Gretna company grows, tests new products to change face of energy

GRETNA — The future is being grown and harvested on the sprawling, gentle slopes of northern Pittsylvania County.

It is there that Ken Moss, founder and CEO of Piedmont BioProducts, is growing and testing a new generation of fuel products that will replace petroleum and change the face of energy usage forever.

If it sounds like an ambitious project, it is. But Moss said it is definitely going to happen and happen soon. He has proven it already in a smaller, pilot version of a mini-refinery situated at the Windy Acres Nursery he and his wife, Sherry, own.

“What we are doing is going to work,” he said confidently last week, standing outside the pilot refinery and looking out over the fields where he is testing feedstocks, or perennial crops that are converted into biofuel as a substitute for petroleum and all its byproducts.

The project began in 2004 when Virginia Tech contacted Moss about becoming a bioenergy partner for Southside Virginia.

With his background as an engineer and as a nursery owner for 23 years, it was a perfect fit, so Moss signed on.

“This project is a natural fit, with taking living plant material and converting it to biofuel in a thermal-chemical process,” he said.

The project was financed with money from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, paying for a pilot scaled-down refinery as a demonstration site on Moss’ land for trials of feedstock production and conversion

The refinery brings in raw materials and converts them to biofuel. Although propane is used currently to run the refinery, eventually the refinery will not only produce biofuel, but will use syngas and a portion of the char produced to power itself.

In the second phase, the tobacco commission provided further funding to take the project from the pilot scale phase to a pre-commercial phase. That’s where the venture now finds itself.

Outside the refinery, Moss is growing eight different feedstocks: hardy sugar, Jerusalem artichoke, panic grass, northern Pampas grass, miscanthus, switchgrass and 120 varieties of hybrid poplars in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Learning & Research and Virginia Tech, not to mention shrub willows in collaboration with the State University of New York.

How it works

Here’s how the process works to take a crop from the field to a jar of biocrude oil and a pile of char or a carbon black, a charcoal-like substance.

In the pre-process phase, a bin holds the raw biomass — either the feedstock or wood chips, which is waste wood from the forest industry.

The biomass then goes to the dryer where the material is dried to a 5- to-8 percent moisture content — quite a difference from the 40-percent moisture content of the original wood products or 15- to 20-percent for the feedstock.

A conveyor then takes it to a hopper, which feeds it into the reactor where it is vaporized at about 1,000 degrees. No oxygen is present during this process, which is why the material vaporizes instead of burns.

The material is subjected to such high temperatures that a chemical reaction occurs, bypassing combustion and going straight to vapor.

After the material vaporizes, it goes to condensers where cooling fluid condenses 70 percent of it into biocrude oil and the other 30 percent into a mixture of synthetic gas and char, which is separated out.

In the final step, the biofuel goes to the furnace where it provides energy to run the process, or it is sold.

“The process is ‘carbon-dioxide neutral,’ meaning it puts no net carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Ken Moss, founder and CEO of Piedmont BioProducts, explained.

“It has a 1 to 15 energy balance, meaning that you get 15 units of energy back for every one put in, all the way through the process.”

By contrast, corn ethanol has a 1 to 1.1 ratio at best, Moss said.

He said that the initial market for the substance will be heating oil, but it can be refined to replace any petroleum product, including a “green” plastic and sugar, but “green” gasoline is the ultimate goal.

Economic potential

Besides the environmental benefits, the biofuel industry will be “a huge economic development” for the area, according to Moss.

Piedmont BioProducts is nonprofit so far, but Moss said the company likely will go public by 2010. The hybrid co-op — so-called because investment will be available for both farmers and non-farmers — will give the public a chance to invest in their community.

“The company is structured so that anyone can invest, and the community will benefit,” Moss said. “The goal is to replace crude oil, and the main focus is to provide a renewable crude oil replacement on a community basis. We will achieve this goal by having community-based mini-refineries.

“It will be a community-managed operation, so no one has to worry about the corporate headquarters being someplace else. The board of directors will be from local people.”

The farmers will make money, both by growing the crops to sell to the refinery for processing and by having ownership in the industry, he said.

“We are looking at one refinery per county or 20 miles apart,” he said, noting there are more than 30 counties in the tobacco commission region.

A site of five-to-10 acres is required for each mini-refinery.

“We have a commitment from 60 farmers in the community willing to participate, if they can make a decent profit,” he said. “This is an opportunity for me — myself and the community — for the future, but I don’t stand to benefit at all if this is not successful.”

The idea for the industry came from a trip Moss and Virginia Tech researchers took to Europe in 2005 to see bio-energy programs there.

“They’ve got community-based district heating stations where feedstocks are converted to hot water and electricity, keeping the money in the community,” he said.

He doesn’t know anywhere in the U.S. a similar process is being done, although there are some sites in Canada.

“I love the rural community and agriculture, but I can inject an engineering flavor into this project,” he said. “It’s a good marriage between engineering capabilities and rural community values. This is unique because it’s up-and-coming technology here in the community. It brings high-tech to a community level.”

He added, “Without the generous funding of the Tobacco Commission, this wouldn’t be possible.”