Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, GM
Coskata caught our attention back in January 2008 with the announcement that GM would take an equity stake in the cellulosic ethanol producer in an effort to bring the biofuel to market at a cost of just $1 a gallon. Since then, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly as Coskata executives might have hoped and deadlines have been missed, but the company is hoping that today’s unveiling of a semi-commercial flex ethanol facility will show things are back on track.
Coskata says that its new plant, located in Madison, Pennsylvania (finally!), proves that the make-ethanol-from-almost-anything process, which uses proprietary microorganisms and patented bioreactors, can be successfully scaled up from promising results in the lab. Using plasma torches that are based on technology that was developed by GM and Westinghouse in the early eighties, the Coskata process heats biomass materials to over 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, converting it into a gas that the microorganisms then use to produce ethanol. The Madison plant, which cost a reported $25 million, “will serve as a showcase for the world’s first commercially-viable flex ethanol process,” the company said in a statement.
The headline numbers, which we’ve heard before, are that Coskata can make ethanol that “reduce(s) greenhouse gasses by as much as 96% over conventional gasoline, while using less than half the water that it takes to get a gallon of gasoline” and “produce(s) non grain-based ethanol that is as much as 7 times as energy positive as the fossil fuel used in the process.” GM remains involved with the program, and will use the ethanol made in Madison to test flex-fuel vehicles back in Milford, Michigan.
Up next for Coskata: building a full-scale plant and licensing the technology to “project developers, project financiers and strategic partners.”
[Source: Coskata]
Continue reading Coskata opens doors to first semi-commercial flex ethanol facility
Coskata opens doors to first semi-commercial flex ethanol facility originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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