Thee is growing interest among producers near Spiritwood in south central North Dakota in the proposed biomass refinery that would require selling some of their corn stover and wheat straw residue after harvest to the plant to produce ethanol.
The biomass refinery would be a part of Dakota Spirit AgEnergy LLC and would be located next to the Cargill barley malting plant and the Great River Energy CHP power plant, according to Broekema.
The first part of the project uses a small amount of biomass along with lignite coal to fire a 99 mega-watt electrical generation plant which is currently under construction, she said.
That plant will generate two primary products, electricity and steam, when it goes online in 2012. The plant also plans to supply 200,000 pounds of steam per hour to the nearby Cargill plant for its production processes.
The second part will be the biomass refinery that will produce cellulosic ethanol.
Experimental biomass harvest trials for the ethanol plant are planned for late summer and fall this year, she said. In 2012, Great Plains will have an initial biomass harvest on a larger scale with the ethanol plant being built in 2013 and a regular full-scale biomass harvest. Broekema said they will need a full harvest next year in order to have enough biomass on hand for when the plant starts up in 2014.
She said they just completed a feedplant supply and product market study that tabulates the amount of feedstock they would require to operate the plant. The study was funded by the Agricultural Products Utilization Commission (APUC) and will be available by the end of February, she added.
Initially, Great River Energy was planning on utilizing biomass from a 50-mile radius around Spiritwood due to the high cost of transportation. However, the report changed that to say a 100-mile radius would be needed to have enough biomass on hand.
Other crop biomasses and CRP grasses could be a consideration for the distant future.
Producers in the area already use wheat straw for feed and bedding for livestock, and they need to leave quite a bit on the soil to protect and increase organic matter, raise winter wheat and as a deterrent for water, wind and soil erosion.
However, biomass does have some chemical properties that need to be worked out, Broekema said. There are variabilities that can occur depending on when a producer harvests and if it is a dry or wet year. Alkali in the samples can vary by 100 percent between samples and too much alkali can cause problems with processing, she added.
Other difficulties with sulfur and chlorine could damage the equipment and cause erosion, but the timing of the harvest can be a mitigating factor, she said.
The study showed the market currently pays about $10 per ton for biomass on a not-for-profit basis to use as a nutrient replacement. If it was purchased for a for-profit system, the cost would probably be $33 ton. Putting the biomass into rectangular bales adds $23 a ton and transportation adds to that amount for a total cost of $54 a ton delivered to the plant, she said.
Partners in the project with Great River Energy include Inbicon in Denmark who has been developing biomass technology in their plants for more than 10 years; Blue Flint Ethanol plant in North Dakota; Fagen, Inc., which has built 60 percent of the nation's ethanol capacity; PowerStock, the nation's largest ag biomass aggregator and supply chain expert; North Dakota Department of Commerce and Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corporation; and Great Plains Institute.
