tonnes of Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) and 70,000 tonnes of Wet Distillers Grains (WDGS), returned to farmers for use as animal feed. Other products include CO2 valorized in dry ice, and corn oil. The federal government contributed $18 million towards construction. SEMECS, a private company formed by three local regional municipalities and Biogaz EG, (GreenField’s subsidiary in anaerobic di-gestion) recently announced plans for the im-plementation of a 50,000 tonnes-per-year an-aerobic digestion plant at Varennes. Feedstock will consist of municipal organic waste (‘brown bin’ collection) as well as organic commercial and industrial waste. GreenField Varennes will be the off-taker for the bio-methane and the di-gestate will be used by local farmers as fertilizer. A digester is also in the works at Kawartha Ethanol, a plant that began operation north of Peterborough in Havelock, Ontario in 2011. Corn is used to produce about 80 million litres of ethanol per year (all purchased by MacEwen Petroleum of Maxville, Ontario), as well as WDGS. Approval for the digest-er project (called Kawartha Biogas) came in April 2013 from the Ontario Ministry of En-vironment. The 9.8 MW digester will be able to accept feedstocks such as WDGS, ethanol syrup, glycerin from proposed bio-diesel fa-cility on the same site, manure, whey from dairy farms, as well as locally-sourced organic matter, fats and grease. This use of digesters is of course, part of a bigger diversification/synergy trend at ethanol plants across Canada and beyond. For exam-ple, GreenField recently installed a greenhouse at its ethanol plant in Chatham, Ontario, in collaboration with established vegetable pro-ducer Cedarline. The ‘Truly Green’ project utilizes waste heat and CO2 from the ethanol plant to grow over 20 million kilograms of fresh tomatoes each year. At another site, GreenField sells steam to Bruce Power, which operates the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Tiverton, On-tario. GreenField also extracts corn oil that today goes to the biodiesel market. Other valuable proteins, fibres and minerals in corn can also be extracted. And the market for ethanol itself will only continue to expand. In terms of cellulosic eth-anol production in Canada at this point, the Canadian Renewable Fuel Association reports that an Iogen demo plant currently runs on oc-casion and both GreenField and Lignol have pilot plants in part-time operation. In addition to the Enerkem Edmonton plant under con-struction, and the VANERCO plant in develop-ment, U.S.-based Mascoma is also developing a cellulosic ethanol plant in Canada (to use woody biomass). “We at Enerkem believe that the demand for cellulosic ethanol will continue to grow in the coming years,” says Labrie. “The advanced ethanol market is driven by a number of fac-tors such as government policies, private in-vestments, infrastructure development such as higher ethanol blends, as well as technologies reaching the commercial deployment phase.” She says consumers are continuing to ask for more choice at the pump while car manufacturers are working to improve fuel economy, an area in which ethanol can cer-tainly help by delivering high octane ratings and lower emissions. “We equally observe a high level of interest and a growing de-mand on international markets for advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals,” Labrie adds. “Moreover, ethanol should continue to be cheaper than gasoline.” • KAHL Wood Pelleting Plants Quality worldwide. AMANDUS KAHL GmbH & Co. KG, SARJ Equipment Corp., Mr. Rick B. MacArthur, 29 Golfview Blvd., Bradford, Ontario L3Z 2A6 Phone: 001-905-778-0073, Fax: 001-905-778-9613, [email protected] www.akahl.de Canadian BIOMASS 13
Canadian Biomass March/April 2014: Page 13
