Twitter headlines« Study: Fuel Cell Vehicles Necessary for Long-Term Significant Reduction in GHG, Criteria Pollutants and Oil Consumption | Main | Sasol Selects Foster Wheeler For New CTL Plant Pre-Feasibility Study »
Range Fuels Raises More Than $100M in Series B Financing
1 April 2008
Cellulosic ethanol producer Range Fuels Inc. has raised more than $100 million through an oversubscribed Series B private financing round. Range uses a two-step thermochemical conversion process that first gasifies biomass waste such as wood chips to create a syngas, which it then converts catalytically to ethanol. (Earlier post.)
Range Fuels will focus the new funds on completing the construction of the first phase of its commercial cellulosic ethanol plant near the town of Soperton, Georgia.
The Series B round was led by Passport Capital of San Francisco, California. Other investors include BlueMountain, Khosla Ventures, Leaf Clean Energy Company (advised by EEA Fund Management Ltd and Shaw Capital), and Pacific Capital Group (with participation by California Employee Retirement System (CalPERS)). Advanced Equity Incorporated and Morgan Stanley were the Placement Agents for this round of financing.
Range Fuels previously announced that it received a $76 million grant from the US Department of Energy and a grant of $6 million from the State of Georgia.
Range Fuels projects their costs to be significantly lower than both the enzymatic cellulosic processes and the current corn ethanol production costs that are near $2.00 per gallon. Range Fuels’ process also uses 75% less water than corn ethanol and is classified environmentally as a minor emitter with 60% less emissions compared to corn ethanol.
The Range Fuels process yields more ethanol per ton of biomass than biochemical processes, both reducing the cost of the fuel and the need for biomass and land. The company expects in the long term that gasoline would have to drop below $50 per barrel to be competitive with its ethanol.
Range Fuels began construction of its Soperton, Georgia plant in November 2007 with excavation and site layout. The Soperton Plant is permitted for up to 120 million gallons per year, with its first phase producing approximately 20 million gallons per year of mixed alcohols.
April 1, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: Healthy Breaze | April 01, 2008 at 10:40 AM
Range is currently claiming up to 16 times energy input for their K2 syngas to ethanol process. They have located in the heart of Georgia's pine forest industry to minimize transport loads. And they claim to be using wood chips, agricultural wastes, grasses, and cornstalks as well as hog manure, municipal garbage, sawdust and paper pulp as feedstock.
Long range plans is for Georgia cellulosic to contribute 2 billion gallons ethanol/annum.
Posted by: gr | April 01, 2008 at 05:20 PM
CAN ANYBODY TELL US WHEN THE PLANT IS TO BE COMMISSIONED. ABENGOA'S SPAIN PLANT WAS TO START IN 2007 BUT THERE IS NO NEWS ABOUT THAT TILL DATE.
Posted by: NIRMALSINH WALA | April 01, 2008 at 11:13 PM
Gasification seems to be the way to go, but why make ethanol which requires huge energy inputs for distillation? Better to generate electricity and fuel PHEVs. Of course you can't get $82m in grant money for that.......
Posted by: doggydogworld | April 02, 2008 at 08:21 AM
AFAIK gasification to ethanol does not need distillation since the reaction temperatures are so high. A part of the efficiency of gasification processes is hot products need to be cooled and the cooling could happen in a boiler for a steam turbine generator. Overall the process could sell both ethanol and electricity.
Posted by: tom deplume | April 02, 2008 at 12:34 PM
There is no distillation, but there might be a separation of mixed alcohols involved. Syntec has a similar process and has been mention on GCC.
"Syntec Biofuel Inc has achieved a yield of 105 gallons of alcohols (ethanol, methanol, n-butanol and n-propanol) per ton of biomass. In 2006, the company had targeted a yield of approximately 113 gallons per ton."
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/02/syntec-catalyti.html
Posted by: sjc | April 02, 2008 at 03:02 PM
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c4fbe53ef00e551a36b678834
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Range Fuels Raises More Than $100M in Series B Financing:
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, they will probably one of the first cellulosic ethanol producers to acheive industrial scale, and they probably process biomass faster than the enzymatic guys. I also suspect that with syngas it will be easier to retool and produce butanol down the road.
On the other hand, they say nothing about the conversion efficiency, which is critical from a land-use-point-of-view if cellulosic ethanol is to have a chance of replacing dinosaur juice.