Red Shield eyes ethanol production

 March 28, 2007

Four new workers were added to the payroll at Red Shield Environmental, LLC on Monday, according to human resources director Dan Bird.

            “We hired four new hourly workers on Monday, basically to put flesh on the bones of the maintenance department as part of our general plan to restart the pulp mill,” Bird said.

            Red Shield bought the former Georgia-Pacific mill in Old Town last September after G-P closed it the previous March, putting over 400 employees out of work and sending a negative economic ripple through 40 other towns. Since purchasing the mill, Red Shield had hired 55 workers, some of them former employees of G-P.

In January, the company received a $1 million Economic Recovery Loan from the Finance Authority of Maine (FAME) for use in the payment of costs incurred over the first two months of operation.

After two incidents earlier this month in which soot fell on the property of some residents of Bradley, the facility’s biomass boiler was shut down so that repairs could be made to its soot collection system. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has since allowed Red Shield to operate the boiler using only whole tree or green wood chips. Tests are currently being conducted on samples of ash taken from the boiler site, some of which had tested at high toxicity levels for lead. The reason for those high readings has not yet been determined by the DEP.

            “Until we’re sure that everything is running at 100 percent, we’re not allowing the burning of any construction and demolition debris,” Ed Logue, spokesman for DEP, said Monday.

            Red Shield had been using the boiler to generate electricity to sell to the power grid as well as for use in its own operation. But, according to Bird, the company’s hope is that the real future of the mill lies in its eventual role as a producer of ethanol. That production would take place in a quasi-partnership with the University of Maine at Orono, which has received a $10.35 million grant toward research on using wood to make ethanol and other products that are now made with oil.

            “Eventually, we’d like to see the pulp become a by-product of the ethanol production,” Bird said. “(Ethanol production) would give us a long-term viability. It would create energy efficiencies that would be used to manufacture wood products besides pulp (as well as) spread that efficiency among other products with a commercial value.”

            Ethanol is a substitute for methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) and is most commonly used as a motor fuel or fuel additive. The largest producer of fuel ethanol is Brazil, where commercial gasoline contains at least 20 percent ethanol and 50 percent of the cars run exclusively on ethanol due to the development of ethanol-only engines and flex fuel engines.

            Medicinally, ethanol is used in medical wipes and in the majority of antibacterial hand sanitizer gels. It has been used as an antidote for methanol poisoning.

            Ethanol is also found in perfume, paint, and paint tinctures. Much smaller levels of ethanol are a basic component of alcoholic drinks. Used as a mix in alcoholic drinks, ethanol serves as a “neutral grain spirit.”

            The production of ethanol also creates commercial by-products like dry ice and carbon dioxide, which is used for carbonation in some beverages.

Proponents of ethanol production say that the process creates very little pollution when burned, but others point out that MTBE is banned in some places because of its suspected link to cancer.

            As part of the work being funded by its three-year $10.35 million grant, researchers at the University of Maine are looking into the types of products that could be made from wood by-products, like pulp. The research is also intended to determine the best and most cost-efficient ways in which to make those products as well as how to market them.

            “The dynamic (at Red Shield) has always been that we would restart the pulp mill,” Bird said. “People ask us how we can restart it when the world hasn’t changed around us. But we have a model that’s been created based on the low production of ethanol.”

            There is no word at present on the exact date on which Red Shield plans to restart the pulp mill.