It is possible that struggling northern pulp mills can survive by transforming into ethanol plants, said retired Tembec CEO and founder Frank Dottori.
“I think over the next few years you’re going to see some breakthroughs in technologies. Trees will be looked at as what they are - natural chemical factories,” said Dottori, 69, who recently became managing director of GreenField Ethanol’s cellulosic ethanol division.
“If we cut a tree and plant another one, it’s sustainable and environmentally friendly, replaces fossil fuels, and doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.”
GreenField Ethanol is one of the largest ethanol producers in North America. It has plants in Chatham and Tiverton, Ontario, and a new facility opened in the spring of 2007 in Varennes, Quebec. Construction is underway on two new plants in Johnstown and Hensall, Ontario.
Ethanol is added to gasoline to make it cleaner-burning, and it is also used in products like mouthwash, aftershave and hand cleaner.
“The North has lots of pulp mills, chips and biomass that we can convert into energy and some chemical forms,” he said. “There’s a good resource there, and there’s a good opportunity. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but in time it will happen.”
Dottori, a trained chemical engineer, is charged with testing new technologies to convert trees into ethanol in a cost-efficient manner. Right now, most ethanol in Canada is made by converting corn, which contains high levels of starch, into glucose and then ethanol.
In places where sugarcane can be grown, such as in South America, the process is even more simple because glucose can be converted directly into ethanol, he said.
Using trees to make ethanol is much more costly because there are more steps involved, said Dottori. Cellulose must be broken down into its components using enzymes, then converted into glucose, and finally into ethanol.
Dottori already has a jump on the competition because his old company has been running a successful ethanol plant at its Temiscaming, Quebec pulp mill since 1985.
“The only plant that’s economically viable is the one in Temiscaming, because it uses slightly different technology, and it uses the pulping process to extract the sugars. The ethanol is the by-product of a pulp mill.”
The company will also explore turning organically-based municipal waste, such as waste wood or cardboard, into ethanol through a process called gasification.
GreenField recently announced it is partnering with Enerkem, a leading gasification and catalysis technology company, to develop the technology.
“To handle municipal waste, because it has a huge mix of things, including plastic, it first has to be sorted into woody, fibrous materials we can gasify,” he said.
“Then, we turn that piece of wood into molecules of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. The secret is to re-form them. You say ‘I’m going to take two carbons, five hydrogens and one oxygen, and make ethanol.’ You create the conditions to re-form the gas into the product you want.”
Dottori, who founded Tembec in 1972 and expanded it from a small pulp mill to a leading forest products company, didn’t hesitate when he was asked to take the job at GreenField. He retired from Tembec two years ago, but was finding life a bit slow.
“Stretching tasks into a full day is boring. This is exciting,” he said.
“It’s a new field. It’s all about what you might call green technology. When I was at Tembec, I was always into installing new technologies and looking at new ways of doing things. This is a big challenge, and if we’re successful, it would be nice.”
