One Person’s Trash Is The World’s Energy Treasure

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We as humans throw a lot of garbage into our landfills and dumpsters, which means disaster for the environment.

Image Credit: Warning: Biofuel Sign via Shutterstock

However, as the old saying goes “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” is allowing one company to literally take this to the bank.

Bioroot Energy based in Darby, Montana is a cellulosic biofuel company targeting to help make these types of fuels more commercially viable on the market.

According to its Facebook page, the company’s mission is to “profitably convert solid and liquid wastes, like trash, and non-crop biomass, as well as coal, methane and CO2, into a biodegradable, water soluble higher mixed alcohol fuel formula that blends seamlessly into gasoline or diesel and coal.”

You would be surprised at what is being use to build this cellulosic biofuel (licenced as Envirolene) which comes right out of the trash; literally. This includes shredded tires, along with refinery waste to name a few examples. Who knew tires could for something more purposeful besides driving your automobile or bicycle?

Envirolene is 95% cleaner than gasoline, which means it runs at near zero emissions, and is more energy-efficient than corn-based ethanol (138 octane rating, 30 more octanes than corn-based fuels according to Bioroot Energy).

While some users think biofuels require modifications to their car in order to use them, the company is also making you think twice about this. Envirolene can be used in not only flex-fuel cars, but also blended between 10% to 30% with gasoline.

Bioroot’s continued presence in the renewable fuel market will certainly be helped out by the ongoing commitments of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard, which is targeting 14 million gallons of cellulosic fuel this year. It’s hoped that, by 2022, 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel will help transportation across the country.

While there has been some challenges in getting it off the ground, a 30 million gallon a year cellulosic biofuel plant is being built by Dupont in Iowa.

Given the challenges of a warming planet, and the increased economic costs of mitigating climate change, along with increased demand in energy from emerging markets, there is definitely lots of potential to turn trash into pure energy gold.

Main Source: Bioroot Energy

Adam Johnston (185 Posts)

A University of Winnipeg graduate who received a three year B.A. with a combined major in Economics and Rhetoric, Writing & Communications. Currently attempting to be a freelance social media coordinator. My eventual goal is to be a clean tech policy analyst down the road while I sharpen my skills as a renewable energy writer. Currently working on a book on clean tech and how to relate it to a broader audience. You can follow me on Twitter @adamjohnstonwpg or at www.adammjohnston.wordpress.com


  • Otis11

    This article has a lot of potential and I would really like to see more on this topic. I’m normally the last person to say something other than point out a little thing here or there, but there were parts I had to re-read to understand what the author meant. Anyway, the biggest issues are below so that they can be corrected quickly. Please delete this comment once they are fixed, or let me know and I will delete it asap.

    “company’s mission is to make “profitably” => “company’s mission is to “profitably”

    “tires could for something more purposeful besides driving” => “tires could be used for something more purposeful than just driving”

    “Envirolene is 95% cleaner than gasoline, which runs at near zero emissions” => “Envirolene is 95% cleaner than gasoline, which means it runs at near zero emissions” unless you ment that gasoline was near zero emissions?

    “It’s hoped by 2022, 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel” => “It’s hoped that by 2022, 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel”

    “challenges in getting off the ground” => “challenges in getting it off the ground”

    “cellulosic biofuel plant is being built by Dupont in Iowa, which is also lending some credit towards a better and more environmentally sustainable fuel than regular corn.” => Consider rewording.

  • Bob_Wallace

    Around 200 million tonnes of waste is produced in UK every year which is capable of producing 4% of the total UK’s electricity and water needs.

    There’s not that much energy lurking in those steaming piles of waste.

    http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/18/new-cost-efficient-method-to-assess-renewable-energy-potential-of-waste/#ymu6vFtEHtiL2KoL.99

    G. Philip Robertson and colleagues at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station have been looking at plants that don’t require farm fields.

    “First, we discovered that the grasses and flowers that take over fields once you stop farming produce a fair amount of biomass, especially if you provide them a little bit of fertilizer,” Robertson says.

    Robertson and his colleagues surveyed the Midwest acre by acre and identified 27 million acres of marginal farmland where these plants could grow, and where the acreage falls into a compact enough area that someone might want to build a refinery to produce biofuels.

    They figured that it would become too expensive to transport this heavy and bulky plant material more than 50 miles, from field to refinery.

    “At the end of the day, we discovered we could produce enough biomass to supply 30 or so of these potential biorefineries,” Robertson says.

    The 27 million acres identified in the latest study would provide less than 0.5 percent of (US) national energy demand,

    http://www.npr.org/2013/01/16/169538570/could-some-midwest-land-support-new-biofuel-refineries

    41% of all US energy is electricity. 28% of all US energy is used for transportation.

    We could, perhaps, get our airplane fuel from biofuels. It is unlikely we have feedstock enough to create biofuel for our cars and trucks.

    • Gary

      This last poster is still missing it. BioFuel does NOT have to come from an agri-crop which is planted, fertilized, copiously watered, then weeded – all before one annual harvest.

      Corn kernels provide carbon atoms as building blocks contained with corn starch. These carbons are first treated with acidic enzymes to become sugars, then inefficiently batch fermented using yeasts to produce corn ethanol which is only 10% of the whole tank of ingredients. To purify and concentrate this 10% alcohol volume takes expensive distillation followed by molecular sieving.

      I don’t believe that Jay from Bioroot is talking about a new BioFuel that comes from anything agri-based which is annually planted, watered and harvested. The same carbon atoms in his fuel’s final recipe can be cleanly obtained from garbage, beetle-killed pine, ground tires, NatGas and CO2.

      That basic carbon atom building block is identical whether it came from corn or ground tires or coal. The processing mechanisms used to isolate these alternative carbon building blocks are completely different – and the results are retiring the inefficient batch fermentation (biologic conversion) process in favor of 24×7 continuous catalytic processes employing thermal super-heated steam.

      Wake up. Please don’t assimilate ALL BioFuels with having to plant and harvest some sort of annual agri-based crop. Not at all… Big differences here. The green plant leaf in the BioFuel’s “O” on the signage is wrong. Completely bass-ackwards – yet this is the common perception.

      Gary

      • Bob_Wallace

        OK, then where do you think biofuel could come from in adequate quantities excluding food and textile crop lands?

        Forget the corn you talk about in your comment. That’s a food crop.

        Forget used tires. The typical auto uses a set of tires every few years. You might get a tankful of fuel from a set of tires. (I’d be surprised if there’s “ten gallons” of fuel in a set.

        Forget natural gas. That’s a sequestered carbon that needs to be left where it is.

        Forget garbage. Only a small amount available there.

        Forget forest/lumber waste. There really isn’t that much. Probably forget bug-killed trees. Would take too much energy to harvest and transport them.

        Forget CO2. The only sources of concentrated CO2 are the smokestacks of coal and natural gas burners. That “leave sequestered carbon sequestered” thing.

        The only biofuel which I can see might have a fighting chance is algae grown in poor quality or ocean water. Grow it on large tracks of otherwise unusable land. But at this point we do not have the technology to do this.

        Setting a goal of producing enough biofuel to power half our airplane fleet might be a reasonable goal. Move the other half of our air travel to electrified high speed rail.

  • Jay

    Thanks for the nice article, CleanTechnica! To clarify the classification of higher mixed alcohol fuel, it is not technically a cellulosic biofuel, but rather a thermally produced synthetic alcohol fuel formula composed of 8-10 simple n alcohols. Think of it as a 3rd generation advanced biofuel.

    Cellulosic biofuels (such as ethanol, butanol – both single alcohols) are derived from fermenting sugars derived from lignins in biomass, using an “ag” batch process not at all unlike making beer! To date there has been very little cellulosic ethanol produced. (Hard to make beer from wood.) And at the end of the day it’s still just 107 octane ethanol. Higher mixed alcohol fuel is a whole different animal. Here’s a brief rundown on the various renewable/alternative fuels:

    http://www.biorootenergy.com/faqs-and-facts/introduction-to-alternative-fuels/

    On the input side, we refer to household and municipal trash and garbage as “solid and liqiud carbons.” There are staggering volumes of other “trash” carbons too, such as flared methane and CO2. For example, North Dakota’s oil fields alone are currently flaring over 200 million cubic feet per day to the sky due to no pipelines. That’s enough methane to produce 240,000 gallons of higher mixed alcohol fuel per day.

    Our mission is to turn all these solid, liquid and gaseous carbons into the world’s strongest, cleanest and most profitable alcohol fuel. No crops (or excuses) needed.