Advanced Biofuels and Biorefinery Platforms Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - 8:30am-10:00am Forestry Companies Discovering the Biorefinery Within Moderator: Laura McIlveen, Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures Robert Jost, Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures Geoff Clarke, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. Rod Albers, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. Martin Feng, FPInnovations Abstract In order to remain competitive and expand their current offering of products, some forward thinking forestry companies are utilizing their byproduct streams to produce new value added materials from biomass. The same way that a multitude of chemicals and fuels can be produced from petroleum refineries, forestry companies are now set to produce chemicals, fuels and high value products from their pulp mills. Breaking down biomass into its fundamental building blocks can produce materials that fuel cars, make paints thick, provide strength to flat screen televisions or power electronics. A lot of these products can be produced as byproducts of already existing pulp mills. This panel is a mixture of industry representatives and applied researchers discussing current and future projects aimed at expanding the products that pulp mills produce. Companies like West Fraser Timber and Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, have innovative, forward thinking leaders and access to research and development that makes these new products viable on a commercial scale. Because of this, both the West Fraser and Alberta-Pacific mills are leaders in the pulp sector. For example, West Fraser‘s pulp mill in Slave Lake, Alberta is currently looking at converting pulp mill effluent to biogas. It will produce electricity for their mill and reduce dependency on natural gas. Alberta-Pacific pulp mill in Athabasca, Alberta is commercializing chemical byproducts from its mill and looking at higher value products made from both cellulose and lignin. These companies work closely with research organizations like FPInnovations and Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures to develop new products and processes. These two applied research organizations are working in the areas of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin derivatives. Materials like nano-crystalline cellulose and lignin based resins are being developed and will be discussed. The modern pulp mill is a biorefinery and this panel will illustrate how companies and researchers are working hard to capitalize on this. Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - 10:30am-12:00pm Financing Biorefinery Projects Moderator: Alan Propp, Merrick & Company Bond Financing as a Source of Capital for Bioproduct Projects John May, Stern Brothers & Co. Fast Track Project Strategies Alan Propp, Merrick & Company Andrew Soare, Lux Research Abstracts John May Bio-product companies (fuels and chemicals) can secure project financing from the institutional capital markets through bond placements. Institutional investors are willing and able to buy bonds that provide a single vehicle for construction and operations of bioproduct projects. Unlike banks, these investors can finance non- investment grade projects. Using a partial USDA loan guarantee, Stern Brothers closed a transaction for Myriant to fund a bio-chemical plant in Louisiana. Alan Propp As an engineering firm, we are almost always asked to fast track projects for our clients. Project fast tracking is a misunderstood science. It consists of much more than simply hurrying and working nights and weekends. Rather, there are certain, time-proven techniques for successfully completing a project on a tight schedule without sacrificing quality or safety. This talk will define fast track projects at both the pilot and commercial scales and will outline the methods that can be employed to expedite their delivery. I will present statistically-based evidence for best practices in fast-tracking as well as specific recommendations on fast tracking techniques. I believe many attendees will find this information very useful in planning their technology development programs. Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - 2:30pm-4:00pm Biogas: Surprising New Opportunities and Approaches Moderator: Michael Weedon, BC Bioenergy Managing Organic Materials in Urban Environments: Harvest's Organics Operating System Paul Sellew, Harvest Power Tertiary Biogenic Gas Creation:The Road from Hunter Gatherer to "Gas" Farmer William Mahaffey, Luca Technologies, Inc. Bio-Upgrading of Syngas Into Renewable Natural Gas (Methane) Serge Guiot, National Research Council of Canada Technology Meets Permaculture, Advanced Integrated Resource Recovery Christopher Bush, Catalyst Agri-Innovation Society Abstracts Paul Sellew The nascent biogas industry in North America could be compared to a growing toddler: it is young, growing quickly, and just beginning to learn how to play well with others. For example, the U.S. has just over 2,200 sites producing biogas compared to Europe‘s 10,000 operating digesters. North America, in turn, is like a new parent figuring out rules (regulations), feeding schedules (feedstock procurement) and play dates (developers) to help this biogas toddler grow. North America still has much to learn about efficiencies: for example, only a fraction of the operating digesters actually use the gas they produce (ibid). Indeed, less than three percent of the 34 million tons of food waste generated in the US in 2009 was recovered and recycled. Tapping into this feedstock is just the beginning: the U.S. Billion-Ton Update projects that ―the U.S. will have between 1.1 and 1.6 billion tons of available, sustainable biomass for industrial bio-processing by 2030.‖ In a quickly changing marketplace, this presentation explores the challenges and opportunities associated with project development in North America including: an overview of waste-to-energy markets; legislative developments and incentives for new plants; challenges in energy markets including natural gas; cultural differences in managing organic materials; and development opportunities in key regions. This presentation will draw heavily from hands-on experience building the first commercial-scale Energy Garden near Vancouver, Canada, and from Harvest Power Inc.‘s experiences in the North American biogas market. In sum, North America is redefining its relationship with organic materials. From apple cores to compost, pizza crusts to power, and farms to forks, this presentation illustrates shifting trends and attitudes towards managing organic materials using anaerobic digestion technologies. Attendees will learn about: • Policies that have stimulated and stymied anaerobic digestion development; • Practices that lead to lower operating costs and higher value products; and • Partnerships that add value at every turn. William Mahaffey Biogenic methane has enormous potential as a sustainable energy source and is found in a wide variety of subsurface, anaerobic, hydrocarbon bearing environments. An area of great interest for biogenic methane is the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, United States. This area has been previously developed for Coalbed Methane production with over 30,000 wells drilled basin wide. The PRB has been shown to be an active ―geobioreactor‖ based on the gas isotopic signatures of produced methane (δ13C-methane -57‰, δD-Methane -320‰). That coal beds of the PRB, and many other basins, are ―alive‖ with active methanogenic communities that can be stimulated to create new methane from coal, has been determined by coal conversion studies in laboratory experiments. Experimental data will be presented that shows new methane creation in real-time by activating the microbial communities with specific activation amendment packages and observing headspace methane accumulation in excess of the stoichiometric production from the nutrients. In addition, BESA inhibited cultures exhibit an accumulation of metabolic intermediates in coal slurries prepared with live formation waters but not in controls with active formation water only. Data will be presented showing commercial scale field demonstrations, supporting commercial scale proof-of-concept. Quickly moving to projects of large scale, we have been able to demonstrate production of commercial quantities of new gas in multiple basins, using an enhanced in situ microbial based process we call ―Methane Farming.‖ Understanding the composition and metabolism of the methanogenic consortia has been one of several key steps in commercializing the process of sustainable biogenic methane production. In order to identify microbes present in these methanogenic consortia we performed microbial community analysis using error-correcting barcode pyrosequencing analyzed with the QIIME bioinformatic pipeline. This involved thousands of samples collected from different locations within set geographical areas over several years. Both bacterial and archaeal specific primers were used to amplify these distinct populations from our DNA samples. The QIIME pipeline was used for library demultiplexing, OTU picking, alignment, taxonomic identification, and statistical analysis of community structure using Unifrac. Visualizations of principle coordinate analyses of the QIIME results and metadata from the formation will be used to illustrate the variables most responsible for the shift in community demographics associated with successful gas production.Here we demonstrate the large scale sampling and community analysis of coalbed methane (CBM) wells within a discrete but large area of the Powder River Basin, the data set encompassing areal as well as temporal components.