Citrus ethanol. A cheap Florida fuel option.

Back in September we featured some Florida innovators who have put the state on the alternative energy map.

Today I want to bring you news of another successful small company, Citrus Energy, which has a highly innovative business plan to make low-cost ethanol from Florida citrus waste.
The concept offers perhaps the most commercially viable option for cellulosic ethanol on the table today.
Unlike all other crop residue currently being experimented with, citrus waste has an extremely high - and easily accessible - sugar content, making it ideal for fermentation into ethanol. This avoids the the problem all cellulosic technologies currently face today - the high cost of pre-treatment of the residue in order to extract ethanol from the cellulose contained in the plant.

Citrus Energy was recently selected to take part in a highly-selective venture capital forum in Philadelphia, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The idea is to showcase start-up companies looking for investors. Citrus Energy was one of 50 companies selected for the event - and the only representative from Florida.

Citrus Energy CEO, David Stewart, is a British ex-pat (like myself) from Perth, Scotland, who came to Florida in 1988 to make computer hard-drives for an IBM client in Boca Raton.
I spoke to Stewart after he returned from Philly to find out more about the company's plans.
"It went very well," Stewart says. "The guys at NREL have been doing cellulosic ethanol research for ever, but there's a lot of interest this year."
Stewart is right. Cellulosic ethanol is one of the big breakthrough technologies that many people in the biofuels business are investigating. The twist in Stewart's idea is that there's very little technology involved - at least compared to the complicated science behind other concepts.
Citrus Energy's business plan relies on the highly soluble, "six-carbon" sugar content of its primary waste material. Unlike other "five-carbon" sugars being experimented with, the citrus waste can easily be fermented into ethanol using regular brewers yeast.
That makes for a monumental difference when compared to the genetically engineered enzymatic technologies required to convert other plant waste into ethanol. (check out the work currently being done by leading companies such as Dyadic, Celunol and Iogen.)
"Because you are getting into plant structure it gets very complicated and expensive," says Stewart. "We don't have to deal with that."

Citrus Energy has great potential in Florida, one of the world's top citrus producers, with both oranges and grapefruits. Florida's citrus processing plants produce 5 million tons of citrus waste annually. In every 2 lbs of oranges, about 1lb is juice and 1lb is waste (peel and fibre.) Processors currently have to pay to get rid of it. Some is converted into unprofitable animal feed (Citrus Pulp Pellets) using natural gas. The only other alternative is disposing of the waste in landfill.

Citrus Energy plans to build a 4 million gallons per year ethanol bio-refinery as the first step towards the development of a new industry in the state with multiple production plants utilizing waste citrus waste as an ethanol feedstock. The company estimates that there is enough citrus waste to produce 80 million gallons of ethanol a year. That not a lot in the overall picture of an industry that produces more than 4 billion gallons a year. But, it could make a significant difference in Florida which currently has no local production of ethanol.

The company hopes to raise $10 million to build its first cellulosic plant. Costs are far lower than traditional ethanol plants because the refinery will be located at the citrus processing facility, reducing costs of seeking permits, as well as transportation.

Citrus Energy also points out, as others have also noted, that Florida has tens of thousands of acres of phosphate mined lands that are not suitable for food agriculture but could be used to grow subsidized energy crops.

Click here to visit Citrus Energy's website.

Click here to read a story earlier this year in the St Petersburg Times.

- David Adams

Comments

[zeeshan]

i need the information of citrus ethanol plant. i have a huge quantity of citrus waste i want to utilize for the said purpouse