Municipal Waste-to-Ethanol Plant Planned for Reno, Nevada
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 07.21.08
image: Fulcrum BioEnergy
Edmonton, Canada is in the process of building a waste-to-ethanol plant. Now, Reno, Nevada will be getting in on the act. The facility in question will be built by Fulcrum BioEnergy and is expected to begin operating in 2010.
Taking municipal sold waste and converting it to ethanol, the Sierra BioFuels plant will produce approximately 10.5 million gallons of biofuel per year, from 90,000 tons of material that otherwise would have been disposed of in landfills. The plant, located ten miles east of Reno, will cost $120 million to build, with construction starting later this year.
Touting the project, Fulcrum President and CEO E. James Macias said,
Converting garbage waste into a clean, renewable fuel for cars has profound social and environmental benefits. It will help mitigate our dependence on imported oil, lower the price of gasoline, reduce the amount of waste landfilled, lower greenhouse gases and create a new industry of jobs and economic growth. Unlike conventional ethanol technology, which uses corn and other agricultural feedstock, our plant will utilize processed municipal solid waste which will not affect the cost or availability of our nation's food supply.
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That. Is. Awesome. Ignoring the whole ethanol is bad (food prices, etc) thing, which as far as I can tell is irrelevant in this case, anything that turns something that would normally be put into a landfill into energy is alright by me.
Hope it works out...seems a little too good to be true...Fulcrum is apparently looking for a project manager and engineers, according to their website...DB
What are the carbon emissions levels of ethanol and other biofuels? How do they compare to petrol/gas + diesel?
Thanks
BRAVO! Reno!
That is awesome... why aren't these plants being built acorss America next to every major city/ geogrpahical area.
So they first charge cities to dump garbage, then use it to make something useful...
A typical corn-to-ethanol plant uses 4-5 gallons of water per 1 gallon of ethanol. I'm not sure if this is the same for waste-to ethanol plant (can someone enlighten me?), but can this region sustainably afford water withdrawals of up to 50million gallons per year, 135,000+ gallons per day? It would be more efficient to burn the waste to produce electricity, which you could then use to power a fleet of electric mass transportation buses, for example, rather than provide fuel for even more cars.
Processing Solid Municipal waste actually (organic waste) into compogas is a huge thing in Germany. In fact it is illegal to throw out your organic food waste with the other solid waste... they collect it separately and process it at plants all over the country. + They use the fuel for food delivery trucks and mass transit. Far more intelligent then promoting the use of even more cars.
I am skeptical of this as I am of any new 'promising' clean energy technology. But my thought is that if they have the extra water and they can separate the waste efficiently... then they should install a "thermal depolymerization" plant next door and take all the rest of the solid waste that they are not using for ethanol and turn it back into neat oil.
With that said, if they dont have the extra water 'seems likely' then perhaps they are trying to solve one issue of rising food prices by creating a much more serious issue of long lasting localized droughts for Renoites.
It would be sadly ironic if you could buy fuel for your car but not be able to get a drink from the tap.
Processing Solid Municipal waste actually (organic waste) into compogas is a huge thing in Germany. In fact it is illegal to throw out your organic food waste with the other solid waste... they collect it separately and process it at plants all over the country. + They use the fuel for food delivery trucks and mass transit. Far more intelligent then promoting the use of even more cars.
I am skeptical of this as I am of any new 'promising' clean energy technology. But my thought is that if they have the extra water and they can separate the waste efficiently... then they should install a "thermal depolymerization" plant next door and take all the rest of the solid waste that they are not using for ethanol and turn it back into neat oil.
With that said, if they dont have the extra water 'seems likely' then perhaps they are trying to solve one issue of rising food prices by creating a much more serious issue of long lasting localized droughts for Renoites.
It would be sadly ironic if you could buy fuel for your car but not be able to get a drink from the tap.
A plant is being considered near me in Middletown NY by Pencor-Masada Oxynol and the city Council is approaching the offer with caution. When i googled it and asked for waste to ethanol plant, your site was the only one mentioning waste, all the others talked about waste sugar and starches, nothing else. Can you explain this to me?
I think that their plans will definitely be good for Nevada as well as the cause of ethanol which doesn't come from food.