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GM, Coskata Choose Chicken, Not Egg By Ron Kotrba
General Motors Corp. did something in January that it hadn’t done in almost 20 years. It took a strategic ownership stake in a nonautomotive company: Coskata Inc.
Before this unlikely partnership was formed, Coskata was a small and relatively obscure biotech company founded in 2006, working to improve clostridia strains from the University of Oklahoma to more efficiently ferment ethanol from synthesis gas. GM’s partnership with Coskata, which was announced at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in January, has brought this unknown company into the public spotlight.
GM could have partnered with any second-generation ethanol technology conversion company it wanted to, says Wes Bolsen, Coskata’s chief marketing officer and vice president of business development. Bolsen joined Coskata in early 2007, only weeks before the company began talks with GM. He came from ICM, where he worked as chief financial officer.
ICM has subsequently become Coskata’s partner in process design and commercialization.
Bolsen says he approached GM after a foreign automaker expressed serious interest in Coskata’s second-generation ethanol technology. “I reached out to my contacts at GM with this in mind and asked, ‘Would you be interested in talking with us?’” Bolsen explains. “Well, it turned out to be an eight-month venture. We waited until the final days before the auto show to work out the details of the many millions of dollars [GM was] putting in.” He couldn’t disclose the final amount but says GM chose Coskata after looking at the best available conversion technologies in the world. “[GM] saw that our plans aren’t based on inventions that are needed or something we can do in the future,” Bolsten says. “It’s now. It’s like, ‘Oh. All you need to do is build a plant? Holy cow.’”
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Coskata states it can produce cellulosic ethanol for “under a buck a gallon.” It has 16 patents issued or in development, and states its design can achieve more than 100 gallons of ethanol per dry ton of input material. Since moving its microorganism from the University of Oklahoma labs to Coskata’s, company scientists have increased the strain’s ethanol productivity rate by 50-fold. Argonne National Laboratory gave Coskata’s ethanol a 7.7-to-1 net energy balance compared with corn-based ethanol’s 1.3-to-1 ratio.
“What we have is a process that uses no enzymes and no catalyst," Bolson says. "It's biological, and we can use any input material. Others use gasification on the front end, but they use a chemical catalyst they had to buy to produce mixed alcohols. Then you have to sell all those various products, or you have to recycle them back through.” These processes require the synthesis gas to be highly pressurized before making it through the catalyst, but Bolsen says the Coskata process uses low temperatures and pressures. “We recover all the energy from between 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit syngas down to 100 degrees, like in a steam generator.”
GM has a zero-landfill waste policy, and its tool-and-die plant in Flint, Mich., became GM’s 10th landfill-free facility in late 2007. It will recycle 180,000 pounds of polystyrene per year, the equivalent of 42 million disposable coffee cups. Also, vehicles retained by the company at their end of life are 84 percent recyclable, and the Coskata process could turn that 16 percent nonrecyclable material into ethanol. “The coolest phrase I heard was, ‘The car eats itself,’” Bolsen says.
A 40,000-gallon-per-year demonstration plant will be complete in late 2008. Afterward, the plan is to begin quickly building commercial plants. Coskata will build its own plants and license its technology to other companies.
By 2012, half of GM’s new vehicle fleet will be flexible-fuel vehicles (FFV), doing its part in solving the tiresome chicken-and-egg analogy so often given to the FFV and E85 availability dilemma. “It really opens up the dynamic and says ethanol is no longer a blending fuel,” Bolsen says. “It’s a primary fuel in the United States. You have the biggest automaker in the world stepping up and saying, ‘You know what, it’s not a chicken and egg problem anymore. We’ll pick chicken.’
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Coskata, GM to Reveal Location for Ethanol Plant By Jim Mateja WardsAuto.com, Apr 24, 2008 2:51 PM Related Stories Coskata Helps Secure V-8 Future for GM
CHICAGO – General Motors Corp. and fuels partner Coskata Inc. will announce the location of a new cellulosic ethanol plant tomorrow, Coskata officials here say. The new plant will produce 40,000 gallons (151,380 L) of the fuel for testing at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds, in Milford, MI. ADVERTISEMENT Asked if the facility would be located in Coskata’s home base of Illinois, an executive says, “We are happy to locate the plant wherever our partner wants to put the plant.” GM announced in January it was taking an undisclosed equity stake in the biology-based renewable-energy company. The auto maker said it would work with Coskata on rapid commercialization of a unique technology promised to affordably and efficiently produce cellulosic ethanol from almost any renewable source, including wood, garbage, manure, old tires and factory waste, rather than food-based crops such as corn and sugarcane. The Milford test program is expected to get under way this fall.
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Coskata cellulosic ethanol pilot plant to be located in Madison Pennsylvania Posted Apr 25th 2008 10:05AM by Sam Abuelsamid Filed under: Ethanol, GM
General Motors and Coskata today announced that a pilot plant for cellulosic ethanol will be built in Madison, Pennsylvania. The plant will located adjacent to the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison. The plasma torches that Coskata will be using for their gasification process are based on technology that was developed by GM and Westinghouse in the early eighties. At that time the companies developed a plasma furnace used to melt raw materials for cast iron production at GM foundries. The first production application was at a GM foundry in Defiance OH in 1989.
Coskata is using the same plasma torch technology to heat biomass materials to over 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature is sufficient to convert almost any organic matter into a gas that is an intermediate ingredient in Coskata's process for producing cellulosic ethanol. Coskata's pilot plant will use Westinghouse Marc-3 plasma torches while the commercial scale plant will use larger Marc-11 torches. The pilot plant will be in operation in Q1 2009 with the first commercial plant following in 2011.
[Source: General Motors]
GM Role in Coskata's Cellulosic Ethanol Has Deep Roots
Pilot Plant Gasification Technology Traces to GM Ohio Foundry
MADISON, Pa. – General Motors Corp.'s role in helping Coskata Inc. bring its next-generation cellulosic ethanol to market traces back a quarter of a century to technology developed for a GM iron foundry in northwest Ohio.
Coskata announced Friday that its pilot plant will be located at the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison, the current site of a pilot-plant gasifier.
Gasification is the first step in Coskata's process to make ethanol out of practically any renewable source. Plasma torches are used to super heat source material, such as agricultural and municipal solid waste, to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which creates a synthesis gas comprised of carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
The gas is cooled to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and then is consumed by Coskata's patented microorganisms, which excrete ethanol and some water.
In 1983, the GM Central Foundry Division collaborated with Westinghouse Electric Corp., later known as Westinghouse Plasma Corp., and others to develop a high-volume plasma torch furnace, called a plasma arc cupola, that could more flexibly produce molten iron used to make automotive engine blocks, crankshafts and brake components.
GM's first application of plasma torch technology was in 1989 at its foundry in Defiance, Ohio, where it is still used today.
"Who knew this process would be used more than 20 years later to make cellulosic ethanol?" said Chris Desautels, Defiance Facilities Engineering Manager. "Coskata's process could dramatically change the biofuels landscape in the next five to 10 years and it has some of its roots right here in Defiance."
At its commercial scale plants, Coskata intends to use WPC Marc-11 plasma torches, which have been proven in metallurgical and waste-to-energy commercial applications throughout the world. The Marc-11 torches have more than 500,000 hours of operation in industrial settings, including the GM Defiance foundry.
A smaller version, the Marc-3, will be used in Coskata's Madison facility. A WPC Marc-3 has been used in Japan to gasify municipal solid waste for more than five years.
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