17 November 2010

Corn Cob Gasoline @ $1 / Gallon? GE Energy Wants In

GCC

GE Energy, a GE subsidiary, has jumped into the advanced biofuels race by throwing in $8 million with the startup CoolPlanetBiofuels. The startup claims to be able to produce a bio-gasoline from rough biomass for about $1 a gallon. Here is more from GreenCarCongress:
$8-million funding round for CoolPlanetBioFuels, a start-up company developing a technology that converts low-grade biomass into high-grade fuels, including gasoline, and carbon that can be sequestered. This venture capital investment was led by North Bridge Venture Partners, which had also led CoolPlanet’s financing round last year. Additional financial details were not disclosed. CoolPlanet’s research and development facilities are located in Camarillo, CA.

CoolPlanetBioFuels is developing modular thermal/mechanical processors which directly input raw biomass such as woodchips, crop residue, and algae and produces multiple distinct gas streams for catalytic upgrading to conventional fuel components.

In support of the biomass fractionator, the company is also developing a range of one-step catalytic conversion processes which mate with the fractionator’s output gas streams to produce products such as eBTX (high octane gasoline), synthetic diesel and proprietary ultra-high crop yield “super” fuels.

At the GoingGreen Silicon Valley 2010 conference in October, Mike Rocke, CoolPlanetBiofuels VP Business Development, said that the startup could produce carbon-neutral gasoline from biomass for less than $1.00/gallon US.

Biomass throughput time in the biomass fractionator is minutes, Rocke said earlier at a conference at Stanford. Two fractionators in a module can produce one million gallons of gasoline per year, with capex of $0.50/gallon to install—i.e., $0.10/gallon over a five year life. _GCC

The image above shows a comparison of product between conventional Shell 87 octane gasoline and the Cool Planet BioFuels drop-in product from biomass, by gas chromatograph.

Whether the information provided to investors is accurate or not, if the company is able to produce high quality drop-in bio-gasoline from biomass technology already developed, increasing efficiencies and yields, and decreasing costs, may make the product competitive within a matter of 5 or 10 years.

The problem with biomass is its low energy density, and its diffuse nature. It takes a lot of energy to gather biomass together, densify it for transport, and to transport large amounts to a central processing facility such as CoolPlanetBioFuels'. It is clear that those energy costs were not figured into the amounts quoted to investors.

Thermochemical production of biofuels via pyrolysis and gasification have a natural head start on microbial fuels -- due to prior work done on other feedstocks. But if the thermochemical approach is to achieve a foothold -- and critical scale-up -- it cannot dally about while people such as Craig Venter are working feverishly to genetically engineer microbes to achieve the same thing at far lower energy cost.

Cross-posted at Al Fin Energy

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4 Comments:

Blogger Tom Craver said...

If this works, every farm should get a unit and export fuel. But the right approach might be to just mow a field of corn around June and plant a second crop.

Collecting corn cobs just isn't done any more - ears of corn are shelled and discarded in the field by the combine.

Gotta say - sounds a bit too good to be true...

Wednesday, 17 November, 2010  
Blogger gtg723y said...

well at least we are using food waste to make energy and not actual food. Have they looked at the yield they can get from polarizing the stalks as well.

Wednesday, 17 November, 2010  
Blogger Loren said...

point behind a small thing like this is that the machine can go to where the biomass is, instead of the other way around.

Put this on a fifth wheel trailer--go around to the farms, and fill up the farmer's tank for the next year for a small cut of the fuel, which can be transported much easier. Farmer gets char for the stove, and fuel for the tractor.

Wednesday, 17 November, 2010  
Blogger Hell_Is_Like_Newark said...

I am with Tom. I will stay skeptical until a pilot plant is built (from 100% private funds.. no government grants) to prove the technology's claim.

Thursday, 18 November, 2010  

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