http://thegazette.com/subject/news/trash-to-biofuel-takes-new-turn-in-marion-20150416
Trash-to-biofuel takes new turn in Marion
Fiberight will turn garbage to biogas in Marion, not ethanol in Blairstown
Rick Smith, The Gazette
April 16, 2015 | 7:36 pm
MARION — No one has claimed that making biofuel out of garbage is as
simple as tossing leftovers into the trash.
So it is that Craig Stuart-Paul, president and chief executive officer
of the Maryland-based Fiberight LLC, said this week that his company is
shifting gears again on its two-year-old plan to build a trash sorting
and shredding operation in Marion.
The idea now is to make the Marion facility more than it was expected to
be a year ago.
The Marion project always has been tied to a small, shuttered ethanol
plant in Blairstown, in Benton County west of Cedar Rapids, which
Fiberight bought in November 2009 with an idea to turn the organic
components of municipal solid waste and other garbage into ethanol.
But Stuart-Paul said this week that the garbage-to-ethanol project has
been put on hold for now.
In its place, he said Fiberight will expand its plans for the proposed
Marion facility, add a digester to the Marion project, and turn the
digested organic material into a different biogas — compressed natural
gas — instead of hauling the organic material to the Blairstown plant to
turn most of it into ethanol.
Stuart-Paul said he has not given up on the ethanol idea or the
Blairstown plant.
“The whole story of fuels from trash still is there,” Stuart-Paul said.
“We’re not abandoning it (ethanol or the Blairstown plant.) We’re
deferring it.”
The latest shift in Fiberight’s plan, he said, comes because of the
extension of what he called a “significant” renewable energy credit at
the federal level for companies that create digester gas on-site. At the
same time, the climate to attract investors for a project that turns
garbage to ethanol is not favorable right now, he said.
Stuart-Paul said creating biogas at the Marion facility always has been
in the plans — though the idea dropped out of the initial phase of the
project last year.
It makes sense to look at biogas in Marion anew, he said, because
Marion, with its commitment to become a “zero waste” community, has seen
the Fiberight project as a way turn its city vehicles into ones that
operate more cleanly and more inexpensively on compressed natural gas.
Marion City Manager Lon Pluckhahn on Thursday said Marion continues to
plan to convert its fleet of vehicles to compressed natural gas as the
Fiberight project moves ahead in Marion.
Private companies are converting their vehicles to use compressed
natural gas where filling stations are located, Pluckhahn said.
Stuart-Paul said he will create such a station in Marion to sell biogas
to any vehicle equipped to operate on compressed natural gas.
He said, too, that some of the biogas may be fed directly into the
natural gas pipeline system.
Garbage war
Marion’s quest for a company to locate in the city to convert garbage to
energy is a decade old and has been fueled by the city’s interest in
making sure that the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency’s
landfill at County Home Road and Highway 13 on Marion’s border doesn’t
expand again.
Marion has worked with Florida-based Plasma Power on a plan to zap
garbage into energy and, when that prospect dimmed, the city signed on
with Fiberight and its plan.
In March 2014, the Marion City Council approved economic development
incentives worth up to $850,000 to support Fiberight’s plan to build a
$15-million sorting, shredding, and recycling facility in Marion’s
“eco-industrial” park at 44th Street and Third Avenue. The facility was
intended to prove that Fiberight’s small demonstration plant in Virginia
could work on a larger scale.
A year ago, Stuart-Paul said he hoped construction would start in June
2014 with the Marion facility operational by December 2014.
This week, he said he now expected the Marion facility to cost $30
million with the addition to the project of a digester to create biogas.
Construction should start this summer with operations to begin in 2016,
he said.
In February of this year, Fiberight signed a development agreement to
build a similar but larger facility in Maine in 2018. That’s one reason,
Stuart-Paul said, that it’s important to get the Marion facility up and
running, he said.
The Marion and Fiberight plan brings with it the prospect of a local
garbage war of sorts as Marion, which is a member of the Cedar
Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency, and Fiberight steer garbage to
the Marion facility and away from the Solid Waste Agency’s landfill on
Marion’s border.
The landfill takes in about 500 tons of garbage a day, and Stuart-Paul
said the Marion facility will need 300-plus tons a day.
He said there is enough garbage to go around, but Karmin McShane,
executive director of the Solid Waste Agency, on Thursday said
Fiberight’s 300-ton appetite will bite into what the agency takes in.
“It matters,” McShane said.
She said the revenue that comes to the agency via a $38-a-ton tipping
fee allows the agency to run an integrated solid-waste operation that
handles recyclables, hazardous waste, construction debris, and more and
operates a large composting operation.
A drop in revenue will put pressure on the agency, she said.
Stuart-Paul said about 30 percent of what the Marion facility takes in
won’t be used and will need to go to the landfill, and McShane said the
landfill likely would accept it.
Stuart-Paul said the Marion facility’s tipping fee will beat the
agency’s as a way to attract garbage, and McShane said the agency likely
will drop its fee to remain competitive.
“I’m an advocate,” she said of Fiberight’s plan to convert some waste to
biogas before it gets to the landfill. “But it hasn’t been commercially
viable.”
The Solid Waste Agency itself is converting waste to energy in a
different way at the landfill on Marion’s border. In a new setup, the
agency captures methane produced by decomposition, which is then burned
to drive an engine that produces electricity.
The electricity is fed into the power grid, and heat produced from the
operation is used to heat the landfill’s new recycling center.
In May 2014, the city of Iowa City stepped back from Fiberight’s
proposal to use of garbage going into Iowa City’s landfill. The city
wanted to wait to see the progress in Marion and Blairstown, city
officials said.
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