Abengoa Bioenergy are nearing the completion of their
commercial lignocellulosic ethanol facility in Hugoton, KS, and have already begun to collect biomass feedstock to supply the plant. They have
announced that their cogen facility will start up around the end of August and that the balance of the plant will be commissioned around the end of 2013. Perhaps Abengoa intended to use the cogen facility to burn some of their collected corn stover to generate green electricity, but it appears that a lot of their bales had other plans.
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| Before the blaze (from Lucas Haag) |
On the night of May 28th, the Abengoa/Cattle Empire corn stover bale stockpile near Moscow, KS, caught fire. Firefighters battled the fire with water initially, but strong and shifting winds made their efforts difficult. Eventually, firefighters from five counties came to fight the blaze and began to use fire retardant foam later on May 29th. By May 30th, the fire was under control, but
it reportedly burned for more than a week, filling the town of Moscow with smoke. Reports vary, but probably more than 50,000 bales of corn stover were destroyed, around 30,000-40,000 tons of biomass. (A
later estimate from Abengoa was around 38,000 bales and 16 days of supply.) Between cogen and ethanol production usage, this represents about 5% of the annual supply for the Abengoa plant (
some details here). At a recent conference, an Abengoa representative quoted their plant-gate biomass costs at $50-60/ton, so a fair bit of money went up in smoke on May 28. At the time of this post, the cause of the fire was still unknown.
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| Biomass supply up in smoke (from United Prairie Ag) |
Links to news sources:
KWCH 12 Eyewitness News (includes video)
Garden City Telegram
KSCB News
Biomass supply, handling, and storage is an under-appreciated challenge for the production of cellulosic fuels. Especially for crop residues like corn stover, the biomass has to be collected from a wide area, bound up into a form which can be easily handled like these bales, and stored until it is used. For the Abengoa project, the residue collection seasons are just about 2 weeks in May (for wheat straw) and 3-4 months in the fall (for corn and milo stover). For the remaining 8 months of the year the plant must be supplied by stored biomass, likely from huge depots like this one. Fire has long been recognized as a risk for bale storage like this and is also a problem for large piles of sugarcane bagasse, another promising feedstock (news and presentation). Safer as well as less costly methods of storage would be a major advance for the biomass industry and help to ensure its long term success.
