon subsidy.
[2] Robert Rapier has repeatedly noted that cellulose-fermenting bugs have a relatively low alcohol tolerance. This means they produce weak "beers" which require lots of energy to distill.
[3] Weak "beers" need more water per gallon of product and produce more wastewater needing treatment.
[4] Batteries cost many times the price of their raw materials, so technological improvement has a lot of room to cut costs. The supplies of energy for making electricity are vast. Biomass supplies are quite limited, so expending effort on cellulosic ethanol does not get us past the issue of shortages; batteries do.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 28 September 2010 at 03:57 AM
EP:
If I replace 20% of a $3.00/gallon of gasoline with ethanol at a total cost of 50 cents - I have saved 10 cents. If I calculate the REAL cost of the gasoline - it is more like $6-7 per gallon.
Thus, any use of cellulosic alcohol DOES replace gasoline and at a competitive rate IF the REAL cost of gasoline (with explore, drill, refine, transport and military costs) is used.
Posted by: Reel$$ | 28 September 2010 at 09:07 AM
And I would add even IF domestic alcohol costs more than subsidized gasoline - what is the cost of the life a young man or woman serving in the Middle East?
If North Americans were asked to pay 10 cents more per gallon of liquid fuel in order to keep young military men and women from harm's way? I believe they would do it.
Posted by: Reel$$ | 28 September 2010 at 09:24 AM
The real closer may be domestic fuel. When I talk with people about this and I mention that there will be less imported oil, they start to pay attention.
Posted by: SJC | 28 September 2010 at 10:18 AM
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 28 September 2010 at 12:43 PM