ABC Board Member Focus of WSU Biofuel Research Project
8/30/2007
Washington State University researcher Jon Johnson, in collaboration with
private industry partners, has won a $583,000 grant to assess poplar wood as a
feedstock for the production of ethanol.
Johnson is partnering with GreenWood Resources, a hybrid poplar company
headquartered in Portland, Ore., with plantings throughout the western U.S.,
Chile and China, and with ZeaChem, which has developed and patented a conversion
process for ethanol production. Johnson is based at the Washington State
University Puyallup Research and Extension Center.
The challenge Johnson and his collaborators face is in assessing the quality
of the feedstock from the ethanol-producers perspective.
“The problem with most studies is that they investigate either the production
side or the conversion side of the process. What we’re doing is bringing those
two aspects together,” Johnson said. “There’s an attitude of ‘if we grow it,
they will come,’ without much thought about the end-user, the ethanol producer,
and if the feedstock is really optimal for ethanol production.”
Feedstock from selected hybrid poplar clones will be provided to ZeaChem to
develop ethanol yield data, which will be used to determine breeding and
selecting criteria of hybrid poplar with specific feedstock characteristics.
Poplar wood has many of the characteristics of a high quality bioethanol
feedstock. A perennial tree, its feedstock can be “stored on the stump.” Poplar
is cheap to grow, with low input costs, low tillage requirements and requiring
little to no fertilization. The tree’s productivity can be maximized for a
particular region and climate through breeding. Poplars are also the fastest
growing temperate-region tree in the world and are widely adapted to grow in
many soils and climates.
Johnson figures that a 950-acre poplar farm could yield enough biomass to
produce one million gallons of ethanol every year. Americans consume about 400
million gallons of gasoline per day.
Environmentally beneficial poplars sequester carbon in soil, remove excess
nutrients from soil and water, and provide food and shelter for animals. And
since they grow well on marginal land, they don’t take up valuable
food-producing agricultural land.
Johnson and his collaborators have over 30 years experience in breeding,
selecting, deploying and commercially growing poplars for maximum biomass
production in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the west.
ZeaChem’s production process involves recycling the conversion byproducts,
such as hydrogen gas, back into the conversion system. As a result, all of the
feedstock contributes to the final product, dramatically increasing yield while
lowering the cost for cellulosic ethanol. Laboratory bench scale yields of over
130 gallons per bone dry ton have been observed, suggesting commercial costs of
well under $1 per gallon should be achievable. |
