Nevada plant to make fuel from garbage

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer  Saturday, July 19, 2008

In its search for new sources of fuel, the green-tech industry has turned to wood chips, grass, algae - even cow manure. Now a Pleasanton company plans to make fuel out of garbage.

Fulcrum BioEnergy announced plans Friday to build a $120 million plant by 2010 that would make ethanol out of municipal waste, stuff that would otherwise go straight into a landfill.

The plant, 10 miles east of Reno, would process 90,000 tons of garbage per year and produce 10.5 million gallons of ethanol. The company eventually plans to open other plants around the country.

Fulcrum is just one of many companies trying to produce the next generation of biofuels. Their holy grail: cheap, domestically produced fuel that doesn't come from crops or oil.

Fulcrum plans to keep costs down by building its plants near landfills. And Fulcrum can get the garbage virtually for free.

"It's very large volume, it's very high in energy content, and it's close to where the fuel is needed," said E. James Macias, Fulcrum's chief executive officer.

The company should be able to produce ethanol for less than $1 per gallon. It now costs about $2.40 per gallon.

Hitting the company's price target will be important. In the past few years, so many ethanol plants were built that the market became glutted. Then record-high corn prices caused by flooding in the Midwest squeezed ethanol producers even further because most ethanol is made from corn.

Macias said Fulcrum's process should be able to undercut the cost of corn ethanol.

Garbage trucks will bring trash to the plant, where Fulcrum workers will sort it and pull out anything organic. The garbage will be chopped into bits, then fed into a hot chamber containing very little oxygen. The scraps will produce a mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen that will react with a catalyst to produce ethanol.

The waste product will be a type of glass that could be recycled as a building material, said Rick Barraza, the company's vice president for administration.

Researchers have tried a variety of ways to make ethanol derived from organic waste, but no one has been able to do it inexpensively on a large scale, said Patricia Monahan, deputy director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Perfecting a method would help fight climate change and address the world's energy problems, she said. Corn ethanol takes a lot of energy to produce, drives up food prices, and could lead to deforestation as farmers plant more of the crop, Monahan said.

"Ethanol produced from cellulosic (sources) - especially from municipal waste - would be a dream come true, from a global-warming perspective," she said.

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.