This is good news, if it scales like they say it will.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Randall Webmail [rvh40 () insightbb com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:30 PM
To: dewayne () warpspeed com; David Farber; johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
Subject: This is good news, if it scales like they say it will.

GM Ethanol Partner Announces Pilot Plant
April 25, 2008

By Bill VisnicCoskata

PITTSBURGH – Coskata Inc., developer of a unique process that uses specialized bacteria to produce cellulosic ethanol – 
and with whom General Motors Corp. formed a partnership last January – announced Friday it will begin construction near 
here for the first production facility to demonstrate the process.

The demonstration plant, Coskata says, will start early next year and run 24 hours a day to produce about 40,000 
gallons of cellulosic ethanol derived from almost any organic waste material, including agricultural waste and 
municipal garbage that might normally be placed in landfill.

Coskata’s facility will be located at the site of the Westinghouse Plasma Center, a research facility focused on 
exploring new-energy uses for plasma beyond its current industrial applications. The high-energy plasma gasifies the 
organic material into synthetic gas – largely carbon dioxide and hydrogen – which Coskata’s patented bioorganisms 
literally feed on, making ethanol as a byproduct.

Coskata president and CEO William Roe told AutoObserver the ethanol produced in its process is vastly more positive in 
a net-energy equation than is ethanol derived from corn, the source for practically all the transportation-fuel ethanol 
currently produced in the U.S.

Roe said Coskata’s process can generate enough ethanol to be produce as much as 7.7Coskata_process_384_2  times more 
energy than the process requires. The company estimates ethanol produced from corn delivers a maximum of about 1.3 
times the energy required to produce it. Coskata says its unique process can generate about 100 gallons of ethanol from 
a single dry ton of waste material, compared with about 67 gallons of ethanol that can be squeezed from a ton of corn.

Roe said the demonstration plant here will be used “to demonstrate the flexibility to use a lot of different feedstock 
materials,” and to study the yield from those materials. He says the company will be “somewhat strategic about what 
we’re putting in.”

He also said the plant will demonstrate scalability of the process and that the microorganisms are “manageable over 
long, long run times.”

Roe cautions the plant’s yield is deliberately small so that it can readily test a variety of source material – 
everything from woody biomass to the garbage citizens normally tote out for curbside pickup and ends up in a landfill. 
He does say, however, that if garbage is used, a future that sees more selective separation of garbage would be ideal. 
Glass, tins cans and other inorganic garbage would burn easily enough in the facility’s plasma “torch,” but would yield 
nothing in the production of the syngas upon which the bacteria feast.

For Coskata’s partner GM, the use of the Westinghouse Plasma Corp. technology is well-known quantity: GM has for more 
than two decades used a Westinghouse-developed plasma torch furnace to produce molten iron for engine blocks and brake 
components.

Roe said the company’s timeline for two full-scale commercial facilities to be running by 2011 remains intact. He says 
the ideal output for such facilities would be in the range of 100 million gallons annually, but he can envision 
profitable plants at the 50 million-gallon level because facilities utilizing Coskata’s process could be economically 
sited in close proximity to any type of potential fuel stockpile.

And what about the 40,000 gallons of ethanol produced at this first demonstration plant? Roe said, “It’s not enough to 
try to find a commercial home for.” Instead, GM will use it to fuel test vehicles next year at its proving grounds in 
Milford, Mich.

Photo by Jason Coehn for GM

U.S. Congressman Tim Murphy (R-PA) looks on as Coskata CEO Bill Roe shows off plans for Coskata's pilot cellulosic 
ethanol producing plant in Madison, Pa., at the Westinghouse Plasma Center, during a press conference in Pittsburgh 
Friday. The plasma center is home to a pilot-plant gasifier. Gasification is the first step in Coskata’s process to 
make ethanol out of practically any renewable source.

<http://www.autoobserver.com/2008/04/gm-ethanol-part.html>

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