EC SD | Gearclash - 1/29/2024 18:24
Ethanol plants burn a lot of natural gas. My guess is that is where the whole CO2 sequestration kick hits.
Good catch... Well the choice to use natural gas was made in the days of it being cheap and abundant, and honestly it still is and likely to continue to be. What has changed is the focus on CO2 emissions...
Several ways to deal with that though (assuming 100 million gal facility needs 5,170 MWh/month to replace natural gas):
1) Build or partner with a 34 MW wind farm. This would only take 16 acres of land out of farm production and with utility scale battery backup, would provide all of the energy needs of the plant and provide a lot of sales back to the utility during the windy times.
2) Build or partner with a 92 MW solar farm. This would take about 250 acres of land and also would need a battery storage system.
3) Build a biomass-fueled combined cycle power plant on site. Farmers would sell corn stalk, switchgrass, sudangrass, etc. bales as the fuel.
4) Contract with the utility to supply renewable electricity from the grid, at the going rate of course. Federal tax incentives exist to perhaps make this the cheapest of all the options, and it is highly reliable similar to the nat gas of today.
5) Buy renewable energy emissions credits to offset the current CO2 emissions, and continue using nat gas. |
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