GM Announces Biofuel Partnership with Coskata: Cheap, Green Ethanol?
LIVE FROM DETROIT AUTO SHOW: GM ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH BIO-BASED ETHANOL PRODUCER COSKATA BIOFUELS TO RAPIDLY COMMERCIALIZE AND DISTRIBUTE ETHANOL FOR FLEXFUEL VEHICLES.
At noon today, General Motors announced an undisclosed equity share in Coskata, Inc., a renewable energy company with the means to produce low-cost ethanol from virtually any carbon-containing feedstock including biomass, municipal solid waste—even used car tires. GM believes Coskata has the premier technology for rapidly implementing ethanol production technology worldwide. Click here for a video of the announcement.
GM already has a vested interested in ethanol, with 2.5 million FlexFuel model vehicles already on the road (15 models planned for 2009), and plans to make half their fleet ethanol-ready by 2012. The partnership is a win-win situation as Bill Roe, President and CEO of Coskata puts it: “GM is enabling Coskata to produce the next generation of biofuels – without using a food source – making it economically viable and commercially available.”
GM will test Coskata’s ethanol at the Milford Proving Grounds by late 2008, followed by completion of a 40,000 gallon per year commercial demonstration facility by the end of the year. A larger, 100 million gallon per year facility is currently being sited for construction in the U.S.
Coskata claims it can produce ethanol for under $1.00 per gallon from almost any carbon-containing feedstock, while reducing greenhouse gas emission by 84% compared to gasoline, using only 1 gallon of water for each gallon ethanol produced, and returning 7.7 times as much energy as is used in the production process.
>> Interested in solar power? See if group discounts are available in your city
>> Don’t forget to: Sign up for our electric car interest list.
How is this possible? The numbers, which verge on the fantastic, come straight from well-to-wheels analysis by Argonne National Laboratories and seem to be the product of a unique combination of innovative engineering, proprietary microorganisms, and patented reactor designs.
And here’s the punchline: Coskata will use gasification technology to turn carbon-containing materials into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can then be converted into ethanol by their highly-specialized microorganisms.
Gasification is a different process for achieving the same endpoint, but works on a wider variety of materials and uses unconventional microbial pathways. Instead of producing sugar (as in other cellulosic-ethanol production methods), carbon-based materials undergo partial combustion to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen, a gaseous mixture known as synthesis gas (or syngas for short). I was assured during a series of short interviews that not only did Argonne’s analysis take into account the energy required for gasification, but also produced no harmful emissions since the gas is filtered through a scrubber before further processing.
So what kind of organism is willing to eat carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol? On January 4th, I had the good fortune to tour the Coskata biofuel pilot plant and world headquarters, which is part business office, ethanol production facility, and microbiology R&D lab. Located just outside Chicago, the unassuming building houses 25,000 square feet of the most technologically advanced equipment available, including one of only a handful of specialized Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometers used in the U.S. This fancy machinery allows researchers to rapidly evaluate new microbial strains, part of the neverending quest for improved efficiency, or the next breakthrough in alcohol fuels (biobutanol, anyone?). Combining genetic manipulation with real-time analytic equipment gives scientists a way to see how each change affects an organism—it’s like evolution at 1,000 miles per hour.
But Coskata’s bugs are pretty good already: they can convert any ratio of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into ethanol, a striking feat if you think about it. Few understand this better than Dr. Dick Tobey, VP of R&D and Engineering at Coskata biofuels. He confirmed for me that, yes, these are unique and highly developed organisms, with thirteen catalytic sites that preferentially attack CO or H2 (syngas), but can function on either gas pure. Discerning readers will note that pure hydrogen cannot be converted to CH3OH (ethanol) without an additional carbon input. The microbe’s trick? Pull extra carbon and oxygen from the water (H2O) bath in which it resides. As if that wasn’t good enough, Coskata’s organisms produce only ethanol, which mitigates contamination issues and increases overall yield.
Coskata’s other key technology is a proprietary bioreactor system. Their patented organisms live in a colony called a ‘biofilm’, which coats the surface of a thin, semi-permeable membrane likened to Gortex. Each membrane is about the width of a human hair and shaped like a straw, which allows syngas to flow freely through the hollow interior. The hair-thin straws are clumped together into several inch-thick tubes, and are housed in a large, water-filled cylinder. Water can’t flow into the straw, and syngas can’t flow out unless it interacts with part of the biofilm. This design is extremely effective because it prevents dilution of syngas and increases bacterial surface area. Bacteria don’t have to work to ‘find’ syngas, as they would if they were floating in an unstructured mixture.
Most importantly, a system of modular bioreactor tubes is almost infinitely scalable. Coskata’s larger 40,000 gallon facility will simply be an expanded version of their several-gallon per day pilot plant. To discuss more about how the process works I’ll leave you to fellow GO Media Writer Philip Proefrock. He’ll also be covering the front end of this system, gasification technology.
The new partnership between Coskata Biofuels and General Motors is worth taking seriously as it may have broad implications for the future of transportation. GM will continue to produce FlexFuel vehicles in significant numbers and, if Coskata’s promise holds out, we may be seeing a cheap, renewable and non-corn based source of ethanol within the next few years.
For another cellulosic-ethanol related announcement, see later post: Cellulosic Ethanol Sugar Diverted to Algae Biodiesel Production
You Might Also Like
Winning Formula One Ferrari Ran on Cellulosic Ethanol 
Reading Tea Leaves: Future Biofuels in the Bottom of a Cup?
Would You Like A Coffee To Go? “Scirocco-ccino” Storms Europe
Boat-Eating Bug May Hold Key for Future of Biofuels
January 14th, 2008 at 4:01 am
[...] « GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol? [...]
January 15th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
[...] you’ve almost certainly already heard by now, General Motors has announced a partnership with Coskata, Inc. to produce ethanol less expensively [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 3:22 am
[...] you talk more about the Coskata announcement and cellulosic ethanol production? The whole deal is that it doesn’t use such expensive enzymes to break material down. This kind [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Great blog!
If the economics don’t work, recycling efforts won’t either.
Http://LivePaths.com blogs about innovative entrepreneurs that make money selling recycled
items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.
These includes some very cool Green online ventures, great new technologies, startups and
investments opportunities.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:10 am
[...] GM’s announcement, and the recently passed mandates present in the new Renewable Fuel Standard, it looks like [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 5:11 am
[...] Wagoner addressed a variety of issues, including the Coskata ethanol announcement, the future of the Hummer brand (hint: smaller), the risks associated with producing the Chevy [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 10:42 pm
[...] you’ve been following my posts on the GM Coskata ethanol announcement, I have one thing to say to you: plot [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:37 am
[...] partnership will almost certainly rev up Solazyme’s production and research process, as will GM’s backing of Coskata ethanol. But I still have no information on how the algae will be grown. I’m getting the sense that [...]
January 25th, 2008 at 10:04 am
[...] 30 minutes on a range of topics, including the new renewable fuel standard, cellulosic ethanol and GM’s announcement, algae biodiesel, vegetable oil as a fuel, and so [...]
February 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[...] the ethanol technology company who made a major announcement about their biofuel technology at the North American International Auto Show earlier this year, has announced that they have [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
[...] agricultural waste, storm debris and trash are all viable fuel sources for ethanol, using the Coskata process. This highly flexible technology allows future manufacturing plants to cater to locally available [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
[...] GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol? [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
[...] all the writing we’ve done recently about the Coskata partnership with GM, and the unique process the company’s created to make ethanol from almost any material [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
[...] Substitution: Increasing biofuel use to at least 35% by 2020 (see previous announcements 1 and 2). [...]
March 7th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
[...] on the massive potential of cellulosic ethanol, namely, making fuel from waste products (see earlier post). KL projects that its cellulosic technology, coupled with new applied design concepts, will allow [...]
March 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
National Algae Association
The Woodlands, Texas
Algae: The Next Biofuel
Is Black Gold Turning Green?
Inaugural
Algae Commercialization
Business Plan and Networking Forum
April 10, 2008
http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com
April 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
[...] into cellulosic ethanol could be a good thing. But it seems like we might have already figured out less complicated (and definitely less controversial) ways of doing this. See the related links for [...]
April 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Can I buy stock in this company? If so, how and where?I like everything about the process. Anytime you can turn waste into fuel is a good thing. Please advise. Thanks, Richard Crosby from Calgary,Alberta,Canada.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
[...] InnovTtek’s reactor can run on a variety of non-renewable hydrocarbon sources they, like the potentially revolutionary Coskata Biofuels, are expressly interested in sustainable power, even to the point of preferring biodiesel in their [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
callorhynchus resiliometer foreorder unfeminineness countercompetition amygdalotome royalty creditor
Electrosult Inc.
http://cnn.com/2001/WORLD/africa/12/28/africa.ebola.ap/index.html
June 6th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
[...] be starting construction of a facility within weeks to convert landfill waste into ethanol, and Coskata Inc. is also constructing a demonstration facility that will use municipal waste as a feedstock. It appears that these [...]
June 18th, 2008 at 2:01 am
[...] from more complex plant material containing cellulose—aka cellulosic ethanol—a process that is still being developed. The first major commercial cellulosic ethanol facility will go online in 2009. Some studies have [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I think that this is great, but what about our water reserves? If it takes one gallon of water per gallon of gasonline, how are we going to avoid a water shortage similar to the one happening right now with food and agrofuels? Water and energy are interdependent. If it takes water to make energy and energy to make water, we may end up with new problems. Where are the data?
September 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
[...] GM Announces Biofuel Partnership with Coskata: Cheep, Green Ethanol? [...]
September 19th, 2008 at 1:18 am
[...] a year and I also think that General Motors bought into it. EDIT – I google and come up with GM Announces Biofuel Partnership with Coskata: Cheap, Green Ethanol? : Gas 2.0 __________________ Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never [...]
May 7th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
[...] This is GM’s second investment in a cellulosic ethanol company, after announcing partnership with Coskata back in [...]