Verenium announces Florida's first cellulosic ethanol plant

A Massachusetts firm today announced plans to build Florida’s first ethanol plant, and one of the first cellulosic ethanol plants in the nation.

Verenium plans to build a 36-million-gallon-a-year plant in Highlands County using plant similar to sugar cane for fuel. The $250-million project relies on a pioneering technology developed by University of Florida scientists that unlocks the energy potential of plants other than ethanol’s traditional sugar and corn.

“We’re thrilled,” said Lonnie Ingram, the UF professor who led the research. “The university is just delighted with the achievements of Verenium, even more so because it’s going to be in Florida, our home state.”

Construction of the plant is to begin this year and take 18 months to two years. The feed stocks will be sweet sorghum and a crop similar to sugar cane that Verenium has dubbed “energy cane.” Lykes Bros. will grow the crop on 20,000 acres of its farmland. The project has been awarded a $7-million Farm to Fuel grant from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It is expected to create 140 full-time jobs.

A handful of other cellulosic projects have been announced around the country, but Verenium, which has a functioning pilot plant in Louisiana, is further along than other companies, Ingram said. The Cambridge, Mass., company is planning projects in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

Traditional ethanol production relies on the easily fermentable sugars found in sugar and corn. A yeast is added to ferment the sugars into alcohol, which is then further refined into fuel. Cellulosic takes advantage of the energy locked in the stalks and leaves of the plant.

The appeal of cellulosic ethanol is that it doesn’t divert food to our gas tanks. The process can use inedible plants or agricultural waste like citrus peels. The difficulty is unlocking the sugars in the inedible parts of the plant.

Nature designed the energy in corn and sugar cane to come apart easily, Ingram explained. Leaves, branches and stems also contain energy, but their sturdier construction makes them tougher to pull apart.

Verenium used steam and enzymes to break down the fibrous portions of plants into sugars. That got them only part of the way. The simple sugars derived from corn and sugar cane — glucose and sucrose — were easily digested by yeast. The cellulosic sugars proved more complex.

That’s where Ingram and his collaborators came in. They needed an organism that would happily consume all the sugars. Ingram spliced together E. coli bacteria with two genes from a bacteria used to make tequila. The organism digested the other sugars.

As Ingram put it, “A good tequila is hard to resist.”

Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer

[Photo: Dirk Shadd, Times]

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Comments

[jim]

Do you know that the 10% or less ethanol in the gas pumps today cut your gas mileage by 2/3 miles per gallon. Also it screws your engine up over time. my son has a boat and he let it sit one mo and starting it up when he went fishing it ran very rough so he had to get the carb cleaned and had an fuel stable product put in to a tune of 140.00 the shop said to start it up once a week so it won't gum up the carb, just think if it does that to an boat motor , what happens to an car engine over time.you can't even get 100% gas any more. BUT i found a station that has not 10% or less ethanol in there pumps i asked him why he didn't have it, he said i'm not paying the added price per gallon with it in it. also since i have been using his gas my car is up to the better gas mileage per gallon. and it's a name brand to.just make more refineries the oil co can afford to build more with the billions they make each quarter as profit sink some money into building new refineries.

[kevin]

Florida already has water shortages in it's present and future. Ethanol production is not a good match with Florida until the water usage issue is addressed. Get those research scientists' attention on adapting the ethanol production process to use recycled or preferrably salt water.

Ethanol is a boondoggle. The only advantage is freedom from Middle East oil. It doesn't address any other problems of fossil fuel such as pollution or global warming, and it does divert food to our gas tanks if you're using potential farmland to grow the crop, regardless of what crop it is.

[Jim]

Well what is the name of the station and where is it, I have been trying to find gas without ethanol also because of the milage loss I have seen, I figured I have about a 15% loss in milage with Ethanol.

[Cindy]

What FL needs is solar energy plants not ethanol plants. With all the sun we get in FL solar makes the most sense.

[Bob H]

Typical of Florida to jump on a bandwagon. Too bad this wagon's wheels fell off some time ago. Ethanol is *not* the answer - it creates more problems than it solves.

[theloneconsumer]

Funny, but from the DEP emails from Director Castille's account I received in 2006, this sounds like US Environfuels' ethanol dream. Jeb was dragging this company around in the Carribean, telling the Bahamas that we have a new Florida, instead of tourism.

The problem with Jeb's vision of Florida though, he didnt share it with the rest of Florida! And the Port of Tampa has had to defend the lawsuits for ethanol production from Port Authority land neighbors that US Environfuels released that lease to another company also.

Crist's Jeb's little boy! Everything he is promoting is what Jeb created in 2006 with Michael Sole and Castille. Even carbon trading from the Aug 2006 DEP email has Jeb saying he will save it for the next GOP Governor!

We are in Florida with tourism in the forefront and Jeb forgot to tell us we have LNG gas terminals in FERC filing production, Suprefund sites that have worse chemicals they are putting a natural gas storage facility from an EX ENRON official suported by AARP Mike Twomey and oil and gas terminals in the Port of Tampa.

Does the Davis Island community know what their homes are NOT worth once Crist's friend Sargeant finishes with his middle east company vision in our back yard?

[flsurfer222]

All you Sean Hannity desciples go shove it! The guy is a loon and so are his conservative cronies.
The plant is good for the state of Florida, get over it

[Tino]

Thanks Cindy. Maybe all don't want to pay three times as much for our electricity like you do.

[lightnin]

Hooray! Ethanol from sugar cane is about 8 times more efficient than from corn, I assume the sources mentioned must be better. Algae ethanol will probably prove better yet, and doesn't need farmland. Tons of race cars use ethanol and have for MANY years. "Doesn't address any other problems of fossil fuel such as pollution or global warming?" Like eliminating offshore drilling, coastal oil spills, coal emissions, the need to drill in ANWR, etc. don't matter? Get real! The lower cost of ethanol will more than make up for the lower mpg. It can make jobs in the US, and in Florida! HOPEFULLY, most of the money will stay in this country!

[Steve]

Ethanol's fuel system related problems develop when the vehicles that contain it in their systems are left stored for longer than a few days ormore.

Ethanol mixes readily with water I.E. Condensation in the tanks. Boats, motorcycles, ATV's, etc are particularly prone, DEFINATELY boats.

Dont leave boats stored w/o filling the tanks so there is no air space in the tanks. Fiberglass Boats with inegrated fuel tanks have additional problems, the ethanol has been blamed for fiberglass fuel tank delamination.

[lightnin]

flsurfer222: Apparently you haven't figured it out, but it's conservatives that WANT ethanol, and loony liberals and the uneducated type of "environmentalists" that are against it! Nobody said you can't have gas without ethanol, too, for boats or whatever. Ethanol is the best idea for now, hopefully some things that are even better will come along soon.

[Andy]

Mankind's follies never cease to amaze me.

[Tino]

"Nobody said you can't have gas without ethanol, too, for boats or whatever."

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 would like to disagree with you.

[Paulie]

Water shortage, are you kidding ? Progress Energy was just given permission to use millions of gallons per day for the coal scrubbers at coal units 4 and 5 when the scrubbers go into service. Progress Energy is out of line with pre construction costs for potential nuclear plants is going to create a crisis in florida equal to the property insurance crisis. Progress Energy can do anything it wants including fleecing customers by charging customers for hurricane recovery when they performed routine maintenance and charged it to storm recovery. What a rotten outfit they are.

[Demetrius]

Progress Energy seems to always be at the center of criticism. They must have pissed somebody off.

[lightnin]

"The Energy Policy Act of 2005 would like to disagree with you"?
How far would you have to drive right now to buy gas without ethanol? I know that politicians who are in bed with the Corn Lobby (like Obama), mandated a certain level of domestic corn ethanol production, with subsidies to the growers/producers, and tariffs on imported ethanol to discourage competition, but if the people DEMAND that that crap stops, it will. We shouldn't make ANY corn ethanol, we should encourage other countries in this hemisphere (including Cuba) to grow/produce cane and algae ethanol and buy all we can get from them! When something comes along that's better than ethanol, we should go after that! Nice thing about a free country, we can change bad laws and "Acts"!

[lightnin]

Paulie: Good info. Facts will triumph over BS, given time.

[Tino]

Yaaay! Ethanol!

"Lexus Announces Safety Recall on Select Vehicles

TORRANCE, Calif., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. will launch a Safety Recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) involving approximately 214,500 Lexus vehicles sold in the United States.

On certain 2006 through 2008 model year GS300/350, IS250/350, and LS460/460L vehicles, Lexus has determined that some ethanol fuels with a low moisture content may corrode the internal surface of the fuel delivery pipes. If this condition occurs, the Malfunction Indicator Light (MIL) in the combination meter may illuminate. Over time, the corrosion may create a pinhole in the fuel delivery pipes resulting in fuel leakage."

[Kathleen McKee]

Drs. Matt Cohen and Jason Evans at the University of Florida School of Forest Resources and Conservation have evaluated environmental consequences of large-scale bioethanol production using a life-cycle perspective and present numbers from recent analyses of four proposed feedstocks in Florida: corn, sugarcane, sweet sorghum and southern pine. They look at energy, water, and nutrient needs for feedstock production; the energy and water needs of ethanol processing; environmental consequences; and some environmental consequences. Report available at: http://www.waterinstitute.ufl.edu/research/downloads/Cohen_and_Evans_Biofuels_and_Water_Resources.pdf
Also published in AWRA Impact magazine, July 2008.

[FinancialServicesRenoNV]

Greetings all members,

I would just like to say hello and let you know that I'm happy to be a member - been a lurker long enough :)

Hope to contribute some and gain some knowledge along the way....

[Tom Paris]

I have an 93 nissan altima and my car stalls on ethanol, when I was in Canada its stalls on the 5% they have, but here in the state of "Florida 10% or more not less", my car stall even worse will not stall running dies before I can shift the car into a gear. and I even have a ethanol conversion kit and still stalls. theres sludge in my cylender when I checked my spark plugs this cant be a good sign!!!!!!!!! i will sue the gas companies soon.

Ethanol is not the answer Fuel vapor is and electric cars
I made a lawn mower run on it "gas vapor" and did not take a bit of gas. next I will test on my car soon.

cheers bottoms up.