In Maine, Former Site of Ethanol Plant to Produce Cellulosic Biobutanol Jet Fuel

In Old Town, Maine, on the former site of an ethanol project that went belly-up last November, a century-old mill continues to produce pulp and paper.

But along with its usual pulp-making business, the mill is doing something unprecedented: Developing technology to produce bio-butanol, a jet fuel, from parts of trees that would otherwise go to waste.

Although production is still two years away, Reuters reports that the reinvention of Maine's Old Town Fuel & Fiber mill is already drawing interest as a potential model for a new wave of biofuel companies that could slash dependence on oil, create jobs and reduce the emissions that lead to global warming.

Loggers, the news service reports, see the mill as a lifeline for their crippled industry. Environmentalists see it as a test of the Obama administration's push for a big expansion in biofuels.

And chemical and oil companies are waiting to see if the mill can do what none has done before by extracting sugars from wood chips into a biofuel that many regard as more efficient than corn-based ethanol as a possible substitute for gasoline.

"There has been a lot of interested parties in what we are doing here," Old Town's president, Dick Arnold, told Reuters. "There have been several oil companies that have been interested in our extract and production of biofuels. There has been a number of chemical companies that have expressed the same desire."

Behind the project is Lynn Tilton, a New York venture capitalist who owns one of the nation's largest helicopter makers. Tilton's Patriarch Partners bought the mill in November, invested about $40 million and shifted its focus to cellulosic bio-butanol.

According to Reuters, Tilton can use bio-butanol in her own helicopter and aircraft businesses but is eyeing a potentially huge market after Congress decreed that the United States must use 21 billion gallons of "advanced" biofuels such as cellulosic ethanols, bio-butanol and "green gasoline" a year by 2022.

The Reuters report is well worth the time it takes to read.

Posted by

Scott Doggett June 25, 2009, 12:27 PM

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Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Butanol, Emissions, Energy Companies, Ethanol, Tax Incentives

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