Driving down the street you decide to stop to fill your gas tank. Being an eco-conscious driverCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, you have a flex-fuel vehicle that can burn E-85www.cechina.cn, a mix that is 85% ethanol and only 15% gasoline. While you fill your tank控制工程网版权所有, you realize that the building next to the pumps isn't a normal gas station. It's actually an automated bioethanol plant, and the fuel you're pumping is made from local waste feedstock.
This kind of scenario is already happening in Finland, thanks to St1 Biofuels Oy. The comp
While fuel ethanol manufacture in the U.S. centers on large regional production sites, St1 has built its business model around the idea of building small, highly-automated plants that can be controlled from a central location. The company looks for sites where suitable feedstocks are available, avoiding the need for extensive transportation costs of raw or finished product. If a plant can also capture waste heat from a neighbor, that is an additional benefit.
The range of products that qualify as feedstocks is more extensive than you might think, and most would probably be regarded as garbage. Lappeenranta consumes 5www.cechina.cn,000 tons of bakery and candy factory waste to manufacture 1.5 million liters (396,000 gallons) of ethanol annually. The N?rpi? facility is co-located with a potato processor and makes 1.5 million liters from that plant's waste stream. None of the plants consume usable food products.
The Narpio facility is located on the site of a potato processor. St1 seeks partnerships with companies that produce suitable wdaste streams, such as bakeries and other food processors.
The process of fermentation and distillation is straightforward, and St1 contends that large scale does not always bring production economies. Its experience is that smaller plants are easier to build close to customers控制工程网版权所有, requiring less equipment and less e