A tiny Boca Raton start-up got a big boost
on Thursday from FPL Group, which will partner with Citrus Energy
LLC to make ethanol from discarded orange peels.
The two firms will build a first-of-its-kind plant designed to produce 4 million
gallons of ethanol a year to be blended with gasoline for vehicle fuel.
"It's great news," said David Stewart, a former computer engineer who founded
Citrus Energy last year. He said that the state now has very little ethanol in
its gas. "This would be a start in Florida."
FPL Group, the parent of Florida's
largest utility, is investing in the citrus energy project through its FPL
Energy business, which manages solar, wind and other clean-energy technologies.
It will own and run the plant, which will cost more than $10 million to build,
Stewart said.
Part of the cost will be covered by a $2.5 million grant awarded earlier this
year to Citrus Energy by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
The plant will take about 18 months to build and will be located in Hendry
County at a citrus processor that Stewart said doesn't want to be named. The
largest citrus operation in Hendry County is Southern Gardens Citrus Co.,
near Clewiston.
Florida is expected to produce 135 million boxes of oranges this year, most of
which go to one of 20 juice-processing plants around the state. Some of the
leftover peels are currently dried and converted to animal feed for export to
Europe. Processors get 2 to 4 cents a pound for the product.
Because the peels are high in sugar, there has long been interest in converting
them into biofuels. Research on the process at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in Winter Haven began in the early 1990s.
Two things prevented the technology from taking off. One was that until recently
gasoline prices weren't high enough to justify the cost of making ethanol. A
second factor was the cost of enzymes used in breaking down the peels, which
fell in 2004 from $15 a gallon to less than 20 cents a gallon.
Last year, the USDA helped fund a pilot plant in Bartow that successfully
produced 10,000 gallons of ethanol from citrus. Using all of the 5 million
pounds of citrus waste generated annually, Florida could produce about 60
million gallons of ethanol a year, USDA researchers estimate.
Two companies in Palm Beach County have led the push for citrus ethanol
technology. Renewable Spirits LLC, founded in 2004, is the USDA's
private sector partner in the Bartow plant.
Stewart was employed at Renewable Spirits, but left last year. Earlier this
month, an arbitrator ruled in a dispute between the two firms that Renewable
Spirits owns several patent applications related to citrus ethanol technology,
but that Stewart did not rely on trade secrets to found his business.
Renewable Spirits had a setback last year when co-founder Raymond Scott
Stevenson was sentenced to three years in prison for filing false corporate tax
returns at Tyco International, where he worked until 2003 as a vice president.
Stevenson's wife, Gwenn, is listed as president and continues to run the
company.
Citrus Energy, which employs five people, will serve as FPL Energy's engineering
partner, Stewart said. FPL Energy will be responsible for any jobs created by
the project, he said.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-flzcitrus0720nbjul20,0,3033403.story