From Dump to Pump: Company Aims to Produce High-Octane Gasoline From Waste

From Dump to Pump: Company Aims to Produce High-Octane Gasoline From Waste

By John O'Dell August 20, 2008
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Then:  "Fill 'er up with premium."

Now:  "Let's see. I've got $50, so guess I'll get 12 gallons of regular unleaded."

Someday:  "Gimme 10 gallons of that sewage sludge distillate please."

Sounds yucky, but sewage sludge and garbage and plant waste that used to go to the dumps may someday be part of the nation's transportation fuels supply.

A two-year-old California startup, Byogy Renewables Inc. , said today that it has licensed a process developed by researchers at Texas A&M University that turns waste into high octane gasoline.

Production of the alternative fuel could begin within two years (could being the operative wiggle word), said Daniel Rudnick, chief executive of the Bakersfield-based company.

The beauty of the biofuel Byogy hopes to produce is that it doesn't need to be blended with other fuels, he said.

And it can be shipped through existing gasoline pipelines and pumped from existing gasoline pumps, unlike biodiesel or alcohol fuels such as ethanol that are corrosive and need to be blended and, in some cases require a separate delivery and pumping infrastructure.

"This technology is important because it addresses many issues -- eliminating waste, producing economical fuel quickly and being friendly to our environment," said Kenneth Hall, associate director of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University, which developed the waste conversion process.

"Furthermore, this technology is ready to be commercialized now and does not require any new scientific or technological breakthroughs to become a reality," Hall said in an interview with Greenwire, a subscription-only environmental news service.

Byogy uses a multi-step process that begins with fermenting the waste and then treating it hith heat and chemicals to produce intermediate materials that are subjected to heat and pressure to produce 95-octane gasoline, Rudnick said in an interview with Green Car Advisor.
He estimates that the cost of making "biolene," as the company calls its fuel, would range from $1.70 to $2 per gallon before any subsidies and tax credits were applied, and depending on the type of feedstock and size of a plant.

Potential raw materials include solids from sewage treatment plants, municipal garbage, lawn clippings and livestock manure.

Rudnick said the company hopes hope to have a commercial plant in operation within 18 to 24 months.

While focusing on California because o the market size and incentives the state offers, Byogy also is looking at potential sites in Louisiana and South Carolina, Rudnick said.

In addition to obtaining the proper permits to build a plant for processing waste, Byogy has a long run of fund-raising ahead of it. It takes cash, lots of it, to bring a commercial-scale biorefinery into operation.

Byogy president Benjamin Brant, who'd worked with the Texas A&M researchrs on previous projects, told Greenwire the company already has attracted some early-stage venture capital funding, but he declined to name the current backers.

The idea of using waste - human, animal, food and other - to make fuel isn't a new one.  There's a major venture in Sweden that makes methane (aka natural gas) from cow manure, and the Orange County Sanitation District, in Southern California, recently announced a deal to extract hydrogen from sewage sludge for use in a test fleet of fuel-cell electric vehicles.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.