by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Green Biologics heads for scale – pilot complete, demo ready in 2014. The race for n-butanol from cellulosic materials is on. The prize for a transformative breakthrough on n-butanol’s cost, performance and sustainability? Could be millions. Could be billions.
In the UK, Green Biologics announced a collaboration and planned investment in facilities with Iowa’s Easy Energy Systems. The collaboration will result in the modification of Easy Energy’s ethanol demonstration plant in Emmetsburg, IA to produce renewable n-butanol and acetone. In mid-2012 GBL successfully produced butanol and acetone from corn mash at the Emmetsburg facility in Iowa at a 40,000 liter fermentation scale.
…
The problems (with biobutanol) have been two-fold. First, a fermentation process with sufficient yield. Two, a process that can utilize cellulosic material.
Now, to complicate matters just a little, there’s isobutanol and n-butanol — the former is better for fuels, the latter is better for chemicals. Gevo and Butamax have been working on isobutanol, and have made substantial progress towards scale — especially Gevo, which is now operating at its first commercial facility in Luverne, Minnesota.
…
On the n-butanol front, there have been Cobalt Technologies and Green Biologics. Not only are both focused, primarily, on chemicals — they both are focused on cellulosic waste as a feedstock (Gevo and Butamax, for now, are producing from corn starch). Turns out that producing n-butanol from C5 sugars (found in cellulose and hemicellulose) is much easier than doing the same for isobutanol.
…
As Green Biologics CEO Sean Sutcliffe noted, he Easy Energy deal provides Green Biologics with significant demonstration capability at a fraction of the cost of a green field demonstration plant.
“We plan to make significant investments in feedstock preparation, processing and product storage as well as process control” said Sutcliffe, “but more importantly, we plan to scale our proprietary (patent pending) advanced fermentation process at demonstration scale. In addition the facility will have the capability to allow us to scale and demonstrate the use of cellulosic biomass as a sugar source for renewable butanol production.”
…
In 2011, Green Biologics partnered with Laihe Rockley Biochemical Ltd. in Songyuan, China and in 2012 produced the world’s first commercial scale cellulosic n-butanol from residual corn waste (corn shells, corn cobs and stover). The Chinese commercial trial run was completed in June 2012 at 3.2 million liter fermentation scale in one of three 50,000 tonne/year production units. In Nov 2012, Green Biologics imported 55 tonnes of cellulosic n-butanol to the U.S. and is now marketing the material for chemical applications.