May 22, 2020. The U.S. EPA in May approved a fuel pathway under the Renewable Fuel Standard for a biomass gasification plant under development in McFarland, California, that will produce renewable natural gas (RNG) for sale into the transportation fuel market.
The project, known as the San Joaquin Renewables plant, is currently majority owned by Frontline BioEnergy, a company that has been active in the bioenergy space for approximately 15 years.
Frontline BioEnergy first started up a commercial-scale biomass gasification plant at Benson, Minnesota-based Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. LLPP’s corn ethanol plant in 2008. That system converted up to 110 tons per day of wood residues into syngas that was burned in place of natural gas at the biorefinery.
T.J. Paskach, president of San Joaquin Renewables and chief technology officer of Frontline BioEnergy, said that Frontline has been working since that time on advancing its gasification and downstream technologies. The company has been operating a pilot plant for more than a decade and has patented several new technologies. The San Joaquin Renewables project is the culmination of that development work, he said.
The U.S. EPA in 2014 published regulations allowing RNG fuels to qualify as cellulosic biofuels under the RFS and generate D3 RINs. California also allows RNG to be used to meet the requirements of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Paskach said those developments are what have made it economically possible to develop the San Joaquin Renewables project.
Compressed RNG and liquefied RNG currently make up the vast majority of cellulosic fuels produced under the RFS. To date, RNG has been produced by upgrading biogas produced via either anaerobic digestion or captured from landfills. Animal manure and food waste are some of the materials currently used as feedstock in anaerobic digestion facilities. The technology employed by the San Joaquin Renewables plant, however, will allow woody biomass and other un-digestible feedstocks to be used to produce RNG through a thermochemical pathway.