A successful demonstration of a new technology to produce large scale quantities of transport fuel from landfill waste was been claimed by Fulcrum BioEnergy yesterday (1st September)

Commenting on the trials E. James Macias, Fulcrum President and CEO said; “The operating results from our TurningPoint Ethanol Plant represent a watershed event for Fulcrum and this new industry. By demonstrating first the clean and efficient conversion of garbage to syngas, and now syngas to ethanol, we have demonstrated that the technology is ready for deployment at our first large-scale project, the Sierra BioFuels Plant.”

Sponsors

Sponsors

Sponsors

The company’s Sierra BioFuels Plant, in Nevada, is scheduled to begin operations in 2011 and will, it says, be one of the nation’s first large-scale waste-to-ethanol facilities. The project will convert 90,000 tons of post-recycled municipal solid waste (MSW) – the amount of trash produced by a city with a population of 165,000 – into 10.5 million gallons of ethanol per year. With long-term feedstock contracts in place, Fulcrum expects its cost of production to be less than $1 a gallon, significantly below that of today’s conventional ethanol production.