Iogen suspends US cellulosic ethanol plant plans in US. $350 million loan guarantees "not enough."

[NNadir]

http://earth2tech.com/2008/06/04/iogen-suspends-us-cellulosic-ethanol-plant-plans/

While we just heard that land management company Alico has decided to nix its plans to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the U.S., Canadian company Iogen tells us that it, too, is backing away from its intentions to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the U.S. It’s interesting because both Alico and Iogen were chosen by the Department of Energy in February 2007 to potentially receive funding to build the first of the next-generation of cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S. that can churn out biofuels made from waste, plant byproducts and energy crops.

Iogen had planned to build a plant in Shelley, Idaho; construction was due to start this year and be completed by 2010. Guess there’s been a change of plans. An Iogen spokesperson tells us that the company has “suspended” its cellulosic plant plans for Idaho to instead focus on its more advanced plant in Saskatchewan, Canada. The spokesperson says that at this time the company won’t be pursuing those DOE funds, which according to the Canadian Press, where we first read of the suspension, included loan guarantees and grant money that was estimated at some $350 million.

Part of the problem may be that for all the hype, their technology is crap.

According to Iogen's website:

Enzyme technology is one of the key areas of Iogen's innovation. Iogen owns and operates a large-scale state-of-the-art enzyme manufacturing facility in Ottawa, Canada. The plant serves customers around the world with products designed for specific-use applications. The company's core skills include protein engineering, enzyme expression, fermentation development, enzyme manufacturing, enzyme application engineering, and operation of enzyme-based reactions.

Iogen's enzymes are now used in the pulp and paper, textile and animal feed industries. In the pulp and paper industry, Iogen enzymes help decrease the amount of chlorinated chemicals used in bleaching, as well as reduce production costs. In the textile, industry enzymes help fade, soften or depill fabrics and garments.

http://www.iogen.ca/company/enzymes_technology/index.html

Fabrics and garments?

I thought they were going to save the car culture by diverting the corn stover that produces most of the carbon in soils to gas tanks, thus working to rapidly decrease the permaeability of soils, their water storage capacity, and the accessibility of nitrogen.

Thank goodness we have bet the earth's atmosphere on Iogen's success. We love to play the market, don't we?

[GliderGuider]

1. The USA probably has ten years left

to find a significant alternative source of liquid fuel. By "significant" I mean a source that can supply the energy equivalent of 5 to 10 million barrels of oil per day. The reason I think you'll need so much is the Mexico is the canary in the coal mine as far as oil export declines go. The international export market could be half its present volume in 15 years, with all that implies for oil prices and economic output.

I have yet to see a source that could supply the needed amount of energy, especially in a form that could be easily integrated into the current infrastructure in a one-decade time frame.

Iogen is looking more like a flim-flam every day.

[bananas]

2. We'll use noo-coo-loo-yoo-rrr energy to melt oil from tar sands and shale rock.

[GliderGuider]

3. Riiiight.

Monkeys flying from my butt to God's ear...

The mere fact that the idea is stupid, expensive, philosophically unacceptable to the public and a waste of EROEI won't keep us from trying it, though. Anything to keep from having to walk. Anything!

[NNadir]

5. What we will use because of the dumb bets made on so called "renewable" fantasies

of scientifcally illiterate people is dangerous fossil fuels.

In general, the main reason that Fischer-Tropsch chemistry is now being explored derives wholly and totally from deliberate contempt for science, of the type that deliberately, for instance, mocks words like "exajoule" (EXO-JEW-EL) and "nuclear" as "NOO-COO-LOO-RRR."

The spelling of the word for genetically based morphological changes, for instance spelling the word as "EVIL-LOO-SHUN" doesn't make dumbass creationists anything but dumb ass creationists.

This reminds me of a creationist who used to mock evolution by claiming that missing items had "evolved legs."

In the energy context of dumb ass creationism we have here, dumb shits who can't compare two real numbers. I have seen it here - dumb shits argue that http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/ELECTRICITY_GEN_1983-2006.XLS">616 > 860.

I have also seen anti-intellectual thugs with arbitrary criteria claim that big risk of earthquakes in New York - and how paranoid is this - involves nuclear power plants and not buildings. The thug I have in mind actually spent lots of time giggling over an earthquake in Japan because it damaged a nuclear plant - without a single injury being recorded - and killed people in collapsing buildings. The same anti-science thug, of course, would never dream of dismantling the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building because "New York could have an earthquake," but still comes around to insist on dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste in the lungs of infacts and the elderly alike because - according to the thug's illiterate formulation - New York could have an earthquake.

The fact is, that the anti-nuclear movement hates the science of Neils Bohr, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermi and many others because its hatred of science itself in general.

The energy creationists are the main reason that the world is stumbling toward Fischer-Tropsch hell, never mind soil strip mining hell.

Meanwhile, in the land of the Curies, of Langevin, and the Joliets, among the literate, it is understood that the safest and cleanest form of transportation energy is the same energy that powers the TGV.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/508521/worlds_fastest_rail_train_tgv_574_8_kph_inside_footage/">The World's Fastest Commercial Landcraft Runs on Nuclear Power.

Of course, it's very clear that France doesn't have a lot of illiterate dopes who deliberately hate and mock science. In that country, reason has a long and respected history.

[Fledermaus]

4. 11 Companies Racing to Build U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plants

There are almost a dozen companies racing to build the first next-generation cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States over the next few years. The plants will be built all over the U.S. and will churn out biofuels made from waste, plant byproducts and woody energy crops. It’s no easy task. Not only do these companies have to build pilot and demo plants, but ultimately large-scale, commercialized refineries that can take years to construct and require hundreds of millions of investment dollars.

While biofuels have been getting a bad rap lately, President Bush’s Twenty in Ten Initiative aims to increase the use of renewable and alternative fuels in the transportation sector to the equivalent of 35 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2017. These 11 companies are focusing on finding the right recipe to make the cellulosic ethanol production economically feasible. Good luck to them (per request from the comment section, we added in the tickers for the public companies):


View Larger Map

http://earth2tech.com/2008/06/03/12-companies-racing-to-build-cellulosic-ethanol-plants-in-the-us/

Ha ha ha

[NNadir]

6. "Focusing on finding" is the same as "building?"

Bullshit.

It's just talk, mostly by people involved in wishful thinking.

They aren't "building" doodly squat. They're researching.

Note the "tickers." It's put there to make sure that everyone who can be scammed is scammed.

The plan to rip out every remaining nutrient out of the soil is still a failure.

[Fledermaus]

7. Pfffttt...

Verenium: The company is in the final stages of testing and evaluating its demo facility, which can produce 1.4 million gallons per year. Construction on the pilot plant began in February 2007

Range Fuels: Range Fuels has been testing its technology in pilot-scale units for the past seven years. The company began construction in November 2007 of its first 20 million-gallon-per-year phase of a commercial ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga., with plans to finish sometime in 2009.

Abengoa Bioenergy: Owned by Spanish engineering company Abengoa, the company opened a pilot plant in York, Neb., in October 2007, which cost some $35 million to build. Abengoa plans to spend $300 million to build a cellulosic ethanol production plant in Hugoton, Kan., which will produce 49 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year.

KL Process Design Group: The company opened what it says is the first wood-fiber cellulosic ethanol plant in January of this year near Upton, Wyo

Mascoma: Mascoma and the University of Tennessee are jointly building a switchgrass-fed demo refinery in Monroe County, Tenn., that will produce 5 million gallons per year and will be operational in 2009. The company also started construction on a pilot plant in Rome, N.Y., in 2006.

http://earth2tech.com/2008/06/03/12-companies-racing-to-build-cellulosic-ethanol-plants-in-the-us/

Many more will have a pilot or commercial plant running by 2009

Ha ha ha