Georgia's abundance of forest land and pulp and paper mills have caught the attention of a Swedish company that makes technology to convert pulp waste into biofuels.

Richard J. LeBlanc, CEO of Sweden-based Chemrec AB, will visit Atlanta Tuesday, July 14, to discuss with Georgia industry leaders the possibility of deploying the company's technology in the state's mills to transform them into biorefineries.

Chemrec makes use of an oily, “coffee-like” liquid known in the pulp industry as “black liquor,” Mr. LeBlanc told GlobalAtlanta in a telephone interview. A byproduct of the pulp-making process, black liquor is made up of wood waste and leftover chemicals. Chemrec's reactors can turn this waste into a clean gas that serves as the building block for biofuels or green chemicals, he said.

Widespread adoption of this technology alongside kraft paper mills would be a boon for Georgia, Mr. LeBlanc said. It would mean the transformation of the revenue model for the mills, which are presently struggling with overseas competition and declining demand for paper products. The biorefinery concept would preserve and create jobs in some rural areas of the state most threatened by job loss, he said.

“It is a shot in the arm for the ailing pulp and paper industry and would add Georgia jobs using our vast forest resources while at the same time decreasing dependence on foreign sources of energy,” said Jon Jurgovan, a partner at Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird LLP, in a Chemrec news release. Mr. Jurgovan's firm is part of a coalition that hopes to cultivate the biofuels industry in Georgia. 

Georgia's biggest assets in this arena are its forests. The state has 24.4 million acres of forest land, second in the U.S. only to Oregon. Jill Stuckey, director of alternative fuels at the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, told GlobalAtlanta recently that many of Oregon's forests are protected land, while most of Georgia's are privately owned and can be used for commercial enterprises.

Pulp and paper mills generally have about as much of waste as they do pulp product at the end of the manufacturing process. Most mills burn it in huge boilers, using the resulting steam to power mill operations, Mr. LeBlanc said.

Usually, there's more than enough black liquor for steam operations and biofuel production. “It's not unusual to have a thousand tons a day of this stuff,” he said.

Mr. LeBlanc hopes that Georgia's “aggressive” stance on biofuels will help the state win federal funding for the creation of biorefineries throughout the state. The $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress in February allocated $71 billion for green initiatives and $20 billion more for green tax incentives.

Ability to attract those funds was one reason Chemrec chose Georgia. The state's “got a good forestry industry, a good number of mills, and the state's pretty aggressive in getting stimulus money to generate jobs in the state,” said Mr. LeBlanc, a French Canadian who also runs the company's U.S. branch, Chemrec USA, in Deerfield, Ill. He travels to Sweden every month for about a week.

Biorefineries typically require a significant front-end investment, which means that the industry would need to be supported by a coalition of government organizations, investors, mills, construction firms and the end users of the biofuels produced, possibly transportation or logistics companies like United Parcel Service Inc. or governments with vehicle fleets they want to fuel cleanly, he said.

During their visit to Atlanta, Mr. LeBlanc and other Chemrec leaders will meet with these potential stakeholders through a forum provided by the Center of Innovation for Energy, which is part of a network of centers funded by the state to support strategic industries.

Chemrec is using the state's one-stop shop program. About once a month, the State Capitol hosts representatives from some 20 agencies an alternative energy company might need to know when setting up in Georgia.

Companies can make presentations at this meeting to avoid having to chase down these key agencies on their own. This helps them get started more quickly than they might be able to in other states, Ms. Stuckey said.

Chemrec has been building its technology at its development plant in Pitea, Sweden, and is using its results there in efforts to produce commercial-scale reactors that can process 500 metric tons of black liquor per day. The process can produce fuels such as ethanol, methanol, synthetic diesel and dimethyl ether, or DME, which Mr. LeBlanc called a “wonderfuel” because of its efficiency and the fact that it runs cleaner than diesel.

Sweden is a world leader in the production of alternative fuels. The Swedish Entrepreneurial Days Conference hosted by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in Savannah this year focused on securing capital for sustainability.

At the conference, the city of Vaxjo – renowned for its efforts to eliminate the use of fossil fuels – signed an agreement with Savannah to share knowledge on environmental initiatives.

A variety of other Swedish companies have set up shop in the Southeast.

Mr. LeBlanc said his company is getting calls from places like Brazil and Chile and elsewhere as governments look to clean up their cities.

“If you went to Copenhagen, Helsinki or Shanghai, these are progressive cities that say, 'We want to be real about this whole climate issue. We want to clean up our city, … we've decided no more fossil fuel for our city trucks and buses,'” he added.

For his business' sake, Mr. LeBlanc said he hopes Atlanta and Georgia officials will take a similar stance.

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