Valley Voice Newspaper

Visalia - Owners of the Goshen ethanol plant, Altra Biofuels, are buying about 100 acres across Highway 99 from the Visalia Airport to build a cellulose-based ethanol plant with its first phase as a research and development facility. “We will be doing R and D work using feedstock from a crop being harvested this fall,” says company spokesman Will Gardenswartz. He says Altra is working on a partnership with an unnamed biotech company to grow and test crops like switchgrass that can— with the right enzymes—unlock the sugar from the woody fiber of the plant that can produce ethanol. The Visalia R and D facility will test these energy crops as well as waste from existing crops grown in the valley, says Gardenswartz. “We picked this location in part because there are so much feedstock and such high crop yields in the valley,” he notes.

The company is buying the acreage from Visalian Kent Kaulfuss who owns Wood Industries with a greenwaste and landscaping materials yard on the site—a business that will continue at this location. Kaulfuss says building an ethanol plant based on the use of waste cellulose “has been a long time dream of ours” in any case. The land had been under contract several years ago to be sold to Pacific Ethanol who decided to buy elsewhere eventually. Still the site has an existing permit from the county that dates to 1993 for an R and D biomass facility that is still in place —just what Altra will be developing.

Altra’s plan for the site is to do the smaller R and D process to make ethanol from waste or a dedicated energy crop first in a lab on the site and then in a smaller 10 to 15 million gallon plant, says Gardenswartz, and finally into a full scale operation some years down the road. To go beyond the R and D stage, the company would need to do a full EIR.

Unlike their Goshen plant that depends on supplies of corn from the Midwest as feedstock, the Visalia plant would enjoy a local waste and energy crop source eventually reducing the cost of making the biofuel that is now blended in gasoline all across the nation. In California, the governor just mandated that fuel in California may be blended at 10% ethanol requiring some 600 million more gallons for California.

Altra Biofuels partner Larry Gross told the Voice that, “We are very excited about our new research facility in Visalia, given the fact this is the perfect place to work on cellulosic ethanol.” He points to the fact that it is located in the middle of California next to the number one through four biggest ag counties in the US. In addition, he says, “We are excited to be working with Kent Kaulfuss a long time advocate of the cellulosic process.” He says this is attractive in part because Kaulfuss’s wood chipping company, Wood Industries, brings in 450,000 tons a day of greenwaste that later can be used to test their research process on.

Witnessing a Revolution

“This really is a revolution we are witnessing,” says Gardenswartz and part of this revolution is happening at Visalia’s doorsteps.

Gardenswartz says the Goshen plant, the first major biofuel plant in the state, is increasing its production over its original 25 mmg production level running 24 hours now rated at 31 million gallons. He says the company is considering no longer firing the boilers with natural gas but with a pellatized plant waste product that would reduce the carbon footprint of the Goshen plant no longer needing fossil fuel as a heat source.

Gardenswartz says the Visalia deal should close next month.

Altra Biofuel is one of several new biofuel makers that have sprung up in California with funding from private investors including well known entrepreneur Vinod Khosla who is also an investor in Cilion who has several plants in the permitting stage in California and actually headquartered in Goshen with partner Kevin Kruse of Western Milling.

Altra Biofuels other partners are L.A. investors including Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, Angeleno Group, Omninet Private Equity and Sage Capital Partners. The company has five projects either built or in the works some in the Midwest.

Ethanol production has been dominated by production facilities that make the biofuel from the ears of corn which require plantings of millions of acres of grain corn. But experts agree that as technology improves, more ethanol can be squeezed out of biomass at both a higher yield and at lower cost. The government has been funding research to make this happen sooner than later and the research on an enzyme used to “unlock” the sugar used to make the ethanol has been carried out by the company that Altra is talking to about partnering and testing the process in Visalia.

Gardenswartz says Altra is applying for R and D money from the Department of Energy for the effort. He notes that Senate just approved more monies for this process considering desire for energy independence in the US.

One study suggests that applying cellulosic technologies to a combination of agricultural waste (e.g., corn stover and other energy crops, such as switchgrass, sorghum and miscanthus) that US gasoline demand could be met on 50 million acres of prairie land or about 10% of the US total.

The Visalia location enjoys proximity not just to field crops but the City of Visalia’s wastewater treatment plant that can be tapped for methane as well as water that could be used for steam. A state-of-the-art ethanol plant nearby could end up reducing the city costs in cleaning water as well as the use of waste, say sources.

So far the county and city have been contacted by the proponents in a preliminary way.

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