Anyone who has been involved in the deployment of a waste-to-energy (WTE) project with public-sector involvement knows how challenging it can be. Siting a project, finding a reliable technology provider, permitting and approvals, funding and retaining the support of elected officials are not for the faint of heart. Many of the successful projects such as the Enerkem Alberta Biofuels or West Palm Beach Renewable Energy Facility 2 can take 10 years or more to complete.

It’s part of the reason why Alison Kerester of the Gasification and Syngas Technologies Council (formerly Gasification Technologies Council), told attendees at the 2015 Renewable Energy from Waste Conference in Orlando that many firms are no longer submitting proposals for public projects. It’s also why Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County Executive Director Mark Hammond joked with attendees of the event’s preconference workshop that if their municipality had less than 10 years left of landfill life, they had better start dusting off their resumes.

It sounds like an uphill battle for firms trying to break into this difficult environment. Fortunately, the WTE industry does have some things working in its favor. The first, quite simply, is waste is not going away. On a global scale, as the population grows and developing countries continue to increase their middle classes, waste generation also is growing. Solutions for reducing that waste and keeping it out of landfills, which can be scarce in some parts of the world, are necessary.

Industries that generate scrap materials or sludges from their manufacturing processes are another major driver of WTE. A growing number of businesses, from large automakers to packaging companies to retailers and breweries, are placing a greater emphasis on the life cycle of the materials they are using to produce goods. They want to reduce their environmental footprint and are taking a look at their entire process, from raw materials procurement to end-of-life, and how they can conduct all areas of business with the least environmental impact. This movement is often referred to as the circular economy. WTE is finding a place within the circular economy as a way to capture as much value (and energy) as possible from the supply chain, especially when reuse and recycling are not options.

“A growing number of businesses, from large automakers to packaging companies to retailers and breweries, are placing a greater emphasis on the life cycle of the materials they are using to produce goods.”

Beginning in March, Renewable Energy from Waste and its sister publications, Recycling Today, Recycling Today Global Edition and Construction & Demolition Recycling, all will take a close look in 2016 into the circular economy and its role in the various business segments our magazines cover. We will feature commentary by those leading the charge in promoting a circular economy in their global operations. These essays will appear in our print editions and on our websites, where you also will find related podcasts and videos.

We look forward to sharing these various perspectives from private industry to help guide your businesses and provide insights into the approaches of some of the companies at the forefront of this massive movement.

The petroleum industry is an enormous global enterprise. It is estimated that the world consumes some 30 billion barrels of oil per year. Drilling, transporting, refining and transporting petroleum through pipelines and other shipping methods drives the economies of many countries. Renewable fuel sources may seem like small potatoes when compared with such massive fossil fuel production and infrastructure, but some companies are making a go of it, and customers and the oil industry are taking notice.

In the U.S., a number of companies are producing biofuels from plant sources. Yet another niche within renewable fuels involves companies who take waste vegetative matter and other discarded materials and convert them into second generation biofuels. Producing fuel from renewable sources also can mean incentives from state and federal government entities offering renewable fuel certificates for blends containing fossil fuel alternatives.

In November 2015, Wilmington, Delaware-based Ensyn announced it had been granted a key regulatory approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its renewable gasoline product RFGasoline, meaning both the company’s RFGasoline and its RFDiesel now had approval, pursuant to Title 40 CFR Part 79 promogulated under the Clean Air Act, which is required in order to market the fuels in the U.S.

The company describes its RFGasoline as “a drop-in gasoline transportation fuel” which is created by processing Ensyn’s renewable crude, Renewable Fuel Oil (RFO), with customary petroleum feedstocks in conventional petroleum refinery”—a process it calls “RFO coprocessing.”

AT THE ROOT

Ensyn’s RFO is produced by processing nonfood solid biomass, including wood residues, using the company’s patented core technology, Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP)—a thermal conversion process the company says is characterized by moderate temperatures and atmospheric pressure.

Ensyn’s website, www.ensyn.com, provides a step-by-step description of its closed-loop RTP technology. First, the biomass enters a feed preparation system. The biomass material is then dried and sized using heat and energy captured from the RTP process. The prepared feedstock is then metered into the conversion unit, where the material is broken down into pyrolytic vapor by a rapidly flowing stream of hot sand.

Pyrolytic vapor travels to the bio-oil collection system while the separated sand and charcoal enter the sand reheater. The charcoal is combusted in a bubbling bed to reheat the sand. Flue gas carries ash overhead to a collection system. Clean, hot sand is transferred from the sand reheater back to the conversion unit. The energy in the hot flue gas is directed to the biomass preparation system, while the vapor is quickly quenched in the bio-oil collection system. The condensed product is drawn off continuously and any remaining noncondensable gas is recycled to the conversion unit to provide the lift that drives and completes the closed-loop process.

The weight percent yields from processing the biomass are approximately 65 to 80 percent liquid, with 12 to 16 percent each of char and combustible gas, according to the company. Ensyn says the precise liquid yield depends on the feedstock that is being processed. Char and gas also can be used as fuel sources for plant operations or for export to other facilities.

According to Ensyn’s website, “The RTP technology has multiple proven applications and has been demonstrated commercially in a number of industrial sectors.” Not only have liquids been used for renewable fuel, they have been a source of numerous chemical products, more than 30 of which have been commercialized, says the company.

ADVANCING AND EXPANDING

Ensyn and its partners have been combusting RFO for industrial heating purposes for many years. More than 20 million gallons have been combusted commercially in boilers and furnaces in Canada and the U.S.

Ensyn completed an enhancement of its RFO production plant in Renfrew, Ontario, in 2014, converting it from a renewable chemicals and heating fuels plant to a dedicated fuels facility producing RFO. The 3-million-gallon-per-year production plant is Ensyn’s first facility dedicated to the production of RFO.

Initial term contracts for RFO produced in the Ontario facility have been signed with two hospitals in New Hampshire and Youngstown Thermal, the district heating facility in Youngstown, Ohio.

In addition to the Ontario facility, Ensyn says it has built and commissioned more than 15 production units incorporating its RTP conversion technology since 1989, including five commercial facilities in operation in Wisconsin producing specialty chemicals and heating fuels.

The company says, “At the core of each of these applications is the same platform RTP technology that has been in use for the last two decades,” adding, “Ensyn is now applying this same technology as it expands production capacity in North America and internationally for the production of advanced cellulosic biofuels.”

BREAKING THROUGH

Through an alliance with Honeywell UOP, Ensyn is developing and commercializing RFO coprocessing. The two companies have formed Envergent Technologies for the technology licensing, engineering services and supply of equipment.

Veronica May, vice president and general manager of Honeywell UOP’s renewable energy and chemicals business, says, “With Part 79 regulatory approvals now in hand for both RFDiesel and RFGasoline, Ensyn and Honeywell UOP can accelerate the commercial introduction of RFO coprocessing,”

Ensyn says it is advancing its RFO Coprocessing business “with UOP and an array of first-class, global industry leaders,” many of them involved in the Part 79 registration process.

The liquid RFO feedstock was produced at one of Ensyn’s commercial facilities and shipped to Brazil. Using Petrobras FCC coprocessing technology, 400 gallons of coprocessed gasoline were produced in a collaboration between Petrobras and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The gasoline fraction was shipped to a global oil company in the U.S. for initial evaluation and preparation for the Part 79 test.

The final RFGasoline product was then shipped to Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, where independent Part 79 testing was conducted.

“This approval is another key step in the commercialization of our refinery coprocessing business,” stated Dr. Robert Graham, Ensyn chairman. “Refiners can now proceed with commercial deployment of RFO coprocessing and sell both key products, renewable gasoline and renewable diesel, into U.S. commerce. Ensyn and Honeywell UOP can now expedite offtake negotiations with refiners while Ensyn and its project partners proceed with expansion of RFO production capacity in order to meet demand.”

The author is editor of Renewable Energy from Waste and can be reached at ksmith@gie.net.

Renewable natural gas (RNG) is considered by many as the most valuable transportation fuel in North America, and it didn’t happen by accident. This renewable energy resource derived from decomposing cellulosic waste was historically dedicated to electricity generation.

When a handful of companies came together in July 2011, they saw a greater vision for what RNG could be. They formed the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas (www.RNGCoalition.com) and began a focused and intentional lobbying effort that has exponentially grown the industry into an essential linchpin of the federal government’s Clean Air Act — the Renewable Fuel Standard.

RNG’S VALUE

RNG is refined biogas used in advanced applications. RNG as a transportation fuel may be compressed or liquefied into renewable compressed natural gas (CNG) or renewable liquefied natural gas (LNG) and used interchangeably with natural gas in any natural gas vehicle application. The predominant volume of RNG is biomethane captured from landfills. Increasingly, however, RNG infrastructure is converting separated municipal solid waste (MSW), agricultural waste, or wastewater to vehicle fuel using anaerobic digesters.

RNG’s value results from a combination of law and the monetization of RNG’s superb environmental attributes that fulfill the law’s policy objectives of cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. fuel mix.

RNG is an ultra-low carbon fuel. While biogas composition is typically 40 percent carbon dioxide (CO2), the RNG refinement process removes virtually all CO2. The resulting biomethane is molecularly indistinguishable from natural gas. When combusted as CNG or LNG, the methane molecule is destroyed, resulting in a near-zero emissions profile. On a life cycle basis, RNG results in an 80 percent or greater greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction as compared to diesel and in many cases can be carbon negative (110 percent or more).

DESIGNATION SIGNIFICANCE

In July 2014, at the RNG Coalition’s urging, EPA designated RNG as a cellulosic biofuel in its Phase II Technical Amendments to the RFS rule. This is significant for three key reasons.

First, the Clean Air Act proscribes annual volume obligation growth in the cellulosic category from 2015 forward, while the other categories of obligation remain relatively capped. This means that obligated parties (gas and diesel companies) must annually increase the percentage of their total fuel portfolio derived from cellulosic biofuel. RNG therefore has built-in demand required by U.S. law.

Second, RNG joins cellulosic ethanol and cellulose diesel as the primary biofuels in the category. Historically and currently, the total volume of cellulosic ethanol and cellulosic diesel is minimal [approximately 2 million ethanol gallon equivalent (EGE) in 2015]. This means that, at least in the short term, RNG has relatively little competition for fulfillment of the category.

Third, cellulosic biofuels possess greater environmental benefit than other biofuels, and significantly greater benefit compared to gasoline and diesel (life cycle GHG emission at least 60 percent less than baseline). The Clean Air Act deems these emission savings to have value. That value is realized by RNG producers with the sale of RINs (renewable identification numbers). Obligated parties may produce their own qualifying biofuels, or they may purchase RINs from registered biofuel producers equal to their annual obligation.

One RIN is assigned to each EGE of biofuel produced under the program. Obliged parties may then purchase bundled fuel with the RIN, or unbundle the commodity and purchase the RIN at market. D-Codes are used to identity the type of RIN being sold. D5 RINs are advanced biofuels (RNG’s old category). D3 RINS are cellulosic biofuels (RNG’s new category).

RIN valuation is a function of the RIN markets. Each RIN is only worth what a party will pay for it. However, publications like Argus Media and OPIS regularly report index of RIN sales, which allows producers to gauge market value.

In mid-December 2015, D5 RINS traded at $0.76. Converting this price to typical units of natural gas measurement [million British thermal units (MMBtu)], this equates to a D5 value of $8.91 per MMBtu. When added to a Henry Hub spot price of $2.14 per MMBtu the total sale of geologic natural gas and a D5 RIN nets $11.05.

For cellulosic biofuels sold under RFS2, the natural gas spot price (NG) plus D-5 RIN creates an effective price floor. The effective price ceiling is NG + D5 + the cost of a Cellulosic Waiver Credit (CWC).

CWCs are issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) each year so that the total available volume of cellulosic biofuel does not at least reach the Clean Air Act’s statutory obligation. Obligated Parties may purchase CWCs along with a D5 RIN to satisfy the D3 requirement.

“Ultimately, there is no substitute for an experienced marketer to help producers find the highest price for their gas and environmental attributes.”

CWC prices are set as a function of law as the greater of $0.25 or $3.00 less the wholesale price of gasoline (with both numbers adjusted for inflation, baseline 2008). In 2015 the CWC price was $0.65. In 2016 the CWC price is $1.33. Again, this is on a per gallon basis and should be adjusted to MMBtu. Using the price ceiling formula and our sample numbers above, NG + D3 should not trade higher than $26.65 per MMBtu (NG+D5+CWC).

MARKET REALITIES

The reality of the market is closer to the low end of this range ($11.05 to $26.65) headed into 2016. It must be noted also that the current market is relatively illiquid, meaning the monthly volume of trades is relatively low, putting producers in a less advantageous negotiating position when pushing for a higher valuation within the range. Ultimately, there is no substitute for an experienced marketer to help producers find the highest price for their gas and environmental attributes.

Still, as the RNG industry has responded to its 2014 cellulosic designation, the impact has been exponential. In the three months leading up to the designation (April-June), RNG production averaged 2.37 million EGE per month. By 2014’s fourth quarter, average monthly production had more than tripled. Today, production is more than 12 million EGE per month, and nearly reached 14 million in one month in 2015.

In November 2015, EPA released its Final Rule on 2014-2016 Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO). The cellulosic biofuel category RVO rose from 33 million gallons (2014) to 123 million gallons (2015) to 230 million gallons (2016). Demand is strong and the RNG industry is rising to the challenge.

The author is director of operations, general counsel and co-founder, Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas, Sacramento, California, www.rngcoalition.com.

Orlando, Florida, was more than a tourist attraction in mid-November 2015. It also was a prime destination for people involved in the waste conversion industry. Those interested in navigating the complexities of this rapidly developing field found what they were looking for during the third annual Renewable Energy from Waste (REW) Conference.

Experts from technology providers to regulators and developers shared information with attendees in a location not only known for tourism, but also for the innovation it has adopted to use food, waste generated from hotels, restaurants, theme parks and a host of other businesses, as a resource to create energy.

The REW Conference, hosted by Renewable Energy from Waste magazine and Gershman Brickner and Bratton Inc. (GBB) Nov. 16-19 in Orlando, Florida, included a preconference workshop, Public Sector Planning for Waste Conversion Projects, two days of educational sessions, and a tour of the Harvest Power Central Florida Energy Garden, an anaerobic digestion facility that has been in operation since 2013.

Florida’s progressive attitude toward waste-to-energy (WTE) projects is just one of many factors behind the success of anaerobic digestion, gasification and landfill gas projects in the state, according to speakers at the 2015 event.

“Some states have decided waste to energy is not a priority,” said Mark Hammond of the Solid Waste Authority (SWA) of Palm Beach County in Florida. “Florida is very progressive.”

The SWA of Palm Beach County’s integrated waste management system includes two WTE facilities, landfills, vegetation processing, a recovered materials processing facility, ferrous processing, household hazardous waste collection, six transfer stations, a biosolids pelletization facility and landfill gas recovery.

The county processes 2.15 million tons of solid waste annually, approximately 6,000 tons per day. It has a total WTE capacity of 5,000 tons per day and recycles 136,000 tons of material annual from its residential and commercial customers, Hammond said.

The authority recently completed construction of its second WTE facility, a 3,000-ton-per-day mass-burn plant. Hammond said it was a 10-year process from planning to completion and involved an “extensive” permitting process that included a dredge and fill permit, a storm water construction permit and air construction permit. The permitting process began in April 2009 and the final permit was obtained in April of 2015, he said. Hammond also added that the air permit was modified three times throughout the project.

“Waste to energy works in Florida because of the favorable regulatory climate,” Hammond said, adding, “I’d doubt I’d ever get one of these built in the state of California.”

He said Florida has a history of successful WTE operations and that the public perception of WTE in the state is more positive than that of landfilling.

Hammond attributed some of the SWA of Palm Beach County’s success with its recent project to the two years of public outreach, which led to “little resistance” from the community.

Thomas Yonge of Golder Associates’ Gainesville, Florida, office, in explaining why Florida represented a good place to site WTE projects, mentioned the state’s population growth and climate as two factors contributing to the 1,100 tons of solid waste and the 10 billion tons of biomass generated in Florida annually.

From a waste conversion standpoint, Yonge said, some of this abundant material is processed at the 12 operating WTE facilities in the state as well as at the one commercial biofuel facility and the two private commercial scale anaerobic digesters. Of Florida’s 22 publicly owned landfills, six have less than 10 years of capacity, Yonge said.

Jeff Koerner of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Division of Air Resource Management in Tallahassee, said the state’s WTE plants have a total of 632 megawatts of capacity and, its 14 permitted landfill-gas-to-energy facilities have about 100 megawatts of capacity.

Florida has a 75 percent municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling target by 2020 and achieved its interim 50 percent recycling goal by 2015. Renewable energy counts toward the recycling rate. Each ton of MSW used as a processed fuel, fuel or fuel substitute receives a 1 ton recycling credit, while each megawatt-hour generated by a WTE plant receives a 1 ton recycling credit.

Koerner recommended that attendees interested in citing WTE projects hold a preapplication meeting with the permitting authority. “Florida has a time clock on permits,” Koerner said, adding permitting a new facility takes priority over five-year reviews.

PROGRESS REPORT

From gasification to biogas to the public and private and academic sectors, many players are shaping the development of the waste conversion industry in North America. Speakers representing all aspects of this rapidly developing industry shared insights from their areas of expertise.

Ted Michaels, president of the Energy Recovery Council, Arlington, Virginia, pointed to the decline in oil prices and recycling markets and its overall negative impact on the energy-from-waste and recycling industry. He also noted what he described as a major “policy failure” on the part of legislators and regulators to create an optimal environment for waste-to-energy (WTE) in the U.S.

He made reference to the circular economy as a way value can be captured from secondary materials, not just by recycling. “There is value in recovering energy from materials that would otherwise go to a landfill,” he said. The circular economy, he said, “brings together a lot of different industries with a common theme.”

The economic benefit of a circular economy also has appeal with government. “It is a good bipartisan message,” said Michaels. “This is the kind of growth that can appeal to an awful lot of policymakers.”

He also said the Clean Power Plan could have implications for the WTE industry as emission and fossil fuel reduction will mean less coal and more natural gas, and landfill diversion is one way to reduce greenhouse gases.

Alison Kerester of the Gasification Technologies Council, Arlington, Virginia, said project developers in the U.S. do not respond anymore to requests for proposals (RFPs), but that they will look at higher value products, such as biofuels, and to working with the military.

PHG Energy, Nashville, Tennessee, has seen some success building gasification facilities with municipalities in Tennessee, Kerester said. Another win for the industry was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognizing biosolids gasification as being different from incineration.

STATUS CHECK

2015 was a year of progress for several waste conversion projects in North America, chief among them being the Enerkem Alberta Biofuels Facility in Edmonton, Alberta, and Vadxx’ pyrolysis facility in Akron, Ohio. Representatives from both companies shared status updates at the REW Conference .

Russell Cooper of Cleveland-based Vadxx discussed his company’s progress on a commercial-scale pyrolysis facility in Akron, Ohio. The company’s thermal depolymerization process can take waste inputs such as industrial plastic, postconsumer plastic, auto shredder residue and tires, and through a continuous process convert the materials into diesel, naphtha, carbon solids and synthetic natural gas.

The company “hot commissioned” its Akron plant in August 2015. Cooper said an oxygen leak-back was detected in the main reactor and the company is working on repairing the seals and gaskets. Despite this setback, Cooper said, the company is moving forward with Phase II of the project, which is building a distillation column.

He said in the first quarter of 2016, “We hope to start depolymerization.”

David McConnell, vice president, business development North America, for Montreal-based waste-to-biofuels company Enerkem, discussed some of the key drivers for use of waste as an energy feedstock, including increased scarcity of urban landfill airspace and interest in low-cost, unconventional feedstocks.

Enerkem has partnered with the city of Edmonton, Alberta, which operates the Edmonton Waste Management Centre, billed as North America’s largest collection of modern, sustainable waste processing and research facilities.

McConnell discussed the “rigorous path to commercialization” that took several years from laboratory, to pilot to demonstration facilities that finally led to the completion of Enerkem Alberta Biofuels, which the company says is the world’s first commercial MSW-to-biofuels and chemicals facility. Enerkem has a 25-year agreement with the city of Edmonton for 100,000 dry metric tons of MSW per year and will produce 38 million liters per year of fuels.

Enerkem Alberta Biofuels is currently able to produce methanol. A second feed system is being installed and ethanol is expected to be produced at the facility in 2016.

MAKING BUSINESS SENSE

The circular economy makes environmental and business sense, as a number of companies illustrated during the session “Smart Business – A Look at Industrial Applications for RDF and Waste Conversion.”

One principle of the circular economy involves the use of systems that maximize the use of biobased materials, extracting biochemical feedstocks and transitioning them into different, increasingly low-grade applications, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. With the help of waste conversion, companies like MillerCoors, CEMEX and Dow are embracing this philosophy.

Audrey Templeton, corporate environmental manager for MillerCoors, headquartered in Chicago, said Miller and Coors used their merger in 2008 as an opportunity to hit the reset button, bringing their best practices together as a single corporation.

The company set environmental goals that included reducing the amount of waste it sent to landfill by 15 percent. “We did a whole lot better than that,” Templeton said, adding that seven of the company’s eight major breweries are now landfill free. In 2008, Miller-Coors sent more than 9,000 tons of waste to landfill. By 2015, that amount has been reduced to roughly 500 tons.

The company did not begin incorporating waste to energy as part of its waste management approach until 2011. Today, MillerCoors sends one shipment to the waste-to-energy facility each month, while in 2008 it had multiple truckloads of material heading to the landfill each week, Templeton said.

The company’s Golden, Colorado, brewery has been landfill free since 2013. Templeton said this was achieved in part through a solid system that incorporates balers and recycling stations that use appropriate collection containers close to the point of generation.

Aaron Garcia of cement company CEMEX, with U.S. headquarters in Houston, said cement manufacturing is an energy-intensive process using rotary kilns fired with primary and alternative fuels. However, the company shies away from the term RDF (refused-derived fuel), preferring SRF (specified recovered fuel) instead because it implies a specific heat value.

Garcia said CEMEX uses alternative fuels to save fossil fuels for future generations, to reduce its carbon footprint and to save landfill space. Additionally, the use of SRF has better prepared the company for upcoming environmental regulations, he said.

“We are a perfect solution,” Garcia said, noting that the ash from its furnaces becomes clinker that the company blends with gypsum to produce its product.

Garcia said alternative fuel accounts for 25 percent of its energy consumption, including 225,000 tons of biomass and 166,000 tons of tire-derived fuel. “The next big thing is going into plastics and paper,” he added.

“For the future of plastics, we have to make better use of capturing the value of these materials.” – Jeff Wooster, Dow

He said CEMEX does not consider its kilns incinerators, adding that the company prefers to work with suppliers that have comfort letters from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Shredding is not enough to say you have an alternative fuel,” Garcia said, adding chlorine is not welcome. CEMEX seeks low-moisture material with high British-thermal-unit value.

Jeff Wooster, global sustainability director for Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, said Dow envisions a more circular economy with the goal of improving resource efficiency. “We don’t want plastic packaging to end up in the landfill.”

He spoke about the company’s Energy Bag pilot project, which used purple bags to divert nonrecyclable plastic packaging from the landfill. The project ran from June 1 to Aug. 31, 2015, in Citrus Heights, California, and converted these difficult to recycle plastics into synthetic fuel oil. Residents were told, “If you can’t bin it, bag it.”

He said the purple bags were used so they would be easy to remove from the recycling stream. Wooster estimated that 25 pounds of flexible packaging are generated per household annually. Through the Energy Bag pilot, the company found that 13 bags of recovered packaging yielded 1 gallon of fuel.

“For the future of plastics, we have to make better use of capturing the value of these materials,” Wooster said.

Contamination in the Energy Bags averaged 14 percent, he said, adding that that was on par with the degree of contamination seen in the city’s curbside collection program. This contamination was primarily paper, though some food waste also was present, Wooster said.

Other sessions at the REW Conference addressed real-world financing; gasification and advanced biofuels; and processing waste materials for maximum recovery.

The authors are editors with the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at ksmith@gie.net and at dtoto@gie.net.