Therm vs Ferm – Which has Bigger Returns?

When you study the slides in detail you’ll see how they came up with those kinds of prices, so we put them together here. We’ve taken a look at some of the economics and some of the resources that you have in this particular corner that we happen to focus in on – southwest Iowa.

So how do we look at it? Well, we look at the value realized where you’ve got $6.89 a gallon for Therm and $6.03 a gallon for Fermentation, so you get a bit of an advantage there for the thermochemical side.

For a drop in fuel, the value realized, however, we saw on another slide that into the role of techno-economic analysis it’ll be cheaper to produce that and then also the fermentation wins on cost and as you can see fermentation is winning right now on marginal value when you compare the value realized to the product because you can see that if those numbers hold up – and they may not hold up – right now fermentation is doing pretty well.

But 3 key considerations are important to look at here too.

First of all, these are techno economic projections and are not done under real world conditions and yield rate and construction costs need to be focused on and understood on a project by project basis. Secondly, we published a study on lignin and had a couple of DigestConnects on the emerging value of lignin and this is one of the big opportunities. Third, you have to look at market saturation – ethanol is not something that some people are rushing to produce right now for the fuel markets. Not because it’s not a great molecule, not because the economics are not very good, but because there are some difficulties in actually reaching the market – gasoline is in a little bit of a glass because of the downturn with COVID-19.

So for now, thermochemical is just not as good on the economics as far as we can see right now.