Greentech Lead U.S: Biogenic Reagents, a producer of
high-value carbon products from renewable biomass, announced it has completed construction
and initiation commercial production at its $30 million facility
in Marquette, Mich.
The company has developed an advanced a platform
technology to create proprietary renewable carbon products that cost less and
perform better than existing coal-based products.
The company’s flagship production facility has the
capacity to process 300,000 tons per year of biomass into carbon products. The
facility is creating more than 40 direct jobs — with military veterans filling
more than one-third of those jobs — and is projected to create and support
more than 100 jobs in the local forestry, wood products, transportation, and
construction industries.
Initial products include activated carbon with
applications for air and water purification and control of mercury and other
emissions from power plants.
Unlike most activated carbon products for mercury control
that are made from coal, Biogenic Reagents’ products are derived from renewable
biomass. Biomass not only is renewable and costs less than coal, it contains
significantly less ash and other contaminants than coal-based products. The
result: greater adsorptivity and better performance.
Biogenic Reagents’ mercury control product outperforms
coal-based products and has demonstrated the ability to reduce mercury
emissions from a coal-fired power plant by more than 90 percent. The achievable
levels are three times lower than the Environmental Protection Agency’s new
mercury air toxics standard that will go into effect in early 2015.
Put another way, Biogenic Reagents’ product demonstrated
the ability to reduce mercury emissions from a coal-fired power plant to less
than three billionths of a gram per cubic meter of exhaust gas, which is
approximately half of the mercury level present in the breath of someone who
has silver fillings containing a mercury amalgam.
“Based on our knowledge and experience with mercury
emissions and how to best control them, we believed there was an opportunity to
introduce a lower cost and higher performing product into the marketplace,”
said Biogenic Reagents CEO Jim Mennell. “The results of third-party
studies and commercial-scale trials now validate that belief.”