Coskata, Inc.

"Coskata" redirects here. For the community in the northeastern United States, see Coskata, Massachusetts.
Coskata
Private
Industry Renewable Energy
Headquarters Warrenville, Illinois, United States
Products Cellulosic Ethanol
Website www.coskata.com

Coskata, Inc. was a Warrenville, Illinois based energy company incorporated in 2006 by serial entrepreneur Andrew Perlman's GreatPoint Ventures group. The company was developing processes for the production of cellulosic ethanol from woodchips. Coskata's process combines both biological (i.e., microbes) and thermochemical (heat and chemicals) processing. The estimated cost of production via this technology was reported as under $1 per gallon, as opposed to corn-based ethanol costing approximately $1.40 per gallon [1]

Coskata announced in April 2008 that the company would begin producing ethanol on a small scale at a plant being built near Pittsburgh, PA. With a capacity of about 40,000 US gallons (150,000 L) annually, the fuel will be used by General Motors to be tested in their vehicles. The pilot plant is being constructed in a modular design by Zeton Inc. in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.[2] A full-scale production plant capable of producing 50 to 100 million US gallons (380,000 m3) of cellulosic ethanol was expected to go online in 2011. In October 2011, an article on the Coskata website stated that a "semi-commercial" pilot plant in Madison, Pennsylvania, had been running successfully for 2 years.[3]

In 2008, Coskata signed a deal with US Sugar Corporation to build a cane-waste biofuels conversion facility in Florida.[4]

Competitors include Fulcrum BioEnergy and LanzaTech. LanzaTech has successfully demonstrated its technology at Pilot scale in NZ –using Industrial waste gases from the steel industry as a feedstock for its microbial fermentation.[5]

As of March 2013, the company's web site stated "While our technology platform is capable of producing multiple fuels and chemicals from a diverse array of feedstocks, we are initially focused on commercializing our natural gas conversion process."[6]

The company went out of business in 2015, and the technology formerly belonging to Coskata has re-merged as the new company Synata Bio. [7]

References

  1. ↑ "Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn" in Wired, January 24, 2008. Retrieved May 30, 2008.
  2. ↑ "Anaerobic Organisms Key to Coskata's Rapid Rise" in Ethanol Producers Magazine, July 2008. Retrieved July 28, 2008.
  3. ↑ http://www.coskata.com/media/index.asp?story=504B571C-0916-474E-BFFA-ACB326EFDB68
  4. ↑ U.S. Sugar wants to turn sugar into fuel
  5. ↑ Voegele, E. November 2009. “Waste to ethanol projects move forward”, Ethanol Producer Magazine
  6. ↑ Official Webpage
  7. ↑ "Coskata’s technology re-emerges as Synata Bio" in BiofuelsDigest, January 24, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2016.

External links

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