Burning Bio News

Durham, NC is going to sell methane generated at an abandoned, closed landfill, which continues to produce methane. Methane Power Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., and Mooresville, N.C., is going to buy it, use it to make electricity, and sell the power to Duke Energy.

The City of Thousand Oaks, CA, has saved $91,000 this year at its Hill Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant through a program that uses solar power and cogeneration, said Chuck Rogers, the plant’s superintendent. Rogers’ goal is to save $200,000 during this budget year, which will end June 30.

Winona, MN is planning to install a digester at the City wastewater treatment plant. The process itself will also help heat the facility, cutting an approximate 1/3 of the natural gas cost at the plant.

A commercial-scale process to extract and reuse pure hydrogen from the hydrogen sulfide that naturally contaminates unrefined oil, is one step closer to reality through collaboration between the US DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. (KPM) of Kingston, Ontario.

Rhode Island and Massachusetts have joined a new multistate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to regulate oil-refinery emissions. The plaintiffs, 12 states, DC and the City of New York, assert that, by failing to set limits on refineries’ emissions of greenhouse gases, the EPA is violating the federal Clean Air Act.

The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) seeks approval to conduct two new information collections, the 2008 On-Farm Renewable Energy Production Survey and the 2008 Organic Production and Marketing Survey. USDA is accepting comments until October 14, 2008.

Umit Ozkan, professor at The Ohio State University has developed a new catalyst to make hydrogen from ethanol with 90 percent yield, at a workable temperature, and using inexpensive ingredients.

Two “major” North American railroad companies want to “work formally” with a budding US company developing what will be the first ethanol-power/electric hybrid locomotive, an executive with Milford, Ohio-based AHL-TECH said. The “cleanest” multi-genset (generator sets) diesel locomotives have to reduce their NOx levels by more than 50 percent according to EPA standards, Mack said, “which at these low amounts is very difficult.”

An order by the VT Natural Resources Board to close the Karl Hammer’s Vermont Compost Co. had touched off considerable controversy. Advocates argued that the facility played a critical role in diverting compostable wastes from filling up landfills, and provided a source of high-quality compost that has become essential to area farms and growers. The State was attempting to implement a new law and did not know what to do with the composting facilitiy, so they decided it was out of compliance, and began to shut it down. Now they have reached an agreement.

EPA Air Emission Monitoring Rule vacated because it is ‘contrary to the statutory directive that each permit must include adequate monitoring requirements.’ The US Court of Appeals for the District Of Columbia Circuit has ruled in a suit brought by the Sierra Club that state and local authorities may supplement an inadequate monitoring requirement so that the requirement will assure compliance with the permit terms and conditions.

In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report.

VeraSun Energy Corp.started producing ethanol at it’s 110 million gallon ethanol plant near Hartley, Iowa. Initial production at the plant was to begin at the end of June, but the company delayed bringing it on line due to unfavorable market conditions.

Northeast Biofuels, Fulton, NY, is currently producing 155,000 gallons of ethanol every day with the goal of ramping up production to more than 200,000 gallons daily by September. Design capacity is reported at 114 million gallons per year.

Iowa State University researchers began studying whether certain types of ground cover might be planted alongside corn so that the stalks, leaves, husks and cobs of the corn plant can be safely removed from cornfields after harvest for use as a cellulosic ethanol feedstock. Leaving the ‘residue’ (stalks, leaves, husks and cobs) in the field has been long recognized as having benefits in lowering erosion and maintaining soil organic matter. A cover crop would replace that role.

Kansas State University E. coli O157:H7 expert T.G. Nagaraja has been awarded $939,220 by USDA to study both the connection between feeding distillers’ grains and E. coli 0157:H7 in cattle and several strategies to reduce the presence of the naturally occurring pathogen in the animals.

US Department of Energy (DOE) announced over $26 million in federal funding over three years, subject to Congressional appropriations, for cost-shared development of energy-efficient industrial processes in the steel and other energy-intensive industries. These projects support the Energy Policy Act of 2005 goal of reducing the energy intensity of U.S. manufacturing industries by 25 percent in 10 years as well as contributing significant reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions.

A wood-chip-burning cogeneration plant in Lyonsdale, NY, is challenging its assessment following a leap in assessed value from $4.04 million to $26 million. Lyonsdale Biomass is requesting an assessment reduction to $2 million on its 19-megawatt facility.

Agresti Biofuels, formerly Indiana Ethanol Power, has announced that it plans to build a commercial municipal solid waste (MSW) to cellulosic ethanol production facility in Pike County, KY. When fully operational, the new plant could process as much as 1,500 tons of MSW per day.

West Lafayette, IN, Purdue faculty members Clint Chapple, Richard Meilan and Michael Ladisch are genetically enhancing hybrid poplars to more easily release cellulose to manufacture ethanol. They have a goal of achieving 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre. Since they began in 2006, they have generated dozens of new poplar lines, but progress is slow due the growth cycle of the trees.

Dockside Green is a 15-acre residential neighborhood under construction in Victoria, British Columbia. This green community will have its own on-site wastewater treatment plant and biomass power plant.