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Florida Company to Convert Citrus Waste Into Ethanol NewsMax.com Wires ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A U.S. energy operator announced plans Thursday to develop a first-of-its-kind commercial plant to convert orange and grapefruit waste into ethanol that will be sold to Florida motorists at gasoline pumps. "Currently, there is no ethanol production in Florida," said David Stewart, president of Boca Raton-based Citrus Energy LLC, a partner in the development of the FPL Energy ethanol plant. "This is the first in the world for citrus." State Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said the proposed facility is one of several now being discussed to move Florida from the sidelines of ethanol production to the forefront of developing new, more efficient methods to make the alternative fuel. "I think you are going to see some production within a year and a half on a small scale. You're going to start seeing a larger scale in two and a half to three years. Within five years, Florida is just going to be going off the map with ethanol production," Bronson said at an alternative fuels conference he is hosting. The FPL plant is expected to produce about 4 million gallons of ethanol a year to be sold as a gasoline additive in Florida. It will be built in Hendry County, in an agricultural region just south of Lake Okeechobee. FPL Energy is a subsidiary of FPL Group Inc., which also operates the state's largest utility, Florida Power & Light Co. Stewart said the plant will use a process the U.S. Agriculture Department developed in the 1990s to convert the leftover peels and membranes seeds from orange juice production into ethanol. That waste is normally converted into animal feed. "Our waste product is the animal feed, so the animals don't lose out completely," Stewart said. "This is turning a liability for the citrus industry into an asset." Story Continues Below
Stewart declined to say how much the plant will cost. He said it will distill citrus ethanol for eight months and be available to experiment on other potential materials, including sugar cane. He said there is a potential to produce 60 million gallons of ethanol annually if more plants are built, enough to replace about 1 percent of the gasoline Florida burns each year. "We've got this common vision of taking revenues from foreign oil and putting it into Florida agriculture," Stewart said. Ethanol is as old as Henry Ford's Model T. But interest outside the Midwest, where corn is used to make ethanol, has tended to wane when oil prices are low. But the war in Iraq and rising oil prices are now putting ethanol back at the forefront of energy policy discussions. "The people understand it's important to wean us off dependence on foreign oil," Gov. Charlie Crist said at the summit. "We have an opportunity, as well as a responsibility, to develop fuel right here in Florida." Crist said he will travel to Brazil in November to discuss increased ethanol and trade partnerships, including marketing more ethanol-gasoline blends at Florida gas pumps. Brazil is second only to the U.S. in ethanol production. China is third. Critics warn biofuel production is energy- and water-intensive and that the U.S. farms could never supply enough produce to meet current fuel demands. The recent spike in interest in corn-to-ethanol production also has created concern about increasing food costs. Bronson said Florida is looking beyond corn for its ethanol needs, and focusing on waste products ranging from citrus pulp to cow manure.
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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