DuPont has opened its cellulosic biofuel facility in Nevada, Iowa. The company says this biorefinery is the world’s largest cellulosic ethanol plant, with the capacity to produce 30 million gallons per year of clean fuel that offers a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as compared to gasoline.
The raw material used to produce the ethanol is corn stover — the stalks, leaves and cobs left in a field after harvest. The facility will demonstrate at commercial scale that non-food feedstocks from agriculture can be the renewable raw material to power the future energy demands of society, DuPont says.
About 500 local farmers will provide the annual 375,000 dry tons of stover needed to produce this cellulosic ethanol from within a 30-mile radius of the Nevada biorefinery.
Earlier this year DuPont announced its first licensing agreement with New Tianlong Industry to build China’s largest cellulosic ethanol plant, and last fall a memorandum of understanding was announced between DuPont, Ethanol Europe and the government of Macedonia to develop a second-generation biorefinery project.
The company also is working in partnership with Procter & Gamble to use cellulosic ethanol in North American Tide laundry detergents.
The majority of the fuel produced at the Nevada, Iowa, facility will be bound for California to fulfill the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard where the state has adopted a policy to reduce carbon intensity in transportation fuels.