coskata

Wood-chip ethanol maker opens plant

Start-up Coskata on Thursday is starting up a facility that can turn wood chips into ethanol, a step toward producing at large scale next year.

The "semi-commercial" plant in Madison, Pa., will use a variety of techniques to convert the cellulosic material in plants or even municipal trash into liquid fuel that's cheaper than gasoline, according to the company. Its method reduces greenhous gas emissions dramatically and uses less than half the water than is needed to process gasoline, according to the company.

It plans to test a number of different feedstocks at the Pennsylvania plant, called … Read more

Dollar-a-gallon ethanol plant in U.S. operation next year

Cellulosic-ethanol company Coskata on Friday announced that it has broken ground on a plant in Pennsylvania that will be operating by early next year.

Coskata has a technology that combines a gasification chamber and a bioreactor to make ethanol from a variety of feedstocks, such as wood chips or even tires. General Motors, Khosla Ventures, and Advanced Technology Partners are investors.

The $25 million plant in Madison, Pa., will make 40,000 gallons per year. At that size, it's meant to demonstrate the process at commercial scale. Its plans also call for a full-scale facility, producing 50 million gallons … Read more

Coskata CEO explains how to get to $1 a gallon ethanol

Nearly every cellulosic ethanol company claims it will be able to produce fuel at $1 or less a gallon in a few years. William Roe, CEO of Coskata, in a meeting on Monday explained how his Warrenville, Ill., company will do it.

It's one of the more interesting processes out there, because it combines both biological (i.e., microbes) and thermochemical (heat and chemicals) processing. Menlo Park, Calif.-based ZeaChem is also taking a mixed approach, but it combines thermochemical and biological processes in a different manner. Most other companies are using primarily chemical or biological processes. We don'… Read more

Trash-to-ethanol company gets $19.5 million more

Coskata, a start-up that wants to make ethanol out of tires and other stuff found in the dump, has raised $19.5 million in a second round of funding, according to SEC documents scoured by Private Equity Week.

Earlier this year, General Motors announced it had invested in the company and that Coskata would build a demo ethanol plant by the end of the year that would be capable of producing 40,000 gallons of fuel a year. GM will buy the fuel.

Coskata's ultimate goal is to make fuel for $1 a gallon. (After taxes, subsidies and transportation … Read more

Coskata signs partner for 2010 ethanol plant

Year-and-a-half-old ethanol company Coskata made its public debut at the North American international Auto Show in Detroit in January, where it announced a partnership with General Motors.

On Wednesday, Coskata said it has signed a deal with ICM to manufacture a cellulosic ethanol plant that will be up and running by 2010.

ICM is an ethanol plant design and engineering firm responsible for about half of North American ethanol production, according to the companies.

When he announced the GM deal, Coskata President and CEO Bill Roe said that the company will be signed on to many partnerships to commercialize its … Read more

Photos: Coskata's cellulosic ethanol production

Many in the auto industry are touting ethanol as the solution to the challenge of post-petroleum transportation. Major carmakers advertise many new cars can run on E85--a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline--and they trumpet the fuels environmental benefits relative to gasoline. But the ethanol story is not as straightforward as it sounds. Aside from the lack of infrastructure--only around 1,400 out of 170,000 U.S. filling stations have ethanol available--the production of ethanol from corn has drawn criticism for its cost (in terms of food-stocks and land usage) and the relative inefficiency of the … Read more