By Paul Morden, from www.theobserver.ca The Observer
Woodland Biofuels’ Sarnia pilot plant is helping the company move closer to commercial production of ethanol made from wood waste and other bio-mass.
CEO Greg Nuttall and other Woodland officials were at the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park in Sarnia Tuesday, where the company built a $12-million pilot plant, for an announcement by the federal Economic Development Agency for southern Ontario of up to $800,000 in funding for the facility.
Nuttall said the federal funding will help “optimize the plant and prove out the economics, from a commercial standpoint.”
Data needed for a commercial-scale plant should be in place within a few months, he said.
“At that point, you’ve got to finance the plant, and then you’ve got to build it.”
That doesn’t happen quickly, Nuttall said.
“But, we believe we’ll have the first commercial plant running within about three years from today.”
That first plant isn’t likely to be built in Sarnia, since the region doesn’t have a large supply of forestry waste, but Chemical Valley may be a candidate for future plants, Nuttall said.
“We have started looking into using agricultural waste,” he said.
“If we were going to build a plant in Sarnia, that would be the primary feedstock.”
One challenge, he said, is that agricultural waste isn’t currently being collected on a massive scale.
“But, that’s a solvable problem,” Nuttall said, adding he believes Woodland will eventually build plants fed by agricultural waste.
“Which puts Sarnia in the running.”
Woodland’s Sarnia pilot plant is currently fed by waste wood.
“The stuff I’m using now is actually old kitchen cabinets,” Woodland vice-president Doug Gray said while leading a tour following Tuesday’s funding announcement.
Nuttall said a 20-million-gallon commercial plant using Woodland’s technology is expected to cost $120 million to build.
Relatively low capital and operating costs are one of the technology’s advantages, he said.
“We expect to be able to able to make ethanol for about half what it costs to make gasoline at today’s oil prices.”
The federal funding helped the company attract another $2 million in venture capital financing, and is expected to create up to 18 full-time jobs.
“Woodland Biofuels is an excellent example of a business producing the type of innovation that can really expand our economy,” Sarnia-Lambton MP Pat Davidson said at Tuesday’s announcement.
“Canada and Ontario are doing a lot more than most places to support clean, green technology,” Nuttall said.
Ontario contributed $4 million to the pilot plant Woodland Biofuels began building in Sarnia last summer and completed in the fall.