DOE offers conditional commitment for a $105M Loan Guarantee for Project Liberty cellulosic biorefinery
08 July 2011
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is offering a conditional commitment for a $105- million loan guarantee to support the development of a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. Project LIBERTY, sponsored by POET, LLC, will produce up to 25 million gallons of ethanol per year and will be located in Emmetsburg, Iowa. (Earlier post.)
Project LIBERTY will use corncobs, leaves and husks. The project’s process uses enzymatic hydrolysis to convert waste into ethanol and will produce enough biogas to power both Project LIBERTY and POET’s adjacent grain-based ethanol plant. Project LIBERTY will displace more than 13.5 million gallons of gasoline annually and fulfill more than 25% of the projected 2013 Renewable Fuel Standard Requirement for biomass-based cellulosic ethanol.
POET plans to replicate their process at 27 of their other corn ethanol facilities, which would have a projected combined annual capacity of one billion gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol. The company estimates that 85% of Project LIBERTY will be sourced with US content.
"annual capacity of one billion gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol"
Broin/Poet claimed that they could get a lot of ethanol just using corn cobs and has set out to do just that.
Posted by: SJC | 08 July 2011 at 02:54 PM
This is great. Combined with the revolution in excess heat devices the energy future has never looked brighter!
What the old school journals and peer reviewers and ivory tower overseers are now facing is the unprecedented introduction of over-unity energy systems on Earth.
NASA's Chief Scientist Dennis Bushnell has recently acknowledged the number 1 energy development as the LANR-CF physics typified by Andrea Rossi's E-Cat and Randy Mills' black light catalyst.
This of course rewires the entire energy picture - largely obviating fossil fuels and even sustainable alternatives like wind and solar (though they have their niche.)
Methanol/alcohol via CTL and biomass will remain transitional liquid fuels for hybrids and heavy lift applications like trucking. As will biodiesel and bio-jetfuel. But light duty transport will now transition ever faster to EV with E-storage systems being the biggest bottleneck.
E-Cat-like generators will rapidly replace all sources of electric generation starting with home CHP distributed energy systems. Coal fired power plants, radiative nuclear fission, hydro, wind and solar will become a tiny sliver of the overall energy generation field. The sustainables like hydro, wind and solar will retain some integration with new distribution energy. Big hydro, nuke, and wind projects as of right now go on the shelf - most likely permanently.
Essentially the energy game is now over. What remains is to see who will clean up by producing and distributing the new energy products. Centralized power is, like climate change - dead. As we have said MANY times in these posts, energy is abundant throughout the universe and we are now to make use of it.
It is a new world. A world of abundant energy able to create and manipulate matter on an unprecedented scale. It is not to be abused. And it is not to be used as a reason to neglect growing population issues. Population is the number one issue on planet Earth. To address it, some hard changes in old world faith traditions need be made. Starting with Judeo-Christian/Muslim taboos on death, seks and contraception.
Welcome to the new world. There is plenty for everyone. But let's have some elbow room please.
PS, there will be repercussions for those who have unlawfully impeded this progress. It is an inevitable and healthy part of "cleaning house."
Posted by: Reel$$ | 08 July 2011 at 07:38 PM
I saw an ad for Lexus that implied they are going to offer a true FFV (OFS) plug hybrid. It could run on electricity, methanol, ethanol or gasoline. They said "it can run on fuels we do not use now". Sounds like a good combination.
Posted by: SJC | 09 July 2011 at 07:59 AM