A dozen companies, including Inbicon, have announced projects or possibilities for converting cellulose to ethanol or methanol. How close are any to success? Most are still in their labs working on the next new technology breakthrough. Some are in the process of building their first test facility. All hope to build commercial plants to process wood chips, crop waste, or garbage feedstocks into a liquid fuel source.

Inbicon, by contrast, has operated a pilot plant successfully since 2003. We’ve proven the efficacy of our patented processes for converting wheat straw and many other agricultural leftovers to ethanol and various co-products. In 2009, we’ll further demonstrate our capabilities on a large scale (1.4 million US gallons per year) at our demonstration plant at Kalundborg port, including our energy integration system with the adjacent power plant.

Here are some of the incentives that make cellulosic ethanol production attractive to Inbicon and other companies:

1. Consumer and government demands to make fuel from something, anything, besides oil and food is greater than ever.

2. Tighter controls on global warming gases would heighten the appeal of these fuels, since many of them would add little new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. With Inbicon’s new biomass refinery design, the hydrocarbon footprint will be a minus—in fact, we could feed surplus energy back into the power grid to heat our homes and supplement other manufacturing.

3. Automakers like GM and Ford are building and promoting flex-fuel vehicles.

4. U.S. legislation passed last year mandates the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2022, less than half of it from corn ethanol. Almost all the rest is to come from nonfood sources.

5. There is plenty of agricultural waste to go around:

Wheat Straw:

In 2008/09 world wheat production is projected to reach 656 million tons. The EU-27 is expected to be the world’s largest wheat-producing region with increasing wheat production to 140 million tons. China is expected to be the second largest wheat producer in 2008/09 reaching 109 million tons. Wheat production in the former Soviet Union (FSU-12) is forecast at 99 million tons in 2008/09, up 7 percent from a year earlier. India is projected to produce a record 77 million tons. Canada is around 25 million tons. The US is about 68 million tons. That is up about 20% from last year. 1 ton of grain produces about a ton of straw depending on the height of the variety.

Corn Stover:

Corn yields are about 309,800 million tons in the US. 475,350 million tons are produced worldwide. China produces 156,000 million tons. EU-27 about 59,000 million tons. About 1 ton of corn stover is produced for every ton of grain.

Rice Straw:

In 2008/09 world rice production is projected to reach about 440,000 million tons. The largest are in China with about 130,550 million tons. Next is India at 97,000 million tons. About a ton of straw is produced per ton of rice harvested.

Bagasse: 

In 2008/09 world sugar cane production now exceeds 1 billion tons. Brazil produced around 500 million tons. The world production of sugar is already exceeding food demands by almost 10 million tons. Sugar Bagass, the biomass remaining after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract their juice, accounts for about a third of the harvest.