They're betting on the chips. Wood chips, that is.
Scientists from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology have designed a plant aimed at producing ethanol from wood chips.
According to George Douglas of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., the planned facility in Upton would be the first of its kind in the nation. A second plant is planned in Georgia, he said.
The plant, near completion in the Black Hills, could bring closer to fruition a goal set for the country by President Bush: To make more fuel from renewable sources.
"This is certainly the wave of the future," said Dr. David Dixon of SDSM&T's Chemical and Bio-Engineering Department.
Ethanol is widely produced today from corn and other food crops and used as an additive to gas and diesel fuel. Making fuel from wood chips and other nonfood crops is more difficult but has the potential to significantly alter our dependence oil.
"We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol," Bush said in his State of the Union address last month, including, "using everything from wood chips to grasses to agricultural waste."
Dixon teamed with Western Biomass Energy, a Rapid City-based company, to help develop a plan to convert Black Hills forest waste into ethanol. The company is building a plant in Upton, Wyo., on just less than 5 acres and hopes to open it in March.
The pilot plant is designed to produce 1 million gallons of fuel a year and could lead to a plant that would eventually produce as much as 20 million gallons of the fuel each year, using wood chips and wood residue as base material, according to President Randy Kramer.
According to its Web site, Western Biomass works closely with KL Process Design Group, a company that operates three other ethanol plants in Greybull, Wyo.; Sutherland, Neb.; and Buffalo, N.Y. Those other plants use corn as the primary source for ethanol.
The ethanol industry is growing by leaps and bounds, with 120 plants nationwide and 72 under construction. South Dakota boasts 12 plants with three more under construction. While the majority of ethanol plants use corn and other grains to make the fuel, a growing number worldwide are turning to wood, grasses and other plants for their needs.
Countries such China, Canada and Spain have joined the United States in the pursuit of this new form of energy.
Turning wood chips into ethanol is a little harder than with corn, so the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology has been developing new ways to do that under the direction of Dixon.
"We just founded a biomass research center and partnered with (South Dakota State University). Ethanol is going to be the primary focus of our efforts," Dixon said.
The Center for Bioprocessing Research and Development was created after Gov. Mike Rounds said the state needed to be a leader in research and development of biofuels.
The center was funded for five years at $500,000 per year. A group of 10 instructors make up the team of researchers, and they have experience in agricultural engineering, chemical and biological engineering, as well as biology and microbiology. The center joins four other research centers around South Dakota.
"With our dependence on oil, we found that this is a resource that is harder to get," Dixon said. "And so we're looking at renewable resources like ethanol, or biodiesel, made from feedstocks that can be added to fuels like gas or diesel."
While starch-based ethanol uses sugars as a starting point, cellulosic ethanol uses cellulose as a base. Cellulose is harder to break down than starch or sugar, so the School of Mines conducted research into making glucose out of cellulose, and then using microorganisms to ferment the mixture. Using cellulosic materials means being able to use the whole plant, making it potentially cheaper to procure.
"Cellulose is the primary part of the plant walls, lignin is the secondary part. Hemicellulose is the weaker part of the plant and can be easily dissolved," Dixon said. "Once that is done, it can be turned into glucose, a natural plastic. It's this that is turned into ethanol."
He said while this process is more expensive, the research being done may make it more efficient. He added the benefits outweigh the cost of producing this type of ethanol.
This different process in distilling ethanol will help lessen the need to use corn to make ethanol, which some contend is affecting the price of a food source for many people.
Dixon - and Western Biomass - hope short grasses, the remnants of corn stalks and wood chips will replace grains in the process.
In addition, the use of wood residue for ethanol production has Wyoming and federal foresters happy with the prospect of a clean forest, without the use of fire to alleviate hazards.
That's because workers for Western Biomass would follow logging crews, clean up slash and residue piles on state and private land and use the wood for the ethanol process. And there's promising news for the future.
A feedstock study revealed that within a 25-mile radius of Upton, there is enough wood to support an ethanol facility for several years.Black Hills Pioneer via the Colorodan
