July 1, 2016
BY Erin Krueger
Fecon adds regional manager
Fecon Inc. has added Devin Chambers as regional manager of its Mid-South region, covering Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Chambers has more than a decade of territory management experience. He is also experienced in the development and implementation of sales and marketing strategies, dealer recruitment and development, sales and service training, and direct sales.
Harvest Power adds to leadership team
Harvest Power Inc. has added Gary Aguinaga as chief operating officer of its energy business. Aguinaga has 25 years of experience in waste-to-energy, including the development, construction, and operation of multiple large-scale waste-to-energy facilities throughout North America and Europe. He most recently served as vice president of international operations and business development at Wheelabrator Technologies.
Rural Energy earns certification
U.K.-based Rural Energy has completed the combined-heat-and-power (CHP) design and installation training course from Bosch Commercial and Industrial. The course was comprised of two days of training and means the biomass specialist is now a certified technology partner of Bosch, a manufacturer of heating and cooling products.
Enviva Forest Conservation Fund announces awards
The Enviva Forest Conservation Fund has announced the recipients of its 2016 grants. The fund, established by Enviva Holdings LP and administered by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, is awarding $500,000 in 2016 to preservation and conservation programs that span more than 2,000 acres of environmentally sensitive bottomland and wetland forests in North Carolina and Virginia. The four awards were made to the Nature Conservancy North Carolina Chapter, the Triangle Land Conservancy, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Nature Conservancy Virginia Chapter.
EPA announces Nutrient Recycling Challenge winners
The U.S. EPA has announced the winners of Phase I of the Nutrient Recycling Challenge, a competition to develop affordable technologies to recycle nutrients from livestock manure. Two of the four winning projects focus on anaerobic digestion. Bo Hu, Hongjian Lin, and Xin Zhang of the University of Minnesota were recognized for a process to create dry biosolids fertilizer by using a novel anaerobic digestion and solid-liquid separations system. Hiroko Yoshida of Centrisys Corp. was recognized for a project that uses carbon dioxide stripping and other processes to create a range of fertilizers from anaerobically digested manure. The American Biogas Council is among the nearly 20 partners in the challenge.
Pacific Ag opens new field office
Pacific Ag has opened a field office near Fargo, North Dakota, to serve the increasing demand for wheat straw residue among the dairy, beef, mushroom and erosion control industries. The company has hired Tom and Stephanie Borgen, local farmers and wheat straw providers, as regional managers to develop partnerships with growers and drive sales of wheat straw to target markets.
UNTHA adds team member
UNTHA has added Andreas Senkbeil to its team. Senkbeil has worked in the waste management sector for the past four years and will be responsible for the company’s growth in the Asian Pacific market, including Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, China and Australia.
WPAC appoints president
Michele Rebiere resigned as president of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada in May, citing a need to focus on her role as chief financial officer of Viridis Energy as the company pursues the sale of its business. She served on the WPAC’s board for five years, and spent one year as president. WPAC has appointed former Vice President Rene Landry as president. He will assume the role until the next general meeting of the membership is held in September. Landry is director of pellet operations for Nova Scotia-based Shaw Resources, which operates two plants in Atlantic Canada.
SBP approves PwC as certification body for Canada, US
The Sustainable Biomass Partnership has announced PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada LLP has become the third SBP-approved certification body. PwC has provided evidence that it meets the SBP requirements regarding its existing accreditations and has demonstrated sufficient resource and competence to manage the SBP certification scheme under the SBP Framework, which enables producers of woody biomass to demonstrate that they source their raw material responsibly and that the material complies with regulations, including sustainability requirements applicable to power generators burning woody biomass to produce energy. PwC has been approved for certification of biomass producers in the U.S. and Canada. These producers typically include pellet or wood chip mills, and the biomass supply chain.
PFI qualifies new facilities under standards program
The Pellet Fuels Institute has announced the qualification of pellet fuel manufacturer NWP Jasper LLC of Jasper, Tennessee, into the PFI Standards Program. New England Wood Pellet, a company with several previously qualified facilities, also added to the program a newly qualified facility, Allegheny Pellet in Youngsville, Pennsylvania. The PFI Standards Program is a third-party accreditation program providing specifications for residential and commercial-grade pellet fuel, now representing 13 pellet manufacturing companies, among them 22 facilities.
AFS, Greenlane Biogas sign 2-year contract manufacturing agreement
British Columbia-based AdvancedFlow Systems Inc., a subsidiary of AdvanTec Global Innovations Inc., recently added Greenlane Biogas Ltd. to its existing portfolio of contract manufacturing clients by signing a two-year contract manufacturing agreement. AFS, along with its sister companies Surround Technologies and Advanced Bending Technologies, is a vertically integrated industrial group that specializes in providing contract manufacturing solutions for a diverse group of companies with an equally diverse range of products.
WesTech, Cleanergy announce partnership
WesTech has partnered with Cleanergy to bring the Cleanergy GasBox biogas generator to the U.S. The Cleanergy GasBox generates electricity and heat from biogas using a Stirling engine. The GasBox requires minimal-to-no gas cleaning which allows for small and mid-size wastewater treatment plants to achieve the power-generating benefits of biogas utilization. The system can run on biogas with a methane concentration as low as 18 percent, which alleviates the need at larger plants to burn off this biogas with a natural gas supplement.
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The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced up to $23 million in funding to support research and development (R&D) of domestic chemicals and fuels from biomass and waste resources.
The U.S. DOE has announced its intent to issue funding to support high-impact research and development (R&D) projects in two priority areas: sustainable propane and renewable chemicals and algal system cultivation and preprocessing.
Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., in August introduced the Renewable Chemicals Act, a bill that aims to create a tax credit to support the production of biobased chemicals.
The Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium, a consortium of the U.S. DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, has launched an effort that aims to gather community input on the development of new biomass processing facilities.
USDA on March 8 celebrated the second annual National Biobased Products Day, a celebration to raise public awareness of biobased products, their benefits and their contributions to the U.S. economy and rural communities.