Biofuel company builds test plant

An Ontariobiofuels company is building a test plant in Sarnia to produceethanol from wood and farm waste rather than corn.

Don Hewson, managing director of the Sarnia-Lambton research park where the facility will be located, said the Woodland Biofuels plant will use wood waste to create usable energy.

"Most of their research and development work has been on wood - and this ranges from forestry products, urban reconstruction old wood," said Hewson. "So wood is expected to be one of their principal feedstocks," said Hewson.

According to the company website, Woodland Biofuels specializes in creating cellulosic ethanol, which is a fuel that does not rely on food crops such as corn for production.

"None of the woody materials, be it wood itself or some of the agricultural residuals, are really part of the human diet, so putting these into the energy pipeline really makes much more sense than fuels from corn," said Hewson.

Officials from the biofuels company said the ethanol-fuel they create is clean and has no toxic emissions.

Ethanol is a clear alcohol - made of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon - mostly produced from the fermentation of plant-derived matter, mainly sugars and starches.

Hewson said the test plant scheduled to be built during the next year will produce a few hundred litres of ethanol a day to start.

A large-scale plant will be built once the success of the biofuel test plant has been proven, said Hewson.