A little advice from a patent attorney with a background in organic chemistry and years of experience working in Chevron’s biofuels space can go a long way. Just ask Sam Yenne, CEO and co-founder of Maverick Biofuels. He listened and now, Yenne and his team at Maverick, which includes patent attorney David Bradin, the company’s chief technology officer, are moving their vision to convert municipal solid waste (MSW) and other nonedible feedstock into an operating facility in North Carolina. Although Maverick may look like an all-star team with names like Texaco, IBM, Ohio State University and Rutgers’ Law School on the list of former employers, Yenne has some advice of his own for other startups, technology providers or project developers looking to take the next step in the process of upgrading that, given the source, sounds overly humble. Yenne, who has a doctorate in plant physiology, a master’s in business administration  from Duke University and 20 years of work developing biotechnology companies, admits that while his background in commercializing technologies is extensive, he doesn’t know everything. His advice: “Don’t be afraid to admit that.”

Because Yenne and his team decided that “the final answer” for arriving at the right technology and the right plans for the future facility “would be best derived from a team of smart people,” as opposed to a single vision, Maverick will break ground on a pilot-scale demonstration facility this year, according to Yenne. Even at a small scale, the Maverick story reiterates that a commonly held belief also applies to biorefinery build out—you don’t have to know everything, you just have to know the people who do.

Engineering a Plan

The technology that will eventually be employed at the Maverick facility has been around for more than 100 years. Yenne and his team have tweaked it, however, and by doing so, will be able to produce what they call mixed alcohols. The technology, Yenne says, uses gasification to produce syngas, which is then converted by two catalyzed reactions. The first is a modified Fischer-Tropsch reaction altered to produce short carbon chains rather than the traditional, longer FT ones. The shorter carbon chains with double bonds, or olefins, are hydrated with water in the second reaction to create a mixed alcohol of two-, three- or four-carbon alcohols that can be blended with gasoline the same way ethanol is today. Because the process doesn’t produce any methanol, Yenne says the energy content in the liquid is about 85 percent that of gasoline.

Even though the process to make the alcohols is based on proven technology that utilizes established equipment, Yenne says that during early discussions, potential partners and investors were focused instead on one thing: What is it going to cost? “We could start to make some stabs at that,” Yenne says, “but we couldn’t get down to the nitty-gritty details.” Unable to answer questions such as how many compressors the facility would need, or where to compress the gas between each step, the team went in search of engineering support, both internally and externally. Today, the team employs an in-house engineer that Yenne says helps “to talk the engineering language and translate back and forth” because, he adds, “one of the things you are going to recognize as you start to build these biorefineries is that there are lots of technology challenges within them.”

Armed with an in-house engineer, Maverick went in search of an engineering firm that could help develop and refine the Maverick vision. After visiting with several different firms, Yenne and his team chose Professional Project Services out of North Carolina to, as Yenne explains, “invest in Maverick Biofuels.” And that was part of its selection criteria—that the engineering firm had to believe in what Maverick was doing, due to the long, committed relationship Yenne felt was part of the process of building a biorefinery with the help of an EPC contractor.

“We’ve worked with companies like Maverick before,” says Chris Bailey, CEO of Professional Project Services, “and they are looking for more of a partner than they are for somebody with deep pockets and a big checkbook that is ready to put a shovel in the ground.” Having a partner helped to outline the business model the team would use in explaining the costs of operations to investors because, as Yenne explains, engineering firms like PPS have a process that helps find the key critical answers related to both pilot-scale plants and commercial facilities.

To find those answers, all efforts were focused on building a commercial facility to see exactly what all parties involved would need in the future. Not only did the commercial-first approach help estimate overall costs, the process also helped PPS to maximize the efficiency and product of the plant. “For example,” Yenne says, “we know we have three major steps in our process that are going to be heat producers.” So, recognizing the opportunity, PPS engineered a system to take advantage of that heat as a sellable product.

So what does the Maverick story reveal about finding and utilizing the expertise of an engineering firm to construct an economically sound and efficient biorefinery? For starters, as Yenne points out, there are a number of different approaches to the process, but for his team, developing plans for the commercial goal first helped them to understand the variables that would be needed in the pilot facility, no matter what. The team, he says, also benefited from having an in-house engineer. Bailey points to the importance of choosing the right EPC provider, based on the experience some would have from working in similar fields. In this, PPS was the obvious positive for Maverick, Bailey says. PPS’ work in fabricating holding vessels, as well as in building, operating and maintaining chemical manufacturing facilities, all helps PPS understand the larger construction ideas that Maverick is trying to figure out. “It’s one thing to come up with an idea with a lot of high-level chemistry and process flow diagrams and make it work on paper,” Bailey says. But it’s different when it’s time for “build stage.” And, as Yenne advises, the most important thing to remember during the process is that the final answer will most likely come from a group of individuals, and should not come from a single perspective.

A Plan with Options

There are no cookie-cutter plans for biorefineries now. Most likely, there never will be. So, while firms like PPS can utilize their experience gained during work on similar projects in similar fields, there could be more to finding the right “partner” than just experience. Evergreen Engineering is also gaining experience, but in a different way. After forming in 1985, the company has grown to more than 200 people in four different cities. To some, those numbers may actually seem small, but Jeff Mills, senior project manager says in the past five years, the group has been more involved in energy-based projects. The team is currently working with clients on processes  to convert plastic bottles and agricultural residues into transportation fuel, and with another client on a torrefaction plant.

The stages of development range from phase two research and development, to scaling up from mid- to large-scale. And Mills says that the functions of the company are different for each project. Evergreen is, in some ways, especially well-suited for the biorefining sector because of that. Look at one of the atypical services Evergreen provides.

Mills says a lot of the early work the company performs for renewable energy projects comes in feedstock feasibility studies that define the quality and amount of feedstock available near a potential build site. “Nobody can be good at everything,” he says. “The guys that are developing a lot of these processes are usually not the guys that are talking to farmers, or are not the guys talking to the buyers and sellers of biomass.” Because of this, Mills has already worked with a number of clients who have relocated their potential sites after reviewing the Evergreen studies. Typically, Mills says the feedstock size and moisture content can greatly affect a project, and helping clients to understand the available options helps make Evergreen’s suite of services even broader.

“We are usually not the developers of the process,” he says. “We are the guys that can tell them what is available and what it is going to look like.” Like PPS, Mills also touts his experience in similar fields as a true plus. After starting in the integrated steel mill business, Mills moved to pulp and paper mills before taking over as senior project manager at Evergreen.

As for the cookie-cutter model, Mills is adamant that there are none in the biorefining industry. But, to save time and  make the process of build-out more efficient, he recommends using the parts and pieces that are readily available in the marketplace. That doesn’t mean that a project developer should just stick with one brand of equipment, however. One of the things Mills says developers will do is align themselves with a particular equipment provider. “The question that comes up is, is [the equipment] the best, and was it the most economical?” Although he tries to stick to what has already been proven, Mills doesn’t take the single-provider approach for the “parts and pieces.”

Choosing an engineering provider doesn’t have to be as hard as moving innovative ideas from the page to the plant, and Maverick’s story shows that. For some, the best choice might be a partner that acts as an investor in a project, and works to design—or redesign in many cases—a plan. In other cases, information on feedstock sourcing or knowledge of best available equipment might be more important. And if employee size or a global presence is important, there are certainly the Fluor Corp.s of the EPC world that have signed with Cobalt Technologies and Fulcrum Bioenergy to develop their novel process ideas into biorefineries. But in the end, it might be best to remember the advice from that all-star team in North Carolina. “No one engineering firm is going to have all the expertise in-house,” Yenne says. “It will be beneficial to everyone to recognize that you may need to pull in bits and pieces from here and there to make the most efficient biorefinery.”

Author: Luke Geiver
Associate Editor, Biorefining Magazine
(701) 738-4944
lgeiver@bbiinternational.com