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 Secure renewable energy, local jobs and additional revenue streams for mills – KL Energy’s technology offers solutions in step with our times.
Cellulosic ethanol from wood fiber is becoming a reality. A handful of companies have announced lately that they’ve been successful in making it.
In this scenario, KL Energy, based in Rapid City, South Dakota, stands
out, for its technology, its business model and its vision – a vision
that’s both modest and, in its own way, groundbreaking.
“We’re not going to solve the national or international energy crisis,”
says Steve Corcoran, KL Energy’s CEO, “but we can solve it at a
community level. We believe that our plant, with its small footprint,
offers the local economy a way to use their biomass to provide energy
and create jobs at the local level.”
This recalls a mantra of the early green movement — “think globally,
act locally”. Given the recent failures of the “big business” model in
many sectors, the idea of acting at a community level to meet the goals
of renewable energy and economic recovery couldn’t be more relevant for
our times.
But KL Energy is not a pie-in-the-sky company. Proven technology and business acumen is the foundation of their approach.
The company began developing the technology for its process in 2001,
working in conjunction with the South Dakota School of Mines &
Technology near Rapid City. With a background in the corn to ethanol
market, KL Energy started out in the laboratory testing the conversion
of Ponderosa Pine to cellulosic ethanol.
Ponderosa Pine was used because, says Corcoran, “that’s what’s growing
out here in the Black Hills. It’s the primary woody biomass in the
area.”
And that’s the first principle of the KL Energy business model — use locally available biomass as feedstock.
The second principle— keep the footprint of the operation small — goes hand in hand with the first.
“What makes our business model work is a couple of things,” explains
Corcoran. “One is that it is not the 100 or 50 or 30 million gallons
per year plant. Our is a 5 to 10 million gallon plant located as close
to the feedstock as possible.”
“One problem with a big operation,” he continues, “ is that more
feedstock has to be gathered and brought to a central location and if
you’re going out 75 or 100 miles you have to pay that transportation
cost. If you have an operation with a small footprint, you can bring
the plant closer to the feedstock. You can stay right in that
community, go out no more than 30 miles for the feedstock, and
everything stays right there in that community, the ethanol and the
pellets.”
Wait a minute — we were talking ethanol, not pellets, right?
Which brings us to the third principle and the ace in the hole of KL
Energy’s business model — co-location of a pellet plant with the
ethanol plant. And not just any pellets, high premium pellets that use
the lignin removed from the feedstock prior to making the ethanol.
Now that you’ve got the big picture of this innovative business model
that gives new meaning to the notion of “closed loop” — KL Energy calls
it “zero-radius” — here are some of the specifics.
 Working the woodchip
To demonstrate its technology, KL Energy has a 1.5 million
gallons-per-year plant in Upton, Wyoming, about 90 minutes’ drive from
Rapid City.
“Ours is a thermal-mechanical technology,” Corcoran explains. “On the
front end of the plant, the feedstock goes through a hammermill and
then through a reactor. Inside the reactor we add steam pressure in
order to break down the fibers so the surface area is softer and more
accessible before we go into the mechanical step.”
Corcoran compares what happens in the mechanical step to sharpening a
pencil, when you shear off the wood around the lead in thin slices.
“This is done in order to create surface area so that when the
feedstock enters the enzymatic step, the enzymes have more access to
the surface and can prepare the wood for the fermentation step.”
“We maintain the original chemistry of the lignin,” says Corcoran, “so
we maintain the lignin’s consistency. And the lignin is what has
tremendous value as an energy source. We have tested the lignin and
converted it to make pellets.”
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