Eager to push cellulosic ethanol toward the pump, General Motors is buying a stake in an 18-month-old biomass to ethanol company, which lays claim to a new production process that’s cheaper, uses less water and emits less CO2 than conventional corn-based ethanol production.
It’s the very first time the Detroit carmaker has bought into a fuels company, although GM has been internally researching fuel properties for decades. The unspecified investment, to be announced by GM CEO Rick Wagoner at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, comes as GM is set to double the number of flex-fuel capable vehicles for the ’09 model year.
Named after a wildlife refuge near Nantucket, Coskata executives and scientists say their feedstock gasification and biofermentation process churns out ethanol at a cost of under $1 a gallon.
Company engineers also say they’re able to generate nearly eight times as much ethanol energy via their processes, than the energy consumed to make the fuel itself. That compares to corn-based processes, which require anywhere from 0.5 to 1.3 times as much energy input to produce the ethanol.
Additionally, the method ultimately reduces the “well to wheel” or complete production process, carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 84 percent versus conventional gasoline, according to a review by the Argonne National Laboratory.
Both claims would represent new answers to criticisms of corn-based ethanol production, namely that it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the fuel ultimately returns in usable energy.
The process allows for about 100 gallons of ethanol per one ton of material feedstock and less than one gallon of water per gallon of ethanol produced, the company says. Using corn ethanol requires three-to-seven times as much water for every gallon of ethanol produced.
“We’ve set the new benchmark,” says President and CEO Bill Roe of the water saving method. Watch the video on the partnership:
Roe says company was founded with non-food feedstocks that are gathered close to the source of the municipal waste.
For GM, Coskata’s production process, which uses gasification and unique bacteria, represents a game-changing opportunity. Engineers and officials say they recognize that biomass feedstocks have far fewer of the drawbacks than corn.
“We do see that there is sort of a ceiling on grain based ethanol,” says Mary Beth Stanek, GM director of Environment and Energy Policy and Commercialization. “We need to use marginal land, and non-food based feedstocks.”
The Technology
Coskata has developed a three-step production process that harvests ethanol from a variety of feedstocks – including biomass such as straw, hay and switchgrass; municipal and agricultural wastes; and even industrial and petroleum-based discards, such as old tires and plastics.
Coskata’s process starts with gasification, in which the feedstocks are converted into a syngas. After the chemical bonds are broken using gasification, the carbon monoxide and hydrogen syngas is fed to the microorganisms, which convert it into ethanol. The bacteria literally “exhale” the ethanol at an effective rate, says Dick Tobey
Before Coskata, Tobey developed and commercialized anti-microbial components for agricultural and pharmaceutical products for Dow Chemcial. His R&D has focused on synthetic and natural product processes in a pesticide that has sold well with organic farmers and was awarded organic status by the USDA National Organic Program.
Watch a Q&A with Tobey:
Researchers are using five different strains of microbes and testing how to maximize their ethanol output by introducing nutrients and minerals at the right time of the bacteria’s life cycle. The microbes are anaerobic, meaning they die when exposed to oxygen.
The technology is scalable to large production and theoretically can be built near large centers of biomass, such as municipal solid waste centers and factories.
Coskata is headquartered in new 25,000 sq. ft. research and development center located in Warrenville, Ill. Roe says the firm is investing in a 40,000 square foot pilot facility, which should be finished as soon as this month.
Since its first batch, Coskata has improved the ethanol output by 50 percent, says Tobey.
By 2011, it will produce 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol annually. However, Roe says the company will soon be announcing a strategic partnership that involves licensing the technology to other potential ethanol producers.
“Virturally everywhere in the world, there are local (biomass and waste) materials to produce an alternative fuel,” Roe says. “This process can be setup virtually everywhere.”
Coskata is the creation of Dr. Rathin Datta and Todd Kimmel, who licensed the exclusive rights to the organisms at Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University. A month later, venture capital firms Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Great Point Ventures all invested in the startup.
GM also will support Coskata’s bid for a Department of Energy grant to build another biorefinery. The DOE is currently handing out funding of $33.8 million to firms able to provide matching dollars for enzyme research, with a goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost competitive by 2012.
Organizations that have benefited from DOE funds include Bluefire Ethanol, food processing giant Archer Daniels Midland, Canadian fuel firm Iogen in partnership with Cargill-Dow, ethanol producer POET in association with DuPont and Novozymes, and Spanish giant Abengoa Bioenergy which will be using its DOE dollars to help build a biomass to ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas.
GM’s Strategy
GM currently has 11 vehicles on the road capable of running on E85. But according to sources, the automaker will add a dozen more vehicles with flex fuel powertrains for the ’09 model year.
Under the terms of the deal, GM will supply Coskata with access to waste materials, such as old tires and plastics from company factories, as it tries to reach zero landfill waste from production.
GM officials say the company has been shopping around for promising startups and technologies in which to invest for several months.
Stanek says the potential of Coskata’s technology is that ethanol production can ramp up relatively quickly, and begin to put a dent in petroleum in a matter of years and not decades.
