Image courtesy of http://solar.calfinder.com.
A long-held problem with biofuels has always been that making them requires displacing land use and resources that would otherwise go to making food crops.
Well now, Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas, with a new finalized loan guarantee of about $132 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, may have found one viable solution to the land resource problem.
Construction has just begun on a new facility that’s expected - when operational – to produce yearly about 23 million gallons of ethanol fuel from plant fibers including: wheat straw, corn stover (leaves and stalks), switchgrass, and sorghum stubble.
The facility is expected to convert about 300,000 tons of this “crop residue” per year to generate the desired annual ethanol volumes.
“The plant will also utilize the same biomass feedstock to produce 20 megawatts of electricity, adequate to power the ethanol production operations, and help make the facility even more energy efficient and environmentally friendly,” added Abengoa.
Image courtesy of http://solar.calfinder.com.
The loan financing will go toward the building costs of the facility, which is expected to create “approximately 300 construction jobs and 65 permanent jobs,” according to the energy department.
Abengoa expects that the “total investment in the project will exceed $350 million.”
After project completion - estimated in about 24 months - operations are expected to “support an annual payroll approaching $5 million for the 65 fulltime jobs at the facility,” said the company.
The plant facilities will be built on 385 acres of land near Hugoton, Kan. with an additional 425 acres to be used as both a buffer to the city limits, and “to continue its use as irrigated agricultural land to test production of biomass feedstocks and for biomass storage,” said Abengoa.
Hugoton is about 90 miles southwest of Dodge City, Kan.
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