Liquid Fuels DuPont in landmark cellulosic ethanol license deal The industrial biosciences arm of American global science and engineering major DuPont has announced a cellulosic ethanol technology and enzyme licensing agreement in China. The deal with Jilin Province New Tianlong Industry Co., Ltd., (NTL) entails the development of the country’s largest cellulosic ethanol manufacturing plant using corn stover and is planned to be located in Siping City, Jilin Province. Acquired by Ginsber Beer Group in 2003, NTL is one of the largest corn refinery plants in the northeast of China with the production and sale of products such as potable alcohol, chemical reagent and corn oil. According to a statement NTL is working to secure the necessary government approvals and support to implement this agreement for the rapidly growing Chinese liquid biofuel market, which is projected to exceed 1.7 billion gallons per year by 2020. – As we bring online the largest and most sophisticated cellulosic facility in the world in the State of Iowa in the United States, we are simultaneously working with leaders who share the same vision of producing the next generation of clean renewable fuels in their region. NTL’s reputation for producing world-class grain ethanol makes it a superior candidate to put DuPont’s advanced technology to work to realise the additional economic and environmental benefits of cellulosic biofuel in China, said Jan Koninckx, Global Biofuels Leader for DuPont Industrial Biosciences. BI81/4983/AS Bioenergy International Internat ional No 81, 5-2015 29 A Greenlane for biogas upgrading plants in China Malta based AOG has, together with its subsidiary Addax Bioenergy SA, announced a decision to downscale its sugarcane ethanol operation in Makeni, Sierra Leone and conduct a review of all options for the future. According to a statement the project has had to overcome a number of unforeseeable events that have had a significant impact on the timeframe, costs and revenues initially planned. They include the Ebola outbreak in May 2014, which not only has had a terrible human toll on the country, but has also led to substantial delays as most of Addax Bioenergy’s contractors declared “force majeure” and left the site. The timing of the decision takes advantage of the naturally occurring low level of activity during the rainy season when no revenues are earned, costs will be reduced and operations downscaled. The number of expatriate consultants will be reduced while most local employees will be maintained and assets kept in good working order. The review process will explore all options for the operation’s future. AOG and Addax Bioenergy intend to work closely with H.E. President of Sierra Leone and his government to find the right way forward for the operation and for the country. Commissioned in May 2014 the greenfield sugarcane ethanol and biomass power plant project became the first operation in Sierra Leone to be registered as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the first sugarcane-based power generation facility for ethanol production to be registered as a CDM in Africa. Addax Bioenergy also received the first African certification by the Roundtable for Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB). Production first took place in May 2014 and, while production stops during the rainy season from May to November, the 2015 season has seen the first exports of certified bioethanol to Europe. Editor’s note: A report from a site visit to Addax Bioenergy can be found in Bioenergy International 4/2014. A recently released report entitled “Agricultural investment and rural transformation: a case study of the Makeni bioenergy project in Sierra Leone” by Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) examines the foreign direct investment (FDI) project’s impact on rural development and local livelihoods. It can be found on www.sei-international. org BI81/4967/AS Greenlane Biogas, a whollyowned subsidiary of UK-based Pressure Technologies plc, has announced its first ever supply orders of its water-based chemicalfree biogas upgrading technology to China. In July, Greenlane announced a partnership with China Agricultural University (CAU) to install a biogas upgrading system to facilitate research in the generation of renewable natural gas (RNG). The top academic institution in China for agricultural studies, CAU will use the water scrubbing based chemical free biogas upgrading solution to test and optimise biogas yields of various agricultural organic wastes generated from a variety of anaerobic digesters. Located at CAU’s National RNG Demonstration Park in Zhuozhou, a city just to the south of Beijing it will convert biogas to RNG at a rate of 80 Nm³ per hour. The resulting RNG is compliant with China’s standards for natural gas vehicles (NGV) and is being piped to a compressed natural gas (CNG) refuelling station onsite to serve NGVs from neighbouring towns. – We are very excited to have installed a Greenlane Biogas plant at our National RNG Demonstration Park. Our objective is to demonstrate an effective process to manage agricultural waste by converting it into RNG and not burning it which contributes to air pollution, said Mr. Zhu Wanbin, Deputy Professor at China Agricultural University in a statement. In August, Greenlane Biogas announced it had received an order for its ‘Rimu’ biogas upgrading plant from Sifang Leo Livestock Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (SF LEO), a leading dairy farm engineering company and manufacturer of high-tech livestock equipment and farm machinery in China. The upgrading plant will be used in an eco-dairy farm demonstration operation to convert organic waste into RNG. The farm is located at SF LEO’s 300 acre (≈ 120 ha) Shahe Agricultural Park in Dingzhou, a city in the Southwest of Hebei province. Digesters will be fed cow manure and crop straw to generate biogas. The ‘Rimu’ plant will upgrade the biogas at a rate of 250-800 Nm³ per hour to produce CNG for NGVs. This will be the first venture in RNG production for SF LEO, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hebei provincial government to develop 30 agricultural waste to RNG projects over the next five years. – We chose the ‘Rimu’ after a thorough evaluation of Greenlane’s biogas upgrading solution and site visits to projects utilising their systems in both North America and Europe. This eco-dairy farm demonstration will allow us to turn waste into wealth and increase the sustainability of dairy farming in China, said Chaoyang Hu, Chief Executive Officer for SF LEO. Text: Alan Sherrard BI81/5002/AS An official signing ceremony took place in Changchun with representatives of both companies in attendance. Also in attendance at the ceremony were Siping City Secretary, LIU Xijie and Lishu County Secretary, SUN Yanjun. Addax Bioenergy downscale operations in Sierra Leone
Bioenergy no 5 September 2015
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