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This is the third in a series of articles describing biomass R&D activities. The series began with feedstock production and continued on to the conversion and production processses for biobased fuels, power, and products. This article focuses on developing integrated biorefineries

The federal government is currently investing in cost-shared R&D to spur the growth of the U.S. biobased industry by developing integrated biorefineries. A biorefinery is a facility that uses biomass to make a range of fuels, combined heat and power, chemicals, and other high-value materials that are conventionally petroleum-derived in order to maximize the value of biomass feedstock. Developing biorefineries could revolutionize U.S. industry, such as the chemical, pulp and paper, and electric utility industry, by substituting renewable biomass feedstocks for petroleum based resources. This helps decrease our dependence on petroleum, of which the U.S. imports an average of 13.1 million barrels per day, as of May 2004, or roughly 64 percent (EIA Monthly Energy Review, June 2004) (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/mer.pdf). The need to shift to renewable sources of energy, chemicals, and other materials will also ensure long-term stability of our economy and the environment.

The concept of a biorefinery is similar to today’s crude oil refineries, which have evolved over time to utilize every molecule present in crude oil by rearranging bonds to improve the properties of its products and byproducts. In the early stages of the oil industry, many desirable products were produced along side byproducts that were considered “waste,” such as hydrogen, ethane, and benzene. Over the years, economic and environmental drivers led to process and technological innovations. As a result, undesirable byproducts were upgraded to make useful products, such as fertilizers and plastics, along with increased efforts to make products less harmful (e.g. removing lead from gasoline). Essentially, the waste from one process became a valuable raw material to make another product.

Similarly, future processes and technological innovations for integrated biorefineries will help break down biomass structures in order to optimize the conversion of their components (mostly cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) into value-added renewable biobased products. These products must also be cost competitive and interchangeable with petroleum-based counterparts. Combining high-value products with high-volume energy production, while employing any combination of conversion technologies, has the greatest potential for achieving this goal. Deciding which products to make and which conversion technologies and feedstocks to employ is one of the main challenges.

To tackle the challenge of developing a biobased industry in the U.S., the Biomass Research and Development Act of 2000 http://www.bioproducts-bioenergy.gov/about/bio_act.asp directs the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to integrate technology R&D programs through the Biomass Initiative http://www.bioproducts-bioenergy.gov/default.asp. As a result of this legislation, the departments have improved R&D coordination through vehicles such as joint solicitations, research partnerships, and joint portfolio reveiws.

The integrated biorefinery is the DOE Biomass Program’s ultimate deployment strategy to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign sources of petroleum and spur the development of a domestic bioindustry. The Biomass Program’s integrated biorefinery R&D capitalizes on the synergies of integrating technologies from four of its core R&D elements: Feedstock Interface, Sugar Platform, Thermochemical Platform, and Products. The Program considers their fifth core R&D area, Integrated Biorefineries, as a large-scale systems validation effort that is exclusively industry-led. The Biomass Program’s current integrated biorefinery projects are primarily based on sugar and thermochemical platform technologies. Although these are two separate platforms, the division is somewhat arbitrary in light of technological synergies from both platforms. Nevertheless, this kind of ultimate integration of technologies is predicted in the long-term. The Program is taking a systems integration approach that translates the technical successes achieved in each of the core R&D areas to develop the technology capability for an integrated market-ready biorefinery. The Program leverages partnerships with industry and academia in order to: 1) complete technology development necessary for start-up demonstration of an integrated biorefinery by 2007; and 2) help U.S. industry establish the first large-scale sugar biorefinery based on agricultural residues by 2010.

USDA also conducts R&D that supports the biorefinery concept, mainly through its laboratory and research partners at Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Forest Services. Biorefinery-related R&D conducted by USDA addresses vital issues such as soil conservation and sustainable biomass feedstocks (including forest management), in addition to biomass-derived products and energy.

In addition to developing multiple pathways for utilizing biomass feedstocks to produce value-added products, other barriers exist that are specific to the demonstration and deployment of a commercially successful integrated biorefinery. These include the challenge of process integration, the risk of pioneer technology, the high financial risk of investment, and attracting investors.

Exising biorefineries such as corn mill processors and pulp and paper mills are key industrial stakeholders and starting points for developing the U.S. biorefinery industry. Developing these existing biorefineries will enable the development of future biorefineries – transitioning the chemical and petrochemical industries. There are two ways to expand upon existing biorefineries: 1) introduce existing technology into existing biorefineries, and 2) make improvements in emerging technology and apply it to existing biorefineries. Future biorefineries will use non-traditional sources of lignocellulosic biomass and will be based on technologies that have not yet been proven commercially or are as yet unknown.

There are projects in the DOE and USDA R&D portfolios that involve existing and future biorefinery concepts. For example, managed forests in the U.S. have enormous untapped potential as sources of renewable biomass transportation fuels, electricity, process heat and steam, chemicals, and other materials. The U.S. pulp and paper industry already has an established infrastructure for collecting and processing these biomass resources and is the largest producer and user of renewable energy in the U.S., self-generating over half of its energy from biomass. Currently, biomass in the form of pulping liquors and wood wastes (a.k.a. “hog fuel”) are burned in recovery boilers for electricity and process heat and steam.

The departments are working with the forest products industry on research, development, demonstration, and deployment of technologies to systematically upgrade pulp and paper mills into more advanced forest biorefineries. Integrating USDA-related R&D in forest management and the DOE Biomass Program thermochemical and sugar platform R&D (such as gasification and fermentation) into pulp and paper mills is the first step toward developing the forest biorefinery concept. These technologies aim to more effectively utilize black liquor and solid biomass (hog fuel, other wood residues, and fiber loss). This has the potential to double electricity output per ton for the forest products industry, which is important since the industry is the third largest consumer of fossil energy in U.S. manufacturing (after petroleum and chemicals). Any excess power produced could be sold to the grid for electricity needs. However, it may be more desirable to use biorefinery technologies on pre-pulping hemicelluose, pulping liquors, and other wood wastes for generating ethanol, syngas, pyrolysis oils, or other high-value products that could be used directly or upgraded to transportation fuels, chemicals, or even hydrogen. Then, these forest biorefinery technologies and products could be applied to the electric utility, petrochemical, and petroleum refining industry in order to supplant petroleum-based commodity usage.

Realizing the integrated biorefinery concept requires industrial symbiosis (resource sharing and byproduct exchange among nearby industries, whereby outputs from biorefineries would be transformed by another industry) along with governmental symbiosis (resource sharing and knowledge exchange among government agencies).¹ Biorefinery R&D is creating new alliances between the departments and component industries. In turn, these alliances are helping to identify new opportunities for biomass, which could revolutionize U.S. industry.

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Virginia consumed approximately 2,084.4 trillion Btu of energy in the year 2000. The majority of that energy was supplied by petroleum and coal, at 43 percent and 24 percent respectively. Natural gas provided 14 percent, followed by nuclear power at 12 percent, and hydroelectric power at less than 1 percent. Biomass supplied 5 percent, at 104.9 trillion Btu, of Virginia’s energy in 2000.¹

Virginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME) works with the Southeastern Regional Biomass Energy Program (SERBEP) to implement biomass-related programs in Virginia. One program funded in Virginia is the Martin Farm Swine Lagoon Project. The project uses a covered anaerobic lagoon to digest swine wastes into methane gas. The methane gas is then used to fire a generator that provides 80 percent of the farm’s power. Similarly, Virginia has also begun conducting research on uses for chicken waste. The goal of the research is to create a system in which chicken waste is combusted to heat the chicken houses. Finally, in partnership with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Center for Forest Products Marketing and Department of Wood Science and Forest Products, Virginia completed a study analyzing the availability of and potential market for wood waste. The study estimated the amount of wood waste generated in Virginia and identified potential markets for the wood waste.²

Virginia participates in the Mainstay Energy Rewards Program – Green Tag Purchase Program. The program offers a financial incentive to promote the production of renewable energy, including biomass technologies. Mainstay Energy, a private company, offers customers who install renewable energy systems a market in which to sell renewable energy credits generated by the new systems. Biomass technologies are usually compensated at a rate of 0.1¢/kWh - 1¢/kWh, though exact amounts vary by the type of technology, the amount of electricity produced, and the length of the contract.³

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