Q:  Who is Novus Energy®?

A:  Novus Energy is a 4-year-old alternative energy company that has developed a patented process to convert organic waste materials and cellulosic energy crops into biofuels—specifically ethanol and higher alcohols.  The patented process is called, “Renewable Gas-to-Liquid” (RGL™).

Q:  What assurance can you offer that the Novus Energy RGL  (Renewable Gas-to-Liquid) Process can efficiently convert organic waste to liquid fuel?

A:  Each part of the RGL system—(1) the anaerobic conversion of organic waste to methane-rich biogas [a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide] and (2) the conversion of methane to liquid fuel—has been operated successfully at a commercial scale countless times for many decades: 

(1) Anaerobic Digestion:  Biogas from digested waste (using anaerobic bacteria) was first used in Victorian England.  Modern anaerobic digestion (AD) systems methane-rich biogas predictably and at high conversion efficiencies. 

(2) Methane-to-Liquid Fuel Conversion:  Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) fuel production method (also called “Fischer-Tropsch”), developed in 1923 and used to produce virtually all the liquid fuel (methanol and diesel) in WW II Germany; 124,000 barrels per day from methane via coal-gasification.  Sasol Corporation of South Africa has been making liquid fuels for more than 50 years using the same process.  Royal Dutch Shell and other global energy companies are currently building multi-billion dollar GTL facilities in Dubai, UAE using methane from the world’s largest natural gas field - Persian Gulf North.  In 1985 Dow Chemical developed a high-yield process to synthesize mixed alcohols (methanol, ethanol and higher alcohols) from methane gas.

In January 2003, the RGL process:  synthesizing fuel from renewable biogas (≈ 70% methane & 30% carbon-dioxide) was demonstrated by Dr. Andrew Lucero, a chemical engineer at Western Research Institute [Laramie, WY].  He synthesized a volume of ethanol & higher alcohols from biogas using a room-size RGLTM apparatus. *

* (Anaerobic digester biogas from dairy manure)

Q:  How does ethanol from the Novus Energy RGL process compare with the ethanol made from corn?

A:  Corn ethanol is made from the fermentation of corn sugars by yeast—the same way that whiskey is made.   In the Novus Energy RGL process, the hydrocarbons in organic waste are biologically converted into a gas (“biogas”) and the gas is then catalytically converted into ethanol.  Because the Novus Energy process uses organic waste or cellulosic biomass as its feedstock rather than corn, it is much less expensive to produce.  Chemically, it is identical to ethanol made from corn.

Q:  What sorts of organic waste are suitable for the RGL production process?

A:  Sugar beet tailings, corn stalks, all crop and vegetable waste, animal manure, municipal sewage, leaves and grass clippings, landfill gas—really, any organic waste as long as it doesn’t contain antibiotics or other things that will poison the bacteria in the digester.  We also can convert the new, so-called “biomass energy crops” such as switchgrass into fuel.

Q:  Can energy crops such as switchgrass and corn stover—the biomass materials named as feedstock for the new “cellulosic ethanol” industry—eventually take the place of corn as the ethanol feedstock of choice?

A:  Yes.  Much of the buzz and almost all the investment in the biofuels industry is focused on cellulosic methods, because corn ethanol has become more expensive to produce due to the current high demand—and price—for corn. 

Besides improving the “food vs. fuel” problem, cellulosic biomass is a better feedstock than corn because cellulosic crops don’t require as much fossil energy—gasoline & fertilizer—to process as does corn. But most analysts predict that it will be at least five years before cellulosic ethanol from yeast becomes a viable industry because production costs are currently around $3.00 per gallon.  A large percentage of these production costs are the expensive, bio-engineered enzymes needed to break down the cellulose into sugar byproducts and the byproducts into ethanol using the traditional yeast fermentation method. 

Novus Energy, on the other hand, has licensed a cellulose-to-ethanol conversion process that doesn’t require any enzyme bioengineering; Hogen I is a patented cellulose conversion method that uses natural microbial processes to turn cellulose into biogas.  The biogas is then converted to fuel using the Company’s RGL process.  The bottom line difference between the Hogen I cellulose conversion method and the ‘enzymatic’ cellulose conversion method is that Novus Energy will be making commercial scale ethanol from cellulose feedstock profitably in less than two years.

Q:  Methane has been used for liquid fuel production since the 1930s in Germany and the 1960s in South Africa using the Fischer-Tropsch (GTL) production process.  Why is this fuel production technology virtually unknown in the U.S.? 

A:  Until recently, cheap petroleum has made GTL (gas-to-liquid) fuels too expensive relative to gasoline, for the technology to develop. With petroleum now approaching $150/barrel, the economics are very favorable for the growth of a domestic GTL industry.

During the era of cheap oil over the last century, GTL has been commercially developed and used only in countries where domestic or imported petroleum has been unavailable – in Germany during World War II and in South Africa during apartheid.  South Africa, like Germany, has little domestic oil, but significant coal reserves.  Using coal, the Sasol Corporation has been making fuel from methane via coal gasification since the 1960s; currently, “synfuel” provides more than 1/3 of South Africa’s transportation needs.

Novus Energy’s RGL refineries, designed to convert biogas methane from waste in anaerobic digesters, will have a production cost advantage over natural gas-to-liquid (GTL) and coal-to-liquid (CTL) facilities because waste feedstock costs are negligible, while the price of GTL feedstocks (gas well methane/ gasified coal) must be added to production costs.