Green Options

On the heels of the opening of Coskata’s first flex ethanol facility capable of making ethanol from virtually any organic material, GM and Coskata have released a video (below) detailing the Coskata process. Unlike most promotional/informational videos that get dumped on the public, this one is actually rather informative.

Pennsylvania is beautiful this time of year, but I missed most of it since I made the 400+ mile drive mostly in the dark. It took eight hours of dodging speeding semi-trucks and going through many miles of tunnels, but I finally made it to the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison, PA. In case you’re asking, yes, the same Westinghouse that makes flat screen televisions (among other nifty tech stuff).

The Coskata semi-commercial flexible ethanol plant, dubbed “Lighthouse”, is located here. This facility is essentially a working scale model of a full size ethanol plant, and the processes and technology here can one day soon be scaled up to produce as much as a 100 million gallons of flex ethanol annually. The important word here is flexible, because unlike other ethanol products, the Coskata process can use just about any carbon matter to produce ethanol. This means the very garbage filling our dumps may one day instead fill our cars.

Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.

Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year.