Bigger may be better for some projects. But for the team designing and building a renewable energy production operation at the Port of Morrow, the best approach was to start small.

The first shovel of dirt hasn’t been turned for construction of the 14,000-square-foot Novus Pacific facility where potato residue and onion skins from local food processing plants will be turned into a renewable energy source. But the project team – led by Minneapolis-based Novus Energy – already knows down to the most intricate detail how the facility will function once it goes fully online.

Their secret: A miniature version of the system has been put to the test in real-world situations.

For most projects, a bug in the system usually indicates a problem. But for the Novus Pacific plant to produce energy through an anaerobic digestion process, a bug (a prokaryotic microorganism) is a necessity.

“The basic bugs are the oldest on the planet,” according to Surya Pidaparti, vice president of Novus Energy’s trademarked Novus Bio-Catalytic system. “The atmosphere was basically hydrogen and carbon dioxide. They figured out a way to exist by converting them to methane and water.”

It’s that same conversion process – use of a bug – that will allow the Novus Pacific facility to take potato waste and onion skins from area food processing plants – along with a smaller amount of cow manure from local farms – and turn them into biogas, concentrated liquid fertilizer and water clean enough to be reused for irrigation or industrial purposes.

Estimates indicated that the Novus Pacific facility, when fully operational, would be able to turn about 442,000 tons of waste into roughly 987,000 mmBTUs of green biogas, 237,000 gallons of fertilizer and 86 million gallons of water each year. The average annual revenue the operation would recognize from that would run about $9.7 million.

But potential investors in projects such as the Novus Pacific operation don’t write checks based on theory alone. They want solid, proven data. So Novus Energy and project partners Harris Mechanical and Adolfson & Peterson Construction decided to create a miniature, fully functional model of the larger plant they wanted to build at the Port of Morrow.

“We’ve spent several years working on this,” said Joseph Hull, Portland office director for Adolfson & Peterson, which will handle the construction and installation of the pre-engineered steel buildings and piping for the Novus Pacific project.

The entire operation was “scrunched down” to one that could fit on a 53-foot-by-7-foot trailer at the Port of Morrow, Hull said. Potato and onion waste from local resources went into the mini system. The output was carefully recorded and tracked.

“We utilized all of the engineering for the tiny-scale version,” Hull said. “We ran it to prove a theory … that the engineering could do what it said it could do. We proved all of the ecological aspects and the financials.”

Hull expects construction of the full-size Novus Pacific facility to begin in August. The construction window will span about 15 months, but the actual building portion will finish a few months before the end of that time frame. The last two to three months will be spent introducing the system’s bug and allowing it to multiply and stabilize.

“The system needs to ramp up very slowly,” Hull said. “You can’t just dump all the (agricultural waste) product in, flip a switch and process at maximum volume.”

The bug that will lie at the heart of the anaerobic digestion system at the Novus Pacific facility may be ancient in its nature, but it’s also high maintenance.

The bug will need a warm temperature; a drop of a few degrees could be lethal. Even the hardware to build the system has had to be taken into consideration for the Port of Morrow operation. The wrong type of paint, for example, could produce fumes dangerous to the bug.

“The system design is very critical,” Pidaparti said. “You have to think about what sort of tanks you’re going to use (and) how you’re going to manage moisture in the air.”

That’s why Novus Energy’s long-standing relationships with firms like Harris Mechanical and Adolfson & Peterson – which have formed a joint venture for the Novus Pacific project – are critical, Pidaparti said. In fact, he and Harris Mechanical’s Nick Rosenberry have worked on so many projects together, they’ve developed a unique balance.

“It’s like yin and yang,” Pidaparti said. “It’s a very complementary relationship.”

Pidaparti and Harris, along with Novus president Joe Burke, all have a strange attachment to the miniature anaerobic digester model that has allowed them to move ahead with the Novus Pacific facility. They didn’t go so far as to name it, but they did spend countless hours in the shop, crawling around on the floor and making tweaks to the demo model. Burke said it is now in a new location gathering data for a possible project between Novus Energy and a large food manufacturer.

“We joked it was like (the movie) ‘Three Men and a Baby,’ ” Pidaparti said. “Joe, Nick and I … fed, changed and burped the baby. Then we sent her out into the world. She’s in California now, but we can still check her vitals.”

At a glance

Project: Novus Pacific renewable energy plant

Location: Port of Morrow, Boardman

Total facility size: 14,000 square feet

Owner: Novus Energy

Engineer/general contractor: joint venture between Harris Mechanical and Adolfson & Peterson Construction

The post Converting food waste into renewable energy appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

ConAgra Foods, Inc., a global producer of name-brand consumer foods like Chef Boyardee and Hunt’s, is planning a $200 million expansion project in Boardman.

The publicly traded company announced this month it will begin construction early next year of a 192,000-square-foot expansion at its Lamb Weston frozen potato facility. The expansion will increase French fry making capacity via a new production line, and the company anticipates hiring 100 additional employees.

Lamb Weston is purchasing 25 acres of adjacent land from the Port of Morrow for $750,000 ($30,000 an acre), and Lisa Mittelsdorf, director of economic development for the port, said the port will make some infrastructure improvements to that land. She said the port intends to apply for a combination of grants and loans from the state in order to do the work.

Once complete, the port will supply Lamb Weston with water and waste water services, as it does with other tenants.

ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston operates seven facilities in the region and employs 4,500 people, of which 500 work in Boardman.

The post ConAgra plans $200M expansion in Boardman appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The amount of biodiesel and biofuels in the U.S. transportation fuel mix will increase again in 2012, but the amount of cellulosic biofuel, which is made from non-edible plant materials, falls short of original projections.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized the percentage of renewable fuels that all gasoline and diesel refiners and importers will have to blend into their products in 2012. As part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the EPA sets fuel standards that steadily increase each year in order to meet a target of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022.

The 2012 standards for biomass-based diesel and advanced biofuels are in line with the EPA’s original projections, but a lack of commercial biorefineries for cellulosic fuel contributed to the agency lowering its projection in that category.

Oregon will provide a bit of a boost to the fledgling industry, however. Colorado-based in 2010 broke ground on a 250,000 gallon-per-year biorefinery in Boardman, expected to come online this year. Once the demonstration plant is up and running, the company plans to build another facility across the street that will produce up to 25 million gallons per year. The commercial-scale plant is expected to come online in three years.

But the 2012 standard for cellulosic biofuels, at 8.65 million gallons, is drastically below the 500 million gallons originally planned for 2012. Still, the new target is 2.65 million gallons over the 2011 mandate.

The total volume of renewable fuel proposed for 2012 is 15.2 billion gallons, up from roughly 14 billion gallons in 2011.

The post Cellulosic biofuel requirements fall short in 2012 fuel standards appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A big deal for Boardman

A settlement reached last week establishes a court-enforceable order to shut down coal operations at the Boardman power plant by Dec. 31, 2020. The agreement resolves a 2008 lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and five other environmental groups for alleged Clean Air Act violations.

Boardman plant owners are compelled to pay $2.5 million to the Oregon Community Foundation for environmental restoration and clean energy projects and $1 million to reimburse the plaintiffs for legal expenses.

The settlement also established caps for sulfur dioxide, a major contributor to acid rain, to reduce the plant’s emissions in its remaining coal-fired years.

Oregon’s last coal-burning power plant, near Boardman, is scheduled to close in fewer than 10 years. But proposed restrictions on coal- and oil-fired electric plants could leave the plant’s owners in a bind.

The Environmental Protection Agency‘s proposed mercury and air toxics standards would require expensive changes to reduce air pollution at U.S. plants, and complaints are arising from industry members – especially those representing Boardman and other coal plants where shutdown agreements are in place.

If such control requirements were to pass in the near future, the Boardman plant would be required to be brought up to code or employ a different production strategy, no matter the cost. Portland General Electric, which owns 65 percent of the plant, and other co-owners already are paying more than $60 million for retrofits. Installation work is under way is expected to continue through the fall.

Because of a recent settlement with environmental groups, the plan to close the plant in 2020 is now legally actionable. Any additional equipment would operate for only a few years, and make an investment undesirable.

The major question for Boardman now, according to PGE spokesman Steve Corson, is whether the EPA will allow flexibility in implementation of the “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT) rules, which encompass the mercury and air toxics standards.

Some of the proposed standards overlap with prior regulations that Boardman is already set to meet, according to Corson. Because Oregon adopted strict mercury emission standards in 2007, Boardman is on track to reduce 90 percent of its emissions of mercury, the pollutant that is the primary target of the toxics standards.

For non-mercury metals, however, PGE needs to conduct more testing to know where Boardman stands in relation to applicable MACT regulations. New emission controls for regional haze might help the plant meet the proposed standards, but Corson says it’s too soon to tell.

“We just don’t know the answer yet,” he said. “Until the system is fully tested, we just won’t know how close we are to meeting the (MACT) standards that EPA has proposed.

“We are submitting comments to EPA hoping that they can ensure that the final adopted rule will have flexibility to recognize a strategy like the one we put in place at Boardman. We believe the package that we have already adopted for significant reductions in the near term followed by complete cessation of coal burning in 2020 represents the best approach for Boardman.”

In pushing to implement the air toxic standards to pass as written, the EPA estimates that the new restrictions would prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths each year, and the value of health improvements would add up to $140 billion by 2016.

The comment period on the rules ends Aug. 4, and the EPA will issue final standards in November.

The Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council are leading the national push for implementation of the MACT rules, according to Aubrey Baldwin, staff attorney for the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center. But the coal and oil industries are resisting by speaking with federal legislators.

“There’s talk in Congress of limiting EPA’s authority to undertake the new air toxics standards,” Baldwin said. “But there could also be requirements stemming from climate change on a local, state or federal level that could become applicable and impact Boardman’s operations. By agreeing to shut down by 2020 in the settlement, (PGE) is taking on the risk that there will be new control requirements.”

The post Boardman faces new threat: tougher EPA emissions controls appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Oregon is becoming an attractive location for biomass plants thanks to a recent extension of tax credits.

Oregon extended its biomass tax credit until 2018, which has made planning for commercial facilities easier.

“It gives our industry and partners the confidence we need that Oregon will support biomass and biochemical production,” said Carrie Atiyeh, public affairs director for ZeaChem Inc., which is building a biorefinery in Boardman. “It’s much more effective than having credits that are only extended by one or two years.”

Construction is 70 percent complete on ZeaChem’s demonstration-scale plant in Boardman. The plant will produce biofuel and biobased chemicals aimed to replace petroleum-based products. Tree farm firm Greenwood Resources is under a long-term contract to provide poplar trees that will be the main feedstock.

The plant is being built in an existing industrial facility at the Port of Morrow, and 75 construction workers are on the job. ZeaChem has an engineering, procurement, and overseeing contract with Kansas City-based Burns & McDonnel. Subcontractors on the project are coming from eastern Oregon, as well as the Tri-Cities area in Washington and a few firms from Portland, Atiyeh said.

ZeaChem is planning a commercial facility across the street from the demo plant that will come online in about three years. The demo plant will have a 250,000-gallon-per-year capacity; the commercial plant will produce up to 25 million gallons per year – scaling up production by 100 times.

The larger plant will bring 275 construction jobs and 65 full-time operations jobs to the Boardman area. ZeaChem has not yet announced any contracts for that project, although Atiyeh said it recently signed contracts that will account for 100 percent of the commercial feedstock.

ZeaChem has completed second-round financing that has raised $40 million, including investments from Valero, one of the largest petroleum refiners in the U.S. The demo facility is supported by a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.  ZeaChem is also pre-certified to collect a . Despite the program’s recent scale back, Atiyeh said ZeaChem will almost certainly receive that money as well.

Two electricity-generating biomass facilities are also under consideration. In Klamath Falls, a plant that will produce up to 35 megawatts of electrical power is proposed. Its application for site certification is open for public comment until Aug. 15. Downtown Vancouver, Wash., might also host a biomass facility. Schneider Electric is currently researching the market for the proposed plant’s green electricity and looking into zoning options in Clark County.

The post ZeaChem joins biomass firms with plans in Oregon appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Only the approval of the federal Environmental Protection Agency is required before Portland General Electric can finalize plans to shut down its Boardman coal facility by 2020.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has been in contact with the EPA regarding PGE‘s plan and expects the EPA to approve it, according to PGE spokesman Steve Corson.

Oregon’s Environmental Quality Commission, DEQ‘s rulemaking board, last week gave approval for PGE to install $75 million worth of interim pollution controls at the facility in advance of a 2020 closure.

The $75 million in controls to reduce mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions will affect customer rates over the next decade. According to the latest estimate, rates will increase 2.4 percent on average over the next ten years, Corson said. When new emissions controls are installed, those costs and how they will impact rates will have to be approved by Oregon’s Public Utility Commission.

The post Boardman closure plan needs one more OK appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

An ambitious biofuels company this month began pouring the foundation for a demonstration plant – the precursor of a commercial facility – near Boardman.

ZeaChem Inc. will annually produce 250,000 gallons of fuel-grade ethanol from woody biomass at the new bio-refinery. The company recently obtained a guaranteed maximum price for the project under its engineering and procurement contracts with Kansas City, Mo., engineering and contracting firm Burns & McDonnell. That allowed ZeaChem to obtain the remaining money it needed to proceed with the project this month.

Corn-based ethanol producers are bemoaning the loss of a 45-cents-per-gallon federal tax credit that will expire at the end of this year. But production of cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from nonedible plant materials, is still viable, ZeaChem CEO Jim Imbler said.

“The U.S. is like the Saudi Arabia of biomass,” he said. “You can fix the price of your feedstock with cellulosic ethanol in ways you can’t with corn, you stay out of the food-versus-fuel issue and you’re using stuff like wood that’s currently wasted or burned. But we have to be able to compete against crude. We worry more about that than any incentive.”

The ZeaChem demonstration plant will be built on a five-acre site. Waste wood from a nearby poplar tree farm will be used as feedstock for fuel-grade ethanol. The company uses special bacteria to break down woody biomass into sugars that can be converted to ethanol.

“You basically put chopped up trees into a pressure cooker with acid,” Imbler said. “That breaks the wood into sugars, which are converted by a special organism into acetic acid and then ethyl acetate, and on to ethanol. Because our organisms are found in nature, they can eat anything. We’re also testing other locally available feedstock like wheat straw and agriculture waste.”

The Department of Energy this week reported the price of fossil fuels will decline 1.4 percent next month to around $2.29 per gallon. In comparison, ZeaChem’s fuel has a capital cost of less than $4 per gallon and an operations cost of less than $1 per gallon. But Imbler hopes that technological advances will soon lead to lower costs.

But producing cellulosic ethanol is simply not cheap, according to Ron Jones, global practice leader for bio-refining markets for Burns & McDonnell. Construction and operation of the demonstration plant will cost approximately $73 million, according to Carrie Atiyeh, director of public affairs for ZeaChem. Commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol facilities are so large and expensive that companies often need to first build smaller, demonstration plants before they can ramp up.

“This is a rapidly growing market,” Jones said. “The CEO of BP Biofuels recently gave a speech projecting the need for 220 of these facilities by 2030.”

ZeaChem declined to reveal the amount of the guaranteed maximum price contract with Burns & McDonnell for the demonstration facility. However, a $25 million Department of Energy grant last year was awarded for only construction of the components to process the fuel. The cost of the facility, Jones said, will be abated somewhat by use of modular building components and commercially available manufacturing equipment that can be modified.

Burns & McDonnell will rely exclusively on Northwest subcontractors, including Swaggart Brothers of Hermiston, Fought & Co. of Tigard and Precision Industrial Contractors Inc. of Woodland, Wash. Burns & McDonnell will hire additional subcontractors as construction continues, Jones said.

ZeaChem has an option to lease 30 acres of land at the Port of Morrow near Boardman once the company is ready to construct a commercial facility. The company is looking around the country for potential commercial facility sites, but Imbler said Boardman is a prime location. Ethanol production will begin at the demonstration plant in the third quarter of 2011, Imbler said.

“From where we are now, we have barge and rail access and can hit anything on the West Coast,” Imbler said. “Our next plant would look similar to the Pacific Ethanol facility in Boardman. Our hope is that our commercial facility will go right in next to the demonstration plant.”

The post Boardman bio-refinery a test run for big business appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality has recommended approval of Portland General Electric‘s plan to close its Boardman coal plant by 2020.

DEQ staff today recommended a plan to close the Boardman facility no later than Dec. 31, 2020, according to Steve Corson, PGE spokesman. The plan requires PGE to install $75 million in interim pollution controls to reduce emissions of mercury, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide.

The decision now goes to the DEQ’s Environmental Quality Commission, who will have the final say on whether to approve PGE’s shut down plan. The EQC will vote on Dec. 9.

The post DEQ OKs Boardman shut-down plan appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission on Friday approved Portland General Electric‘s long-term plan, which includes a tentative plan to shut down the utility’s Boardman coal plant by 2020.

PGE‘s is a 20-year road map that details how the utility will meet future electricity needs while maintaining low rates for consumers. The PUC’s acknowledgment of PGE’s plan could be reversed, however, if the utility’s plan is rejected by the state Environmental Quality Commission next month, according to Bob Valdez, PUC spokesman. The commission is the rule-making board of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The DEQ is currently reviewing public comments on PGE’s plan for phasing out Boardman and expects to make a recommendation to the commission in December.

“If the (Environmental Quality Commission) rejects PGE’s plan, PGE will have to come back to us with a new plan,” Valdez said. “These issues are moving targets, but given what we were presented so far, the commission approves of PGE’s current plan.”

PGE must file its next integrated resource plan with the commission by November 2012.

The post Utility commission approves PGE long-term plan appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Several Northwest environmental and ratepayer advocacy groups have signed on in support of a revised 2020 shutdown option for Portland General Electric‘s Boardman coal-fired power plant. But despite support from the Oregon Environmental Council and others, PGE‘s plan is flawed, according to Cesia Kearns, director of the Oregon Sierra Club‘s .

If the new option were approved by the Department of Environmental Quality next month, the Boardman plant would be closed no later than the end of 2020 and eliminate the possibility that it could operate until 2040. PGE’s latest proposal is expected to cut sulfur-dioxide emissions at the plant by 35 percent beginning in 2014 and by 51 percent beginning in 2018, but Kearns said the suite of pollution controls being proposed would still leave PGE in violation of the federal .

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month issued PGE a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act for running the Boardman plant for the past 12 years with inadequate pollution controls. Kearns said her group was not invited to participate in the latest round of discussions between PGE and Northwest environmental and ratepayer groups. The Oregon Sierra Club maintains that Boardman should be shut down much sooner than 2020, perhaps within the next five years, to avoid penalty under the Clean Air Act.

“The latest news (on PGE’s agreement with the Oregon Environmental Council and others) sets up a false choice between solving climate change and cleaning up air quality,” Kearns said. “We feel PGE can develop clean replacement energy at Boardman, take advantage of renewable energy replacement opportunities and not pollute the air in the meantime. We hope the DEQ will reject this plan based on its flaws and continue to do the right thing for Oregon.”

Oregon’s DEQ recently reopened the public comment period for proposed pollution controls for the Boardman plant until Nov. 15. The new plan would require the Boardman facility to meet increasingly stricter emission limits with $100 million in new pollution controls, close no later than Dec. 31, 2020 and eliminate existing rules that would allow the plant to operate indefinitely.

In a letter signed by members of the Oregon Environmental Council, the Renewable Northwest Project, the Citizens’ Utility Board and the NW Energy Coalition, those groups agreed to testify in favor of PGE’s latest proposal in exchange for providing input on how PGE can use renewable resources to replace Boardman’s power output after the shutdown. The new option would allow PGE to wait until 2020 to shut down the plant, but Rachel Shimshak, executive director of the Renewable Northwest Project, said that doesn’t mean PGE couldn’t shut down Boardman sooner if an opportunity arose.

“We wanted an end date so that planning for the phasing out of Boardman could begin in earnest,” Shimshak said. “We have a commitment from PGE to work together and look at how to meet customer needs, keep costs reasonable and reduce the amount of carbon in their portfolio. If there’s a reasonable solution that meets all those criteria that could happen earlier, that’s still a possibility.”

While the Oregon Environmental Council didn’t endorse an earlier 2020 shutdown option proposed by PGE, known as the BART III proposal, Jane Gastellum, OEC program director for global warming, said that her group wants to be at the table when the utility discusses low-carbon replacement options for Boardman, which is why they signed on in support of PGE’s latest shutdown option.

“These conversations aren’t just about shutting down a coal plant, but replacing it with something that will meet long-term climate goals,” Gastellum said. “We don’t endorse a 2020 closure date, but if Boardman is going to stay open that long, it needs stricter limits and a robust process to come up with a low-carbon replacement portfolio.”

PGE spokesman Steve Corson said that the utility is committed to working with these groups on an in-depth analysis of low-carbon options for replacement power at Boardman. Having flexibility with the shutdown date, Corson said, could allow the utility to take advantage of new renewable energy technologies that may come about in the next decade.

Kearns, however, maintains that the longer PGE waits to shut down Boardman, the more likely it is to be fined under the Clean Air Act. According to the recent notice of violation from the EPA, PGE could face fines up to $37,500 per day per violation if the utility is found to be operating out of compliance for the past 12 years.

Hearings on PGE’s latest 2020 option will be held in Boardman this week. After the comment period closes on Nov. 15, the DEQ will review all comments and provide a recommendation to the Environmental Quality Commission in December.

The post Sierra Club: Boardman must close sooner appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.