Coskata's new Lighthouse cellulosic ethanol plant, in depth
by Sebastian Blanco on Oct 16th 2009 at 7:22PM 
Coskata Lighthouse Cellulosic Ethanol Plant - Click above for high-res image gallery
Coskata's newly-opened semi-commercial flex ethanol facility in Madison, Pennsylvania is as small as it can possibly be. Co-located at a Westinghouse facility that also in some fashion uses nuclear energy, the Lighthouse project, as it's called, is running 24/7 to turn wood chips into ethanol. It's also intended to show off just how far Coskata has come since emerging from stealth mode almost two years ago. Oh, and the plant can also be scaled up to fit the needs of cellulosic ethanol producers from coast to coast.
The Lighthouse plant follows the Horizon integrated processing plant that started in 2008 in Warrenville, Illinois and precedes the Flagship plant that is due for 2012 at a location somewhere in the Southeast U.S. that will be announced later. The location for the Flagship plant has been selected, but Coskata will not specify where it is exactly until it can talk more specifically about the financing arrangements involved for the 55-million-gallon-per-year plant that will use forest residue and other woody biomass. Coskata says the Flagship will be "the first commercially-viable, feedstock-flexible ethanol facility." Coskata has not taken any government money to date, but they may apply for DOE loan guarantees for the Flagship plant. Coskata will not expand the Madison Lighthouse facility. In fact, they're only located there as a guest and will leave when the contract is up. The facility is modular and will actually be dismantled and trucked to the Flagship location in the future.
What might this plant offer, both for partner GM and for the U.S.'s biofuel needs? Find out after the jump.
Photos copyright ©2009 Sebastian Blanco / Weblogs, Inc.
What is flex ethanol?
Flex ethanol is the term Coskata is using for ethanol that can be made with almost any feedstock, i.e., ethanol made using the Coskata process. As we've heard since day one, the plasma torches and microorganisms can turn everything from tires to coal to municipal waste into ethanol. Flexible inputs = flex ethanol.
Making flex ethanol is fast, too. Coskata CEO Bill Roe said that it takes "just minutes" to go from feedstock to ethanol. The Coskata process is continuous, not a batch process, and the entire team we heard from in Madison was clear that there are no longer any technical hurdles to overcome in order to start full-scale cellulosic ethanol production using this system. As shown in the slide below, the feedstock is sent into the gasifier where the plasma torches create a gas. This gas needs to be cleaned and is then sent into the bioreactor where Coskata's proprietary microorganisms (shaped like PacMan, apparently) eat it and make ethanol. Compared to standard gasoline, Coskata's cellulosic ethanol reduces greenhouse gases by about 96 percent and uses half as much water. The microorganisms could also be tuned to make butanol or other chemicals, but the focus is on ethanol for now.
The prehistoric anaerobic microorganisms are from the family of clostridium bacteria. These "bugs" are found in nature, typically in deep-water ponds. Cosakata has managed the strains with nutrient programs and selection process to make them more efficient at producing ethanol. Coskata "did what Mother Nature would do, but on an accelerated path," Roe said. The microorganisms were discovered and developed with help from the Oklahoma Biofuels Consortium, made up of OSU, BYU and OU.
OK, what does it mean for E85 in the U.S.?
Coskata used to say that it would be able to make (not sell) ethanol for $1 a gallon. At the plant unveiling in Madison, that number was not mentioned a single time. Instead, Richard Fish from Alter NRG (home to the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation and a partner to Coskata) said that the Coskata system is able to produce ethanol at "a very competitive price" compared to the market as a whole. A "very competitive price"? How much is that? Roe explained that the exact cost depends on the feedstock going into the gasifier. Municipal waste will get you ethanol that costs much less than a dollar a gallon, virgin hardwood would cost you much more (but anyone using that particular feedstock is of questionable sanity).
In any case, Coskata doesn't see itself really competing with other renewable energy companies – "We need a lot of producers in this industry," said Coskata CMO Wes Bolsen. "I don't see anyone in the biofuel industry as a competitor" – and has its sights set on gasoline. As long as Coskata ethanol can be made cheaper than gasoline – which requires that oil costs something in the area of $65 a barrel and that producers can get biomass for $50 a dry ton – the company thinks it has a winner.
Gallery: Coskata Lighthouse Slides
Gallery: Alter NRG Coskata Slides
What is GM's role?
GM has invested an unspecified amount in Coskata. While the money and association certainly don't hurt Coskata's efforts to bring cellulosic ethanol to market, the biofuel company has received large investments from other groups as well (including Vinod Khosla's venture capital fund). The bigger question is what does Coskata (and Mascoma, another company The General has invested in) do for GM?
Bob Babik, GM vehicle emissions director, was on hand in Madison to share GM's fuel diversification strategy, which is absolutely nothing new. These days, though, we more often hear GM talk about plug-in and hydrogen vehicles; the longer-term, sexy technologies. Biofuels? There's no thrill in that.
But biofuels are important to GM. Very important. GM started looking for biofuel partners in 2007 and was interested in the flexible input streams that Coskata can use in their production process. Getting cellulosic ethanol to market is a good thing, Babik said, because 96 percent of all vehicles on the road today still rely on petroleum. Biofuels offer a low-cost, feasible alternative to petroleum, and can do so sooner rather than later. The vehicles are here, after all. Worldwide, GM has built over five million flex-fuel vehicles and has publicly committed to having over 50 percent of its vehicles be E85-capable by 2012.
GM does get an immediate benefit from the ethanol that Coskata is making today. "We feel beholden to GM, for all that they've done for us," Roe said, explaining why some of the ethanol produced in Pennsylvania will be shipped up to Michigan for GM's testing purposes.
What could the U.S. get from all of this?
The U.S. government has set a Renewable Fuel Standard that increases the volume of renewable fuel required to be blended into gasoline from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. Coskata executives are dubious that the U.S. can reach this goal, especially without help from next-gen biofuel companies like Coskata.
Coskata's CMO, Wes Bolsen, said that Coskata plans on licensing the technology to other companies and he expects 4-6 commercial facilities to be spun off "fairly quick" now that the Lighthouse plant has been unveiled to the public. The feedstocks for these other plants will be determined by the company leasing the technology. Wood chips are readily available today, and construction waste and bagasse are also likely candidates. Bolsen couldn't say what he expects will be the most common feedstock for the Coskata plants of the near future, because biomass is such a local issue. Since Coskata plants could be made in all 50 states, Bolsen said there is no reason to build an ethanol pipeline in the U.S. Coskata would like to expand overseas, but it is currently "laser focused" on the U.S. market in order to meet the RFS mandate.
How can Coskata make more energy than it uses?
Argonne National Lab has found that with certain feedstocks, the Coskata process can "reach a net energy balance of 7.7" (meaning, the ethanol produced contains 7.7 times as much energy as it took to make the fuel). Because we've seen a lot of, um, interesting claims from people in the green car space regarding energy returns, we thought it makes sense to make it clear no one is claiming Coskata has invented a perpetual motion machine.
For one thing, the system requires a constant influx of biomass, and the microorganisms need to be culled and replaced every few days. The production process itself is made as efficient as possible. It takes electricity to power the plasma torches, pumps, etc., and this generates excess heat. Some of this is recaptured; more is lost. Most importantly, the ethanol is made from the carbon energy trapped in the feedstock, so the Coskata process is really just converting energy trapped inside wood, for example, into liquid fuel. There's no hocus-pocus going on here. Think of it as a BTU conversion process. We made sure Roe explained it very clearly for everyone to understand, as you can hear in our interview with him (4.6 MB, 9:30 min, download here):
Our travel and lodging for this media event was provided by the manufacturer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave 10:55PM (10/16/2009)
"The location for the Flagship plant has been selected, but Coskata will not specify where it is exactly until it can talk more specifically about the financing arrangements involved for the 55-million-gallon-per-year plant that will use forest residue and other woody biomass."
The USA uses about 320 billion gallons of oil per year, I believe. So I guess we'll need 6000 of these plants?
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sollord 6:32PM (10/17/2009)
The US imports around 383billion bbl a year but only uses 138billion gallons of gasoline so they only need 2500 plants! That perfectly doable! *smokes some more crack*
hermperez 11:46PM (10/16/2009)
how many cities in the US?.. maybe they all have trash to get rid of.
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ziv 10:13AM (10/17/2009)
Herm, not only trash is useable, how about we harvest ethanol from human waste, kill two turds with one stone, so to speak.
Carney 10:29AM (10/17/2009)
As I pointed out in the earlier article about this, we can already do all this with methanol. Methanol was called "wood alcohol" because it was originally made from wood (plenty of cellulose there). Methanol can be made with ANY biomass without exception, including sewage and trash. This tech has been around a long time. So it's a bit frustrating to see politicians and industry talking about what a big deal it is that maybe someday ethanol can be made from the same stuff.
I'm a big backer of ethanol too, but boring old ethanol from starchy and sugary sources is just fine. There's no real need for years of waiting and millions of research dollars (including from taxpayers) for cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is driven primarily if not entirely by the bogus, oil cartel funded food vs. fuel myth, and by ignorance of methanol's existence.
The right way to do this is to mandate that all new gasoline ICE cars sold in America be fully flex-fueled, able to run on any alcohol fuel (methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol) as easily as on gasoline. The tech to do this has existed since the early 90s and is reliable and cheap ($130 per car). Thus in the short to mid term the post petroleum world would have methanol be the bargain short ranged fuel and ethanol be the mid price mid-ranged fuel. Propanol and butanol could be the exotic high priced longer range kinds.
And overly elaborate, expensive, unnecessary cellulosic ethanol and all its hype is best abandoned and forgotten.
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Matt234 5:16PM (10/17/2009)
When you are in the grocery store, do you also point out to your fellow customers what a hugely impractical shape the eggs are? Wouldn't we all be better off with cube shaped eggs? They would transport so much better.
To be serious, I find nothing wrong with someone building a real plant to provide real Ethanol to the millions of real cars and trucks that are "flexfuel" but have nowhere to find Ethanol.
Carney 5:05PM (10/18/2009)
Matt 234, your response makes no sense. You act as if I'm being pedantically critical of a good-enough product (cellulosic ethanol) in favor of a hypothetical, even absurd vaporware substitute (methanol).
But methanol is real and has existed long before cellulosic ethanol. The Indy500 switched from gasoline to methanol in the 60s for safety reasons, and I'm sure the extra octane didn't hurt either. The very first flex-fuel cars ever made were methanol/gasoline, in the mid-80s.
You propose cellulosic ethanol as a solution to the relative lack of ethanol availability. But the problem is not and never has been on the production side. There's enormous untapped ethanol-producing potential both here and abroad using cheap, ordinary starch/sugar methods without having to turn to overly complex and expensive cellulosic methods.
Instead the problem is that existing ethanol producers using conventional methods already can produce more fuel than there is a demand for. They don't have enough demand because there are not enough potential customers driving E85-compatible cars. Only about 3% of cars on the road are flex-fueled. It doesn't matter how much fuel you can make IF THE CARS CAN'T USE IT; nobody will buy it.
So the key issue is market share of flex fuel vehicles. Unfortunately automakers are dragging their feet. The Big 3 was pledging years ago to make a measly 50% of their fleet flex-fueled by 2012, a leisurely pace. But since about 10% of cars on the road are new that year, even if all automakers, domestic and foreign, went 100% flex fuel next model year, only 13% or so of cars on the road would be flex fueled that year (generously assuming no retirement of existing FFVs and that 100% of new FFV buyers are switching from monofuel). At that rate it would take 3 years AFTER that policy went into effect for flex fuel's market share to rise to 30%, which is where it needs to be for ordinary gas stations, even those with 4 pumps, to really consider switching just ONE of their pumps (25% of sales) from gasoline to alcohol. Slowing down that pace (by timelines or only domestic automakers participating) slows down the rate of alcohol adoption even more, allowing more years and years to drag on where the only common and practical fuel choice available fouls the planet, trashes the economy, and funds Islamist terrorists and their ideology.
So the urgent need is to increase the market share of flex fuel vehicles as much as possible as soon as possible - that's the heart of the matter. Bush's pledge of $150 million tax dollars to fund cellulosic ethanol research, and other public and private sector cellulosic ethanol efforts, is just a distraction and a waste of resources. And that's why what we need to do instead is to simply mandate that all new cars sold in America be fully flex-fueled.
Russ Finley 1:15PM (10/17/2009)
Huh, they use plasma arc technology to create a secret gas that goes into a bioreactor where secret bugs shaped like little packmen eat it, metabolize it, and pee ethanol or "butanol, or other chemicals," and this all happens in just minutes. Makes you wonder why they don't just tweak them to pee a fuel compatible with our cars and fuel infrastructure. I think somebody is trying to throw competitors off the trail of how they really make it, or possibly this is another Cello debacle about to unfold. And why would GM want to test the ethanol produced? Ethanol is ethanol (CH3-CH2-OH).
I am humored by the remark "I don't see anyone in the biofuel industry as a competitor." They have to be careful or the corn ethanol lobby will find a way to have their subsidy pulled. Can't let cellulosic ethanol hurt small farmers, don't you know.
Why ethanol? It isn't compatible with exiting cars or existing fuel distribution pipelines. If someone finds a way to gasify organic material and reconstitute it into fuels that are compatible with today's cars and infrastructure, how will the ethanol producers react?
Another, much more efficient way to trap the energy locked up in wood, or any cellulose is to just burn it! A recent study pointed this out. Displacing coal with biomass is upwards of 100% more efficient than converting it into a liquid fuel.
Plasma torch technology is used all over the place (Japan, Germany) to convert waste into electricity and cogeneration heat sources. Nothing new there.
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bubba-Jbob 8:40AM (10/19/2009)
Whoa. Exactly what you ask for is being done. Bio-butanol is compatible as is the green gasoline and diesel produced from biomass, soon to be available from Virent and LS9
Gary Bridge 2:24PM (10/17/2009)
For one thing, the system requires a constant influx of biomass, and the microorganisms need to be culled and replaced every few days.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The root platform of using special biobugs to feed upon CO & H2 synthesis gas and excrete ethanol as their waste urine content - go back to University researchers from Arkansas - well over a decade ago. Several scientists whom I trust observed this method of re-arranging carbon atoms from various solid feedstocks using biobugs as a 24x7 conversion mechanism and simply walked away from it.
The efficiencies of this process to create a two-carbon ethanol molecule were far too low in comparison of how the world has synthesized a single-carbon methanol molecule for the past 100 years.
The weakest point of this whole process is that specialized micro-organism bio-bugs need to be culled and replaced every few days. There is no mention of the conversion rates of CO & H2 syngas via biobugs into ethanol nor at what dilution the ethanol is produced from the bugs in water mediums having to be distilled and then further processed to anhydrous (dry) states.
The promoters behind this technology used hype and excitement garnering "it must be great and actually work" if GM were to invest too while Americans were paying $4 for gasoline. Too bad joe public doesn't understand anymore than most investors do regarding the most simple basics of what goes on chemically to batch ferment with enzymes and yeasts vs: continously produce C2 ethanol using new biobugs vs: something new which they've still not yet seen - nor would scientifically understand anyway.
There are some other startups which have not yet shown off their new biofuel techs while the whole damn bunch is bastardizing the term "lingo-cellulosic ethanol" as a new buzzword.
A carbon is a carbon as a building block and it may come from a corn kernel, a wood chip, tires, sludge, garbage or coal. Others are totally confused in thinking that this renewable carbon atom must come from a plant oil annually harvested from switchgrass, jatropha, palm, sunflowers, soy or now, green algae which is the most confusing of all as even if it were free, it will not scale. Wait and see.
Certain editors in this emerging biofuels space don't even know what they are doing by whipping up frenzies around elements as foolish as hydrogen hallucinations - and mistakenly steer enthusiasm along pathways which cannot scale and become profitable while making any kind of ecologic difference at all.
It is still going to take another couple of years to unveil that which needs unveiling. And people need to realize that you just don't snap your fingers and have new biofuel refineries pop up in commercial scale every thirty days. It will take 36 months to erect multiple copies of specific new technologies which still haven't seen the light of day yet. And to get two generations of these next buildouts moving rapidly into populations around the globe will take about a decade. No way you can hurry this along any faster.
Gary
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Dave D 10:29PM (10/17/2009)
As Carney points out, we could be using methanol today. It's very common and there is enough floating around to replace nearly 5% of all US transportation fuel today and it only cost about $1.00/gallon. China is scheduled to bring online an additional 6+ billion gallons per year of production by 2012 and most of the plants we have in the US are are sitting idle or underutilized right now.
Why do we ignore this? It actually disperses after a spill with no lasting effects which is better than gasoline and is truly only slightly more toxic...in other words don't drink either one so big deal.
This is a crime against our national security. We claim we're doing everything we can to get off foreign oil here in the US, yet we totally ignore this across the board.
I hate to say it, but there is no reason that every vehicle produced isn't flex fuel enabled so that no group can lock us into their supply of fuel. Haven't we had enough of that?
If you want a fuel that is compatible with current distribution infrastructure (pipelines, pumps, the vehicles themselves, etc), they should be targeting butanol rather than ethanol. It comes from the same feedstocks and has similar production rates to ethanol already despite the fact that literally thousands of years have gone into making ethanol (it's great for making drinks with little umbrellas) and we're really just starting to work on butanol. Why not focus on butanol instead of ethanol?
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Snowdog 6:20AM (10/18/2009)
It might be because methanol is poisonous, is easily absorbed through the skin and would need special handling precautions. Methanol is even less energy dense than ethanol as well.
If this plant can extract ethanol from wood waste it seems like a safer, more energy dense option than methanol.
Snowdog 2:45PM (10/18/2009)
But I do agree on Butanol.
Dave D 2:58PM (10/18/2009)
@Snowdog,
But how much of a problem is methanol toxicity? It's used commonly today in everything from waste water treatment plants to windshield wiper fluids. It will probably be used in excess of 15 billion gallons this year yet there were only 18 methanol poisoning deaths in 2002 (the only year i could find good stats). Yet there were 49 aspirin poisoning deaths and 120 alcohol related poisonings.
Gasoline is also a poison just in slightly less amounts than methanol. So don't drink either of them! Gasoline vapors are worse and gasoline is also carcinogenic so it causes lots of other long term problems due to exposure. And it is much easier to start a gasoline fire, according to the EPA, switching to methanol could reduce over 90% of all vehicle fires...and that is tens of thousands per year in the US alone.
And I don't even want to get into the whole political side of how many of our kids get killed in Iraq or other places in the middle east so that we can keep oil supplies flowing.
I know that you're a fan of EV's from all your other postings and I'm totally with you. I want to move to EV's or at least ER-EV's as quickly as possible. But while we're stuck with liquid fuels and our current infrastructure...I'd like to move away from petroleum as much as possible and it seem to me that methanol is a really good choice for at least a good portion of that liquid fuel needs.
Carney 5:15PM (10/18/2009)
Snowdog, methanol's "toxicity" is a FUD canard spread by the oil cartel. It's in the same class of toxicity as gasoline, but you don't year hype about how deadly to your health it is to fuel up at the local Citgo.
Sure you shouldn't drink or bathe in either gasoline or methanol, but proper ordinary use of either has minimal-to-vanishing risk. In fact, unlike methanol, gasoline is both a carcinogen and a mutagen, and because it is more difficult to ignite (needs more energy input {a bigger spark} and a more narrow and precise range of air-to-vapor ratios) it's arguably far safer overall to have in our transportation system than gasoline.
Methanol is what we naturally metabolize from artificial sweetener, and it's naturally present in many fruits and vegetables - so much so in oranges that the latter would be banned by our hyper-strict regulations if they were an artificial product. Toxicity is all about dosage over time, it's not black and white.
Finally, while no antidote as such exists for gasoline ingestion, methanol ingestion can be effectively addressed with --- ethanol. Yep, since the body preferentially absorbs ethanol, it's what's prescribed for methanol. Even booze can work if it's high enough proof. No such luck with gasoline.
So now you have the facts on big bad scary "toxic" methanol. If you're honest, we won't hear that from you ever again.
Carney 5:23PM (10/18/2009)
Snowdog, you are right that methanol is less energy dense. That's why it would be the cheap, "bargain" fuel of the future, one where drivers know that they will have to fill up more often, but are willing to do that so as to pay less, not only per gallon, but also per mile.
If you want more energy per gallon than methanol and are willing to pay for it, then ethanol would be your other major option. It would be the mid-range mid-market mid-priced fuel.
At the high end you'd have propanol or butanol.
Mike Z. 6:33PM (10/18/2009)
The US actually used large amounts of methanol in motor fuels in the form of MTBE of course that did'nt go over too well.
However, I think it's worth noting the Exxon is quite happily listening it's methanol-to-gasoline technology http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/dkrw-selects-ex.html
Of course, making methanol from biomass is not as easy at it sounds. "Wood Alcohol" while easy to obtain in terms of technology has miserable yields. I heard a story of some German farmers during WWII that would use a ton of biomass to get a few gallons of methanol. Basically, you have to gasify the biomass to syngas to make methanol; Making Syngas from biomass has a lot more impurities that need to be dealt with as compared to natural gas. So making methanol from natural gas makes a lot more sense. So at that point, it makes more sense to just put natural gas in cars as compared to using methanol.
Dave D 7:29PM (10/18/2009)
@Mike,
I agree that it's always better to avoid extra conversions so the natural gas route is more efficient. However, I've also spent a great deal of time traveling abroad where taxis used natural gas. Do you have any idea what a pain it is not to be able to put even a couple of small suitcases in the trunk of a car? The space it takes up is miserable to live with.
As for how easy it is to produce methanol...I can't find a lot of information on it, but I know that at a dollar a gallon or less, it is clearly possible. And that is with over 13 billion gallons in 2008 and growing. So even if it's only about 58% of the energy content of gasoline, it's still cheaper per mile traveled and it is something we can control vs. foreign oil.
And of course, it's always going to be more efficient to burn natural gas or wood biomass for that matter and produce electricity and run the vehicles as EV. End to end it's more efficient....if we can just solve those problems of battery cost, energy density, etc. I think we'll get there but it's going to take a few more years to make it practical for mainstream use.
So in the mean time, we all have to figure out how to deal with our existing liquid fuel infrastructure until things change. So why not go for flex fuel vehicles so we have the ability to use whatever is out there?
petr 3:47PM (10/22/2009)
Speaking of Methanol - my father remembered (while growing up in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia) the Germans had cars and trucks that ran on wood gas. Due to the shortage of petroleum.
There was a boiler in the back that pyrolized the wood and made gas that the car ran on.
You can search around the internet and find some pictures of it..
This makes me think of the huge areas of pine - beetle damaged forests here in British Columbia (15million hectares and area the size of the UK) which are slowly dying and giving off co2. They should pyrolize the wood - make wood gas for electricity generation, bury the charcoal as biochar (thus sequestering the co2 for centuries) and use whatever other by products tar etc.. It should be carbon negative process and provide work in areas that are hard hit right now with sawmills & pulpmills closing etc..
The other thing about methanol - earlier this year there was a newsstory about
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330111257.htm (March 09)
an archaea (bacteria like) organism that can turn electricity into methanol with about 80% efficiency - which would be ideal as a way to store power from wind or solar if there is excess power not ready to be used.. We already have an infrastructure for methanol.
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