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Terrabon Breaks Ground on Bio-Feuls Plant
By NICOLE PRIOLO


With gas prices rising, it seems that there is no end in sight to the pain people feel in their wallets every time they fill up at the pump. However, new technology that will be developed locally could, in time, provide a light at the end of the tunnel.

Construction recently began on a demonstration plant in Bryan that will further test and develop the “MixAlco” technology, which is a process that transforms biomass into liquid fuels. The technology has been developed over the last 17 years by Professor Mark T. Holtzapple and Cesar B. Granda of Texas A&M University.

Terrabon, LLC broke ground on the semi-works facility April 29, and it is expected to be operational by September of this year. The facility will have the capability to digest 5 tons per day of biomass feedstocks such as municipal solid waste, sewage sludge, forest product residues and non-edible energy crops.

Over the last three years, the MixAlco process has been tested at a pilot plant in College Station, but it only has the potential to digest 100 pounds of feedstock per day. Testing the technology at a demonstration plant is the last step before the process will be moved into a commercial plant, which would have the ability to digest 1,000 tons of biomass per day.

“The overall goal is to show that the technology can be scaled up and commercialized,” said Malcolm McNeil, a financial advisor for Terrabon. “When we’re finished operating this after a couple cycles, we should be in a position to go to a third party and say, ‘This is exactly what you’re going to need to build a plant like this.’”

Texas A&M University owns the patents for the MixAlco technology, but Terrabon has been granted worldwide licenses to try and deploy it commercially.

Although Holtzapple and Granda’s research is promising, it will take time before the MixAlco process will be able to displace the need for foreign oil. “The nature of any energy technology is that it requires a lot of investment, and it has kind of a time scale to it,” explains Holtzapple. “I think the first commercial plant will probably be about three years from today. If that first plant is successful, my guess is in five years, there will be maybe half a dozen or a dozen plants. Until enough of the plants are available to actually make an impact on the market, I hate to say this, but it’s probably about 10 years away.”
Holtzapple’s motivation to find an alternative solution to fuel began back in 1973 during the first energy crisis when he was still in high school. “I became acutely aware of how important energy is. I made it a personal commitment that I was going to try to figure out a technical solution to the problem,” he said, and 30 years later, he is one giant step closer to seeing this goal come to fruition.