Construction underway at Nevada trash-to-ethanol plant

September 7, 2010

Construction is now underway at a commercial-scale biorefinery in Nevada, which will turn ordinary household garbage into fuel for cars and trucks.

The Sierra Biofuels Plant is being built by engineering contractor Fluor Corporation in the city of McCarran, Storey County, about 20 miles east of Reno.

Project developer Fulcrum Bioenergy, Inc., is expecting the facility to be up and running in 2012.

The new facility will convert post-consumer municipal solid waste, sorted to remove recyclable materials, into ethanol fuel.

More than 550 engineering, manufacturing, construction and operations jobs are being supported by the project, developing one of the first large-scale trash-to-ethanol facilities in the country.

When complete, the plant will have the capacity to turn around 90,000 tons of trash into about 10.5 million gallons of ethanol each year.

E. James Macias, Fulcrum’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said: “The Sierra BioFuels project is designed to bring clean, low-cost biofuels to the Northern Nevada and California markets.”

Ethanol

Fulcrum said its process will produce a cellulosic ethanol that will cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 75% compared to the lifecycle of traditional petroleum-based gasoline.

The process involves firstly the gasification of waste materials – heating it in a controlled chamber to turn it into a hydrogen-rich synthetic gas – and then an alcohol synthesis of the resulting syngas to produce ethanol.

The company already has long-term feedstock contracts in place, and is developing additional projects across the US that it believes will ultimately produce a billion gallons of ethanol each year.

Mr Macias said Fluor’s construction start was a “key milestone”. He said: “Fluor has proven experience in the petrochemical and energy industries, with significant expertise in the areas of gasification and alcohol synthesis and they have a proven track record of delivering on energy projects. They have assembled for us an outstanding team to construct Sierra BioFuels.”

“Fulcrum has developed a creative and innovative approach to the production of advanced biofuels, and we are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking project,” said Jose Bustamante, Vice President of Fluor’s Chemicals Business Line.