Something’s Brewing

Mt. Hood instructors ready to light the fire on experiment in making ethanol

By Shannon Wells

The Gresham Outlook, Sep 26, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (6 Reader comments)

jiM CLARK / gresham Outlook

Hiroshi Morihara, president of HM3 Ethanol, explains the equipment that will convert non-food resources into ethanol.

The sparkling white refrigerator in the new Mt. Hood Community College laboratory contains four large Ziploc bags containing exactly one item: wood chips.

What Hiroshi Morihara and Rich Palmer may lack in party favors, they gain in ingenuity. The two scientific entrepreneurs are about to unveil a pilot plant to explore the possibilities of wood- and plant-fueled ethanol at the college.

After the ribbon is cut at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 3, Palmer will climb the latter in the steam plant, pour some chips from the bags down the funnel hopper … and see what comes out. If all goes well, when the chips meet with steam from the adjoining high-powered boiler, a brown-colored pulp should emerge from the orifice below the labyrinthine cluster of pipes and valves.

By studying the results in the nearby lab, Morihara and Palmer hope to make headway in the accelerating race for viable fossil-fuel alternatives. Part of what sets HM-3, the name of the pair’s business venture, apart from the competition – which includes monoliths like Chevron, DuPont and Weyerhaeuser – is the agility of a small, focused organization with specialized equipment.

“They’re battleships, we’re PT boats,” says Morihara. “I can go anywhere I need to go quickly.”

Still moving forward

Morihara, 70, founder of Persimmon Realty and the former Oregon Science and Technology Partnership, likens the HM-3 production process to making moonshine whiskey in a still. When the high-pressure steam hits the chips, an enzymatic process breaks down the wood’s cellulose into glucose, sugar, then into a flammable alcohol.

The pilot plant is not intended for large-scale production.

“Less than a pound produced in one day equals months of work on the inside,” Palmer says.

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