Waste makes Haste:

In Canada, Waste Management (NYSE:WM) announced a strategic investment in Enerkem, as part of Enerkem’s new $51.5 million financing round, which included Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital and Cycle Capital among new investors.

Enerkem uses a proprietary thermo-chemical technology (green gasification and catalytic conversion) to convert heterogeneous materials into ethanol. R&D is underway to produce Synthetic gasoline (syngas), Synthetic diesel, and Dimethyl Ether (DME). Among its research partners are University of Sherbrooke, LeHigh University, Mississippi State University and Alberta Energy Research Institute.

The new funds raised will be used to support Enerkem’s growth plan, including initiating the construction of its second waste-to-biofuels plant in partnership with the City of Edmonton and Alberta Innovates. Production of methanol and second generation ethanol will begin at its Edmonton municipal solid waste-to-biofuels production facility by 2011. The plant will produce 10 Mgy of ethanol. Enerkem signed a 25 year agreement with the City of Edmonton for the supply of 100,000 tonnes of sorted municipal solid waste to be used as feedstock. The Edmonton biofuels plant will be situated at the City’s leading Edmonton Waste Managed Center (EWMC).

More on Waste Management

The investment by Waste Management represents its third in the waste-to-energy space, after investments last year in S4 Technologies — a joint venture of WM and InEnTec, proving plasma gasification of waste into energy streams — and an investment in waste-to-energy developer Terrabon.

Terrabon ranked #47 out of more than 1400 eligible companies in the 2009-10 “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” rankings released by Biofuels Digest in December. Depending on chemical pathway chosen, Terrabon can produce mixed primary alcohols (a mix of ethanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol and heptanol), mixed secondary alcohols (a mix of isopropanol, 2-butanol, 3-pentanol, 2-pentanol, etc), green gasoline, green diesel and green jet fuel. Terrabon, which is operating a 5-ton per day semi works plant using sweet sorghum as feedstocxk, has joint venture arrangements with Valero and Waste Management, and licensing arrangements for larger facilities (300 to 500-ton per day) using agricultural and forest residue, food scraps and non-food energy crops as feedstock.

WMlogoLast May, Waste Management Inc. and InEnTec announced a joint venture, called S4 Energy Solutions, that will produce renewable fuel, power and industrial products as well as to generate electricity, using plasma gasification. In plasma gasification, biomass is fed into a closed chamber and superheated to temperatures of up to 20,000 degrees fahrenheit. The intense heat transforms biomass into syngas, which is then reformulated using into ethanol and green diesel, hydrogen, methanol or methane.

A secondary process can convert the base materials into other industrial chemicals. S4 Energy Solutions’ initial focus will be to process medical and other segregated commercial and industrial waste streams. The company’s future commercialization plans may also include the processing of municipal solid waste once the technology has been demonstrated to be economical and scalable for such use. The S4 technology is designed with unique advances in plasma technology that increase the lifespan of high-cost elements such as the refractories.

The S4 project grew out of a collaboration between InEnTec and WMI’s Organic Growth Group, a corporate venture unit. The venture focused on plasma, as opposed to straight gasification, because the higher temperatures of the plasma process produce an ultra-clean syngas that more fully utilizes and destroys potentially dangerous waste, and because ultra-clean syngas is more useful in the commercial activity of producing high-end fuels and chemicals. The plasma approach allows WMI to expand its service offering to its current customer base by making certain types of waste easier to handle. The technology will be based on a distributed generation module – rather than large-scale facilities aggregating waste from multiple clients the venture will focus on smaller markets with modules designed to handle 5 to 125 tons per day. The distributed approach allows WMI to offer an alternative to clients who have to long-haul waste, or whose waste is too toxic to safely transport. Clients are expected initially to use all of the power and fuel for their own use, but S4 said it expects that some clients in the future, especially for those producing large amounts of fuel, will seek to sell the fuels in the open market for added revenue.

Think residue, not waste

With the investments, Waste Management is moving towards meeting three of its sustainability goals: doubling its renewable energy production and tripling the amount of recyclables processed by 2020, and investing in emerging technologies for managing waste.

In December 2009, Enerkem was awarded US$50 million in funding by the U.S. Department of Energy for development of its planned Mississippi plant, a third project. Enerkem will build and operate the 300 ton-per-day biorefinery in Pontotoc, which will produce 20 Mgy of ethanol, as well as green chemicals, from sorted municipal solid waste and wood residues and will reduce the pressure to landfill. Enerkem signed a Memorandum of Intent for the supply of 189,000 tons of unsorted municipal solid waste per year, for use as feedstock, with the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority of Mississippi. Since the announcement of its Mississippi project last March, the company has made substantial progress on the environmental permitting process and has further developed the project with its local partners, the Three Rivers Planning and Development District and the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority. The project is expected to create 130 jobs. The company also intends to double the size of its Mississippi biorefinery plant by adding a second module, bringing the total production capacity to 20 million gallons.

Its 1.3 Mgy commercial-scale demonstration facility in Westbury, Canada, which was completed in 2009, has reached 1,000 hours of operation, and overall the company has completed 3600 hours of piloting and testing since 2003.

The investment in Enerkem complements Waste Management’s comprehensive waste services in the areas of recycling, landfill, waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy.


Daily Biofuels Digest Feb 25, 2010