Fuel Wars

Community Comments

“What you see on the Range Fuels website is all you’re going to get,” says Fran Ferraro, one of the world’s leading experts on ethanol technology and a member of the Merrick Engineering firm near Denver. “It’s all the information that is fit for the public to see. It’s confidential.”

The cloak-and-dagger routine that surrounds K2 kept us from getting a close look at the technology, but it is clear that the Klepper system is a departure and an improvement on the process used to make ethanol from corn. Called cellulosic ethanol, it can be made from a variety of biowaste products ranging from tree scraps, plant and municipal waste, sawdust, switch grass, olive pits, peanut shells and even hog manure.

The biomass is heated in an oxygen-free environment to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which are reconstituted into ethanol. This conversion takes place in minutes. It is modular and therefore highly scalable. But does it work as advertised?

“That’s really hard to say,” says Mark Yancey, a Stanford graduate and former manager at PG&E, who is an expert on ethanol production. Yancey who works for BBI International, a renewable energy service company in Denver says, “No one can comment directly on the Range Fuels technology because they keep it locked up tight.

“In general, the gasifying of biomass has two problems. First, if the fuel, in this case scrap wood, is wet, it has to be dried to at least the 30 percent moisture mark before it can be used. That can cost money and time. Second, the process produces a lot of tar as a waste product which tends to plug up the downstream processes. These two issues are significant technological challenges that K2 has to solve before it will be as efficient as they say it is,” he continues.

“If they’ve done it, then the sky is the limit to where they can go from here. If they haven’t, then we’re back to the drawing board. Since K2 is such a secret, I guess only time will tell,” says Yancey.

• Share
  • Digg This
  • del.icio.us
  • Newsvine
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Furl It
  • !Y My Web
  • Google
• Email
• Print

Recommend This

Community Comments