Award Week at POET

They say that accidents sometimes come in threes. Well, in the first half of this week, it was three straight days of awards for POET.

It started on Monday, when POET Chief Executive Officer Jeff Broin was honored by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association (MCGA) with their 2009 Kernel Award at the Minnesota Ag Expo 2010. The annual award is given to individuals who work to promote corn producers in the state of Minnesota. During the award ceremony, Broin, who is pictured here receiving the award, was praised for his work in founding the ethanol trade association Growth Energy.

On Tuesday, POET's landfill gas partnership with the City of Sioux Falls was named project of the year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP). Read POET's press release here and the City of Sioux Falls here.

Finally, today Broin and POET Chief Financial Officer Dan Loveland were recognized by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) with the Patriot Award. The pair was nominated by Gina Watkins, Administrative Assistant to Jeff Broin who is currently serving overseas in the Air Guard. 

Who knows what will happen tomorrow, so stay tuned for more.

Jeff Broin in Copenhagen

Jeff Broin, POET’s CEO, arrived in Copenhagen this morning to talk about ethanol’s role in solving climate problems worldwide.

He’ll be part of a panel discussion on Wednesday titled “The global potential of biofuels,” along with other world leaders in biofuels and agriculture. It’s one of a series of events held by the Danish Climate Consortium in Copenhagen this week.

Expect cellulosic ethanol to be a large part of that discussion. In fact, there are some E85 cars in Copenhagen this week running on cellulosic ethanol from wheat straw, produced by the Inbicon demonstration plant.

In the U.S. alone, there are about a billion tons of biomass that could be used annually to produce cellulosic ethanol. That’s according to a 2005 study by the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture. Before you ask, that does NOT include protected or inaccessible areas, environmentally sensitive land, etc.  It’s biomass that you could reasonably and responsibly harvest.

Extrapolate that billion tons out to the entire world, and it’s clear we’re talking about game-changing technology.

Jeff and the POET crew have already posted a couple photos to our Flickr site. Check back for more updates throughout the week.

Here’s some coverage of Jeff’s trip from KELO-TV in Sioux Falls:

Technorati Tags: Copenhagen,Broin,POET,Climate Consortium,cellulosic ethanol

POET No. 2 in Biofuels Digest rankings

POET today was ranked second among more than 1,000 eligible companies in the Biofuels Digest “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy.”

Top ranking went to Solazyme (congrats!). Amyris Biotechnologies, BP Biofuels and Sapphire Energy rounded out the top five.

Thanks to Biofuels Digest and those who selected POET for this honor.

Looking back, we have had a lot of activity since last year’s rankings (we were No. 4 in ‘08-‘09).

Notable milestones for POET over that time include:

- Operating the first full year of our pilot cellulosic ethanol plant in Scotland, S.D. and using that data to drop the overall cost to produce cellulosic ethanol from $4.13 to $2.35.

- Completing a project with the city of Sioux Falls, S.D. to use landfill gas,along with a wood waste-fuel boiler, to help power POET Biorefining – Chancellor (S.D.).

- Eliminating wastewater discharge at POET Biorefining – Bingham Lake (Minn.).

- Energy Star recognition for the Combined Heat and Power system at POET Biorefining – Laddonia (Mo).

- Developing the production process for Inviz, POET’s brand of zein. This is a new co-product in ethanol production that is used for films and coatings, among other things.

Expect the next year to be just as exciting for POET. We’ve already announced some upcoming events, such as start of construction on Project LIBERTY, our first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant. There are many more developments that we’ll be able to announce to the public soon.

Technorati Tags: POET,Biofuels Digest,cellulosic ethanol,Energy Star,CHP,cob collection,landfill gas,zein,Inviz

Getting farmers invested in cellulosic ethanol

One challenge to commercializing cellulosic ethanol that is often overlooked is convincing enough people to grow and/or harvest your feedstock of choice.  POET’s work to clear that hurdle will continue this week. 

POET CEO Jeff Broin this Thursday will be at the National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Trade Talk in Kansas City.  He’ll be packing as many interviews as he can into a time slot of 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

To illustrate the challenge in feedstock logistics, POET’s $80 million award from the Department of Energy (which recently got an additional $20 million boost) comes with the requirement that we process 700 tons of biomass (corn cobs, in our case) per day.  That means we’ll need about 400,000 acres of cobs harvested in the area surrounding our Emmetsburg, Iowa plant.

Cob harvesting is going to be a huge opportunity for farmers to get additional income with zero new acres going into production.  We’ve made a lot of progress in attracting farmer interest in the Emmetsburg area through events such as Project LIBERTY Field Day last week.  But we also realize those efforts must be replicated across the Corn Belt in order to expand the technology to other POET plants as well as other interested ethanol producers.

The more we can get farmers familiar with the coming revolution in agriculture, the easier that process will be.

Farmers watch the latest cob harvesting equipment in action Nov. 3 at Project LIBERTY Field Day in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

Biofuels Journal Presentation from POET CEO Jeff Broin

Jeff Broin, CEO of POET, delivered the keynote address at BIOFUELS JOURNAL's 2nd annual Commercial Ethanol Technology and Research Workshop. In the speech, he focused on the potential for the ethanol industry based upon the projected availability of feedstock over the next 20 years.

You can watch video of the speech here and here. Here is the presentation:

Biofuels Journal Workshop at POET this week

POET will be a busy place this week.

At our corporate headquarters in Sioux Falls, we’ll host a great lineup of ethanol researchers, experts and industry leaders for Day One of the BIOFUELS JOURNAL 2nd Annual Commercial Ethanol Technology and Research Workshop Wednesday and Thursday.

The focus of the workshop is to outline ways to make ethanol production more efficient and profitable. Technology such as displacing natural gas for energy savings, fractionation, and adding new co-products will all be covered. Industry progress in commercializing cellulosic ethanol will also be highlighted.

Wednesday's session will take place at POET. The Thursday session will be at the Best Western Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center in Sioux Falls.

Keynote speakers for the event are Jeff Broin, CEO of POET, and Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol. For a full list of speakers and topics, see the agenda.

Moving a mountain of woodchips

After months of construction, the delivery system for POET Biorefining – Chancellor’s solid waste fuel boiler is up and running.

I had the chance to check it out this week during a visit, and it’s impressive.

A large building stores a mountain of wood chips. Each day 150-300 tons of biomass are sent up a conveyor to feed the five-story tall boiler. Although the building is large, it only holds enough biomass for three days of operation.

When you combine the biomass power with methane piped in from the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill, enough energy is produced to handle all the plant’s energy needs for steam generation. It offsets 65 percent of the total natural gas use, including that for drying the DDGS. That number will increase as more gas is generated at the landfill.

A peek inside the boiler showed some ferocious flames; my photo doesn’t do it justice. Check out a series of pictures at POET’s Flickr page.

Using Alternative Energy to Power Ethanol Production

Our announcement at the 2009 Fuel Ethanol Workshop about the installation of an anaerobic digester at the cellulosic ethanol pilot plant in Scotland generated quite a bit of interest. It was especially gratifying to see blog posts like POET Sets the Standard from Robert Rapier at R-Squared Energy Blog and POET to Use Corn Cobs - Not Natural Gas - to Power Cellulosic Ethanol Plant from Kirsten Korosec at BNET Energy.

As Jeff Broin said in his announcement speech, POET wants to eliminate fossil fuel usage from all of our plants. For anyone who would like to learn more about those efforts, click on the alternative energy tag of this blog, or visit our web site to see what we're doing with co-generation and waste power. Or, if you prefer video, check out the alternative energy playlist on POET TV:

We're on the cover!

Photographer Greg Latza shot a photo of POET Biorefining - Chancellor for the cover of the Progressive Farmer and posted it on his blog. However, he did get our company name wrong, calling us Poet Energy rather than POET.

With this facility recently adding alternative energy technologies that will displace most, if not all, of its natural gas usage, it's fitting that it would be on the cover of a magazine looking at the Next Steps for Ethanol.

If you want to see other (much less professional) photos of this facility, be sure to check out our Flickr page.

If you're in Sao Paulo, is it still considered work?

You'll have to ask POET Director of Corporate Affairs Doug Berven. Next week he'll be traveling to Brazil to participate in the Ethanol Summit 2009. Although he will cover several topics, he will primarily talk about the present status and the future prospects for cellulosic ethanol.

Doug will be on a panel with the President and CEO of Novozymes, the CEO of CanaVialis and Alellyx and a leader at BP Biofuels. Keynoting the conference is former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

To get a better idea of his topic, here's a presentation that Doug gave at the 2009 BIO International Convention last week:

Advances in Ethanol

View more OpenOffice presentations from Nathan Schock.