Ed Lehrburger, CEO of PureVision speaking on the future of bio-fuel production

PureVision – Enabling Technology for the Cellulosic Biorefining Industry
Stealing Beauty movies
Presented by Ed Lehrburger, CEO

PureVision is a technology company, based in Ft. Lupton,  that has developed a patented a solution to make bio-refining of fuels a sustainable and profitable venture. A carbon-neutral biomass fractional technology produces sugars from cellulosic biomass. The resultant product can also be direct energy or fiber to be used as feedstock to other industrial or consumer products. The feedstock to the PureVision process excludes food based products such as corn and focuses on cellulosic based biomass such as wheat straw, corn stalks, trees and energy crops.

Ed started his presentation by providing a clear definition of his technology and use of cellulose. Cellulosic sources range from trees, shrubs, grasses and other fuel crops. The process will not use the seed or the fruits but focus more on the branches, stumps, trees and other materials that are not necessarily as recyclable.

The result of the process is to produce sugars which can be used for many products. In the next hundred years sugars will replace crude oil as a source of energy. It is rapidly becoming the feedstock of the future.

There are many products that can be made with these sugars, including ethanol diesel gasoline, jet fuel and industrial chemicals, consumer products, pharmaceuticals with fibers and sugars from biomass. Today there are number of companies with platforms to make their products from these fibers and sugars but the problem is that there are few technologies to make sugars from abundant bio-mass. Today a common way to do this is the nine day process known as the NREL dilute acid pre-treatment. This pretreatment makes the biomass available for conversion when enzymes are added. The sugars are then used to make bio-fuels/ethanol.

PureVision has a new technology that condenses the dilute acid process from 9 days in batch mode to a 20 min continuous process. Today’s processes involve a number of steps such as stirring, mixing, heat that involve large facilities, energy, capital and incur waste water disposal problems. Fractionation reduces much of the downside of this process, by using water and reagents to quickly extract the product. Examining a new approach we first examine the inputs:  biomass & plant products. Typical feedstocks consist of a combination of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin (A typical biomass breakdown is 40% cellulose (fiber), 25% hemicellulose, 20% lignin, 5% ash, 10% extractives). Essentially much of the cellulose input is pulp, and the PureVision solution mimics the pulping process (removing lignin, hemicellulose) concentrated to an 8 min process in a reactor (versus 2 hours for paper). The cellulose (e.g. corn stalk) is converted to glucose (6 carbon sugar).

The structure of the target feedstock, biomass (e.g. corn stalks) is a combination of cellulose (containing glucose – 6 carbon sugars), and hemicellulose (containing non-glucose 5 carbon sugars). This combination along with lignin has evolved over millions of years to withstand rain/snow/storms. Ultimately though, the structure needs to be broken down to make the end product. Glucose is the primary intermediate product from the fuelstock – the (C6) sugar is the easiest to work with and provides the highest yields for the end product (e.g. fuels). The other product are as follows:

• Xylose sugar syrup from the hemicellulose
• Lignin – cane be used a young coal (high btu fuel) – sold as fuel or for making other industrial products
• black liquor – a biogrowth media for producing yeast
• residue of ash (nutrient rich to go back to the soil)

Invincible move

The process is very effective, using a countercurrent process (injecting water upstream), it extracts out around 95% of the fiber from the biomass while removing the hemicellulose & lignin. This process avoids overcooking the biomass and thereby losing the fiber recovered. The final stage converts the extracted fiber to glucose

Food versus fuel debate has positioned cellulosic processes as a more viable option to make fuels. Ed referenced the spike in corn-meal prices in Mexico shutting down tortillas plants

• Brideshead Revisited psp

. Also here in the states corn went to over 7 dollars a bushel with increased ethanol production and the Iowa flood coinciding in June 2008. This positive incentive along with the federal support for cellulosic ethanol (up to one dollar a gallon for cellulosic fuel) is driving considerable research into making cellulosic biofuels more sustainable and produce better yields at lower costs. Target markets for PureVision is to follow the trend of converting ethanol plants (in the next 5 years) in places such as the American corn belt and South America (e.g. Brazil) into cellulosic plants. The existing PureVision pilot plant can run 24 hr/day and process a half ton biomass per day. Near-term pilots are expecting to scale up to 20 ton/day and an upcoming commercial plant is expected to process 250 ton/day. The company has done R&D for clients and received 6 grants so far to help develop their unique fractionator process.

Questions from the green tech group started with the expansion and retrofitting of plants in Brazil. Ed considers it one of the biggest markets in the world. Brazilian sugarcane ethanol (considered to be the most successful alternative fuel to date) is processed by squeezing sugar cane. The residue created from this process is burned as bagasse The Black Shield of Falworth ipod which provides heat for the mill’s operations and is also used for cogeneration of electicity to be sold back to the grid. This process is considered to be greenhouse gas neutral since the CO2 released during its burning is the same absorbed by the plant during its growing phase but this could be partially mitigated. The PureVision process has proposed to make 35% more ethanol by using their process and to derive energy from the lignin to replace the direct burning of bagasse.

Another question raised about how much product is generated the 250 ton plant. Ed responded that the plant would generate 60 gal/ dry ton (cellulose) of ethanol fuel and by using the lignin and hemi-cellulose the output raise to 90 gal/ dry ton. Vertical integration is another evolving area for cellulosics. Although today a wood based feedstock could be used with volumes as high at 2000 ton/day, the main focus is on energy crops/ agricultural residues such as switch grass that will provide a more sustainable input to bio-refineries. PureVision has multiple patents on the process and apparatus and have worldwide patents. As of today they have experimented with 6 feedstocks: bagasse, corn stovers, wood, corn cobs, wheat straw, triticale straw. The energy required for cellulosics is generally accepted to be 35% more efficient the corn ethanol production and water usage is significantly reduced with cellulosics (specifically if the biomass has more moisture – typically plant mass is already 50% water).


Texas Instruments – Alternative Energy Initiatives Redacted hd Final Destination the movie
Presented by John Van Scoter, Senior Vice President

Texas Instruments helps customers solve problems and develop new electronics that make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. A global semiconductor company, TI innovates through design, sales and manufacturing operations in more than 30 countries.

As Texas Instruments (TI) is primarily an electronics company, John began with a little background on how the company is applying its current expertise in green electronics. Firstly, TI is a large corporation with 12.5B in fourth quarter revenue 2008 (a 30% drop from 4Q07 ) and R&D spending was around 2B in 2008. Some other notable trivia, a major market segment for TI’s chips is targeted for communication based systems. The device/chip catalog has over 30000 products and many of these product are available for free for entrepreneurs for prototyping. TI is showing leadership in green construction with its latest TI analog 300 mm manufacturing facility in Texas, the first semiconductor facility awarded a gold LEED certification. TI also has a received a silver LEED certificate for their assembly/test facility in the Philippines that will be the first in the country awarded a LEED certification.

The Texas Instrument approach to the green technology sector falls into 4 categories:

1. MakeIt – Renewable(solar, wind, biomass) and Distributed power (including efficiencies in Refinement/Drilling)
2. MoveIt – Real-time monitoring, transmission & distribution, smart meters, 2-way price signaling
3. UseIt – improving motors, lighting (LED), consumption, appliances, power supplies, transportation, HVAC, (white goods – e.g. refrigerator appliances)
4. Self Powered systems – through Kilby labs (step-function innovation for technology 5 years out) - using intrinsic environment-derived (kinetic, thermal, RF) energy to store (in a thin film battery) and power small electronic devices

TI sees many opportunities to apply their experience to the Smart grid including communication applications in the home/wide are network. Today TI chipsets for the Smart Grid are employed on the meter-side. For enterprise applications, areas such power management/efficiency solutions  and optimization of battery management/density is also a TI expertise. TI solutions can reduce up to 50% energy consumption in data center-based server farms. Another area of opportunity is LED lighting. LEDs already   reduce power consumption with an efficiency improvement of over 10x compared to incandescent bulbs. TI sees a value-add green play by using the solid state device to become a sensor. Not only will the next generation light illuminate, it will collect information and turn on/off local thermostats, lighting and other electronics.  Other applications for embedded light circuits are security and atmospheric sensing. TI is currently researching this area more deeply with a learning lab that explores thermal properties, light balancing, power management and communication between sensors.

Structure embedded self powered sensors have show great promise. Work on embedding monitoring sensors in bridges can detect strain on bridge components and communicate potential issues to state authorities. Previous bridge collapses such as the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis are examples where long-lived sensors (potentially up to 100 years) could be used with no external power or wiring to monitor a structure’s health. Future personal healthcare monitoring applications could use energy generated by a person to power devices such as in a smart shirt. An individual can generate up to 100W a day. From the TI perspective, this is more than adequate energy to power its low-power electronics that would be embedded into clothing items.

The green tech audience brought up TI  consumer awareness which for many translate to TI-powered products such as Speak & Spell, TI-branded calculators and LCD projector systems. Beyond its product line, the most famous asset of TI is one of its engineers, Jack Kilby, who invented the thermal printer, integrated circuit and won a nobel prize in Physics.

Another areas raised by attendees was the area of environmental stewardship. TI has made great strides optimizing the wafer fabrication process and improved the management of the toxic waste generated. Their latest work for LEED certification was attributed to water reclamation and power reduction/efficiency. One of the more impressive illustrations of this was a reengineering effort to optimize water pumping systems (reduced # of pumps by 50%) in their facility that resulted in a significant energy reduction to run the new lab.

TI also is leader in smart meters / e-meters,  where they enjoy a 2/3 market share in this product category for embedded TI chips. In order to be a chip supplier to worldwide green products , TI’s approach is to be protocol/standard agnostic. In that regard TI has adopted, amongst other standards,  Zigbee for wireless device communication.  It is a popular standard in the US and is advancing with EU standard committees for use in smart meter in-home device communications for smart grids.