Growing Power Hairy Hill – we’re not just green, we’re Growing Power™!

This technology is now patented!  Read More.

Growing Power Hairy Hill is developing the first Integrated bioRefinery™ in Canada. Our unique process (outlined below) takes grain such as high-starch wheat, and processes it into fuel ethanol. The residual material from this process, known as "Distillers Grains" is fed to cattle at the nearby feedlot, and their manure is used to produce energy in the form of biogas in our IMUS™ facility, which in turn is converted to green electricity and steam in our bioUtility™. The whole process is highly integrated and is targeted to be the most cost and energy efficient method of producing fuel ethanol.

The Integrated bioRefinery™ powered by Himark's IMUS technology & know-how will generate, each and every year:

-- 40 million litres of fuel (denatured) ethanol
-- 30,000 tonnes of premium bioFertilizer, and
-- 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions credits (GHG credits) per year, the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars/light trucks off the road (26,000 if all of those cars and/or light trucks were post-2011 model years).

To accomplish the above, the Integrated bioRefinery™ will have to:

-- Purchase 102,000 tonnes of high-starch grain. This will be mainly select NON-food varieties of wheat and triticale....plus possibly, barley later on.
-- Treat over 140,000 tonnes of feedlot manure, knocking out diseases and parasites, weed seeds, and odor.
-- Divert 25,000 tonnes of wastes from landfills around Alberta [e.g. slaughter waste, municipal source-separated organics (called SSO), oilseed process byproducts, human sewage, etc.]

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Traditional ethanol plants have been rightly criticized for their lack of energy efficiency. But almost all studies quoted by detractors of the industry, however, look at "old tech" ethanol and data from those plants.

In any case, the biggest loss in energy efficiency and the greatest contribution to greenhouse gasses at conventional, stand-alone ethanol plants that are not integrated with an anaerobic digester comes from the use of fossil fuels for both:
-- distillation + cooling, and
-- drying of distillers grains.

A Himark-designed Integrated bioRefinery™ gets much of its energy for distillation from the digestion of cattle manure. And due to the proximity of the feedlot, GPHH has no need to dry its distillers grain. This reduces the substantial upfront capital cost of drying equipment AND it eliminates the operating cost (i.e. eliminates natural gas from a pipeline) as well as all the maintenance headaches involved with operating dryers.

The bottom line is that GPHH is among the world's most highly energy-efficient and cost-efficient ethanol producers, **even when** you compare it to cellulosic ethanol technologies currently being touted and experimented with.