Syngest Inc., San Francisco, says its first plant to manufacture anhydrous ammonia fuel and fertilizer from corn biomass will be located 45 miles west of Des Moines. The company confirmed that it has signed an agreement to purchase 75 acres of land in Menlo (population 375) in Guthrie County. The Menlo site offers easy access to road and rail transportation.
The plant will use 150,000 tons of locally-supplied corn cobs per year to manufacture 50,000 tons of bio-ammonia annually, enough to fertilize 500,000 acres of nearby Iowa farmland under corn. Syngest told Green Markets earlier (GM Feb. 10, p. 10) that a major Midwestern agribusiness has agreed to supply the stover and distribute the ammonia; however, the identity of the company will come later.
Syngest CEO Jack Oswald told Green Markets last week that the plant will cost $80 million and require about 500 workers during construction. Groundbreaking is expected in six-to-nine months. Full-scale ammonia production is expected in two to two and one-half years.
Oswald said without ammonia, major crop production would be reduced by 50 percent. “This is worrisome because more than half the ammonia that we use is imported, notably from Trinidad, with its dwindling gas resources, and from Russia, with its reputation for interrupting critical supplies for political gains,” he said. “The few large ammonia plants in the U.S. are aging fast, and no significant domestic expansion is foreseen.”
It should be noted that Trinidad ammonia and gas producers have taken issue with assertions about declining reserves. In 2007, after a gas audit of Trinidad’s gas reserves, country officials as well as PotashCorp reiterated that there is plenty of gas to serve producers going forward, and that extensive gas reserves remaining untapped (GM Aug. 20, 2007).
“Even a 20 percent shortfall in the foreign ammonia supply chain, whether it’s accidental or deliberate, will cause serious problems in our food industry and related financial markets,” said Oswald. “Our SynGest biomass-to-ammonia mini-plant business model will help to mitigate this risk. We will empower the farmer and make him impervious to external forces. The SynGest option will let him convert his agricultural waste material into fuel to power the farm and nitrogen fertilizer to replenish the soil.”
Syngest says the front-end engineering and design program for the SynGest Menlo project is headed by Dr. Ravi Randhava, chief technology officer of SynGest. Syngest says he is an internationally-recognized pioneer in the mini-plant industry, and is the “go-to” specialist for solving challenging process problems. He is also president of Unitel Technologies and was a co-founder of the Xytel Group, including a joint venture with Bechtel known as Xytel-Bechtel Inc. (XBI).
“It’s gratifying that the ammonia mini-plant concept that we created at XBI during the 80’s and early 90’s is finally being put to good use,” said Dr. Randhava.