By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent

CATONSVILLE, Md. — For a Blairstown, Iowa-based bioenergy plant and one of the world’s largest paper mills – located roughly 25 miles from the town of about 700 – what’s one company’s organic trash really is another’s renewable treasure.

As the nation’s first plant to turn organic industrial waste into renewable fuel, Fiberight, LLC has converted a former first-generation corn ethanol plant in Blairstown into a cellulosic biofuel production facility.

“Everyone from the average household to large industrial manufacturers is focused on reducing waste,” said Craig Stuart-Paul, CEO of Fiberight, headquartered in Catonsville, Md. “But the reality is that there will always be a significant waste stream in this country.

“What’s unique about our approach is that we can take that waste and turn it into billions of gallons of fuel to spur the nation’s energy independence,” he added.

In May, the $1.6 million Benton County facility started using enzymatic conversion technology and industrial/municipal solid waste (MSW) as feedstock, and then incorporated specialized waste treatment and biochemical technologies to efficiently turn MSW into biofuel, which Fiberight refers to as “trashanol.”

Fiberight – which spent $25 million converting the former Xethanol, LLC ethanol production plant into its new biorefinery – has developed a core extraction and processing technology with the potential for 9 billion gallons of renewable biofuel contained in 103 million tons of non-recyclable MSW generated each year in the United States.

According to company officials, Fiberight’s Targeted Fuel Extraction process separates, cleans and processes organic and hydrocarbon fractions. It then converts the organic fraction into cellulosic biofuel, the hydrocarbon fraction into plant energy and electricity and the inert fraction into recyclables or beneficial products.

In May, Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based International Paper, one of the world’s largest packaging and paper producers, started shipping Fiberight organic fiber waste from its Cedar River recycled paper mill, designed to produce 7 MMgy  (millions gallons per year) to 10 MMgy, called “mini-mills.” As a result, International Paper churns out 1 million tons of recycled paper for corrugated packaging per year, which translates into about 50,000 tons of organic fiber waste each year.

Of that, about 95 percent is then recycled into new paper, with the remaining unusable fiber going into the mill’s waste stream. Tom Olstad, operations manager at International Paper’s Cedar River mill, said the residual fiber waste provides a good base-load feedstock for the biorefinery, and is consistent with the paper company’s business goals of cleaner energy and cost efficiency.

“When Fiberight approached us in late 2008 with their idea for using our residual fiber to process renewable energy, we saw this as a potential win-win for both companies,” he said.

In turn, Fiberight efficiently fractionates International Paper’s waste and uses a highly cost-effective biochemical process to turn the organic element of MSW such as contaminated paper, food wastes and other discards into fuel grade cellulosic ethanol.

“As one of the largest recycled paper mills in the world, recycling and reusing raw materials is a big part of how we operate,” Olstad added. “Through Fiberight’s new facility, we can now be assured that whatever recycled fiber can’t be made into new packaging can be used to create (renewable) energy, while helping us offset our disposal costs.”

In addition, Fiberight has developed technologies to capture value from the inorganic fraction of solid waste and can recycle many materials that are otherwise discarded. In April, after a three-year application process, Fiberight’s core wet pulping technology was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in a Notice of Allowance.

With more than 60 percent of the trash stream turning into valuable biofuel, Fiberight’s biorefineries will fulfill the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s mandates under the National Renewable Fuel Standard program, which provides statutory requirements for the incorporation of renewable biofuel, including cellulosic ethanol, as part of the nation’s transportation fuel. For 2011, the federal government has set the cellulosic standard for 250 million gallons, increasing to 16 billion gallons by 2022.

Over the last six years, Fiberight has been designing processes to separate this organic pulp from everyday waste, creating more recyclables and energy from other parts of the waste stream along the way.

“You can’t just back up a trash truck to a corn ethanol plant and expect fuel to come out the other end,” Stuart-Paul said. “We undertook extensive modifications to the (Blairstown) plant to incorporate our proprietary digestion and fermentation techniques, as well as processes to help convert organic pulps into cellulosic sugars.

“I’m very pleased to say that these processes worked extremely well, and hats off to our engineering team, APS Engineering, for making this a reality.”

This summer, Fiberight began using MSW from the Benton County municipality and other Iowa landfills to process more than 350 tons of waste per day into valuable biofuel, at a cost of less than $1.65 per gallon, at full production.

Moreover, novel technologies such as enzyme recycling and cellulosic sugar concentration have been developed to control costs and the company has tested these processes on a commercial scale.

During 2009, Fiberight achieved high yield conversion factors at its Lawrenceville, Va., pilot plant because of recent development of the robust enzyme catalysts used in strategic partnership with three different enzyme suppliers.

According to company officials, Fiberight is now able to forecast, with extensive data backup, its ability to produce cellulosic ethanol at an attractive profit margin and investor return.

To provide expansion capital for the Blairstown biorefinery, Fiberight has retained Source Capital Group, Inc. of Westport, Conn., to complete a financing led by Venture Cross Partners of Great Falls, Va.

In the future, Fiberight plans to target communities with populations of 150,000, which will each produce approximately 10 million gallons at a cost of $30 million-$50 million.

The Blairstown plant is expected to be scaled to its final commercial production capacity of six million gallons in 2011.