News

August 24, 2007

Cultivating a new ethanol plan

EthosGen eyes Newport to build facility that uses cellulosic process rather than a corn-based strategy.

WILKES-BARRE – As the potential wanes for one ethanol production facility in the area, it’s waxing for another so unique that it’s patented.

Rumors swirling that the plant protested out of Wright Township might end up in the Whitney Pointe Industrial Park in the Honey Pot section of Nanticoke are likely untrue. That plant seems to have found a home in Mayfield, south of Carbondale in Lackawanna County.

Northeast Ethanol and Renewable Resources LTD filed an air-quality plan application with the state Department of Environmental Protection to construct a 60 million-gallon-per-year plant. The proposed site is along train tracks east of Lackawanna Avenue near Gordon Avenue, according to Phyllis Jaskowiec, the borough’s secretary. No applications for building or zoning permits have been filed, she said.

But another, potentially more viable, plan is taking shape for a site off the Kirmar Parkway in Newport Township. Heading EthosGen, recent King’s College graduate Jim Abrams is running with an idea his father, Bill, has been tinkering with since 1981.

EthosGen would use a cellulosic process, unlike Northeast Ethanol’s corn-based strategy, to unlock the sugars required to create ethanol. Industry critics say cost-effective cellulosic technology is years away, but the Abramses feel they’ve bypassed that by selecting a specific feedstock – a fast-growing, hardy crossbred grass – and adding a specific enzyme at a critical time to extract more sugar than using all possible cellulosic stocks.

“If you’re looking to make trees and every bush you see into ethanol, that is seven years away,” Jim Abrams said during a presentation at King’s on Thursday. He described his company’s process as manufacturing both the lock and key rather than choosing one and searching for the other.

The plan would also minimize transportation costs by growing the grass at the facility and selling the ethanol regionally.

Though the initial site, on land leased for free from the Earth Conservancy, is planned to eventually encompass 100 acres and supply Northeastern Pennsylvania, the process is scalable both up and down. And because the grass isn’t grown in the ground, smaller facilities could inhabit industrially spoiled land such as brownfields and Superfund sites in metropolitan areas.

At full build-out, the plant would create 2,000 metric tons of grass feedstock per year and require roughly 1,200 truck trips to distribute the estimated 7.5 million gallons of ethanol produced.

The plan accounts for the vast majority of usual complaints against the ethanol industry. Year-round feedstock production will be controlled in a series of 1-acre greenhouses, mitigating the potential for fuel scarcity. The company hopes to utilize underground mine-pool water and storm water collected from the greenhouses for irrigation, addressing heavy water-use concerns. The cellulosic process is odorless, like vodka, eliminating the beer-like aroma associated with corn-ethanol fermentation. Finally, the proprietary process reuses waste heat and biomass to create energy, meaning very few energy inputs would be needed and the company might actually supply some energy to nearby consumers.

Jim Abrams said there are five other cellulosic ethanol plants in the country, but none uses EthosGen’s process.

The idea has attracted the attention of several King’s professors, a regional technology start-up support organization, several state legislators and potential Swedish investors.

Because there are no economies of scale, each acre of production would cost about $1.2 million to construct. So far, the company has raised $320,000, but Abrams hopes to land a $600,000 loan and match it with a state Energy Harvest grant.

“Energy’s going to be the focus of the fall (Legislative) session,” state Rep. John Yudichak, D-Nanticoke, noted at the meeting, adding that he’d “be happy to work with” the company to pitch the proposal to influential state officials.

While the plant expects to be profitable and competitive, it will have to move quickly to capture the regional market because the Northeast Ethanol plant is ahead in the process.

A public informational meeting and hearing on its application will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 11 at St. John’s Hall at 703 Hill St. in Mayfield for DEP to describe the project and solicit comments from the public before considering approval. DEP will respond to all pertinent questions and comments when it decides on the application.

Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.

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