SunOpta and CMEC to Study Building 10M Gallon Cellulosic Ethanol Plant in Minnesota

23 December 2007

SunOpta BioProcess Inc. (SBI) recently signed a Letter of Intent with Central Minnesota Ethanol Co-op (CMEC) of Little Falls, Minnesota to complete a feasibility analysis and engineering study leading to the parties jointly building, owning, and operating a 10 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant.

The proposed plant will be initially designed to produce 10 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year, with anticipated modular scale-up plans to expand the plant to over 50 million gallons per year. The operation is expected to be located adjacent to CMEC’s existing 21.5 million gallon per year corn starch to ethanol plant, will use local wood chips as raw material feedstock, and is dependent upon completion of final engineering and definitive agreements.

Residual lignin will serve as fuel stock for an energy efficient gasification and co-generation system that will provide the required power for both the corn starch and cellulosic ethanol operations.

The plant will utilize SBI proprietary and patented technology together with CMEC’s existing infrastructure, raw material supply sources and operational expertise. The pretreatment process step will utilize SBI’s proprietary auto hydrolysis (steam explosion) process, which uses only heat and steam to pre-treat and partially hydrolyze lignocellulosic materials. In this process, no external chemical catalyst is required and water contained in the raw material feedstock is efficiently utilized, eliminating the need for large external water sources.