Hairy Hill biorefinery enters second stage of development

Construction has begun on the Hairy Hill biorefinery in Canada which is to turn farmers’ grain into ethanol whilst at the same time producing power for the grid.

The construction marks the second phase of the development, which already features a biogas plant that produces 1MW for the power grid from manure and other waste.

That facility is expected to cost about $50 million (€38 million) and will mill, cook and process 110,000 tonnes of grain feed to produce 40 million litres of ethanol. For the biogas, which is created through an anaerobic digester system, about 120,000 tonnes of manure will be treated.

Approximately 10,000 tonnes of fertiliser will also be produced as a byproduct and the whole process is expected to generate about 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission credits.

The facility is expected to be the world’s biggest biorefinery although at the moment the feed lot creates about 250 tonnes a day of manure which is fed into the biogas plant.

However, sewage and waste collected from a slaughterhouse and a canola crushing plant is also used.

The facility is expected to create about 25 new jobs when it comes online and was able to be built thanks to a round of funding that the project was given from Climate Change and Emissions Management (CCEMC) which gave $130 million to renewable developments being built in Alberta.

Under these grants, the Hairy Hill project was given $15 million and will help the world’s first large scale carbon neutral biofuels plant to get off the ground.