Dive Brief:

• Fulcrum Bioenrgy awarded a $200 million contract to Spanish firm Abengoa for the engineering and construction of a biorefinery that will use gasification technology. The biorefinery will convert 200,000 tons of municipal solid waste into syncrude, which will be processed further into jet fuel.
• The plant will be at Tahoe-Reno Industrial Centre, outside of Reno, NV. It will create over 10 million gallons of biofuel yearly, and is expected to be in full operation by late 2017. Abengoa will use gasification technology provided by ThermoChem Recovery International.
• Last year, Airline Cathay Pacific invested in Fulcrum. The airline is expected to be a customer of the jet fuel which the new operation will manufacture.  

Dive Insight:

Fulcrum Bioenergy’s dive into gasification technology is not the first North American gasification system. In 2012, Covanta Energy Corp., which owns and operates waste-to-energy plants, finished testing on a Tulsa, OK gasification facility.

By demonstrating the process of economically creating jet fuel from waste, Fulcrum, like Covanta, will help build a market for its product.