February 04, 2008
California Company to Produce Ethanol From Waste Sugars
Greenbelt Resources Corp. announced Friday that Master Recycling Center, Inc. has increased its earlier order of two million gallons to five million gallons of ethanol per year. Diversified Ethanol Corp., a subsidiary of Greenbelt Resources Corp. will begin construction of the new facility in Pomona, Calif. with completion planned for late spring/early summer of 2008. Diversified is focused on producing valuable renewable energy from substances that presently are considered waste -- in this case converting energy produced by breweries and soft drink manufacturers among others. Currently, industries pay firms such as Master Recycling to dispose of expired consumer beverages such as soft drinks. Using the proprietary technology of Diversified Ethanol, Master Recycling can now convert the waste sugars into valuable energy.
Corn-based ethanol's future is somewhat limited by the new Renewable Fuel Standard established in the 2007 Energy Act. That act limits corn-based ethanol production to 15 billion gallons -- which is essentially a doubling of the current industry's production capacity. In addition to cellulosic ethanol produced from switchgrass, sugarcane bagasse, wood waste, wheat and rice straw and other feedstocks, there is expected to be a place for biofuels produced from urban trash and other wastes, soft drink and beer wastes and even coal. In other words, all regions of the country are expected to play a role in a future ethanol and biofuels industry.
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American Biofuels
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2 comments:
Great story and something I haven't heard a whole lot about yet. I know it's probably too early to tell but is there any indication of how scalable this type of technology is? 5 million gallons isn't going to go all that far.
Dave,
You are right 5 million is pretty small but I think they are sizing them to the size of the waste stream at each recycling location. It doesn't say in there how many locations they have but that they do hope to spread this technology to their other locations. Even though the quantities at each location may be small it may help to bring ethanol into areas that don't have much supply.
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