DuPont Biofuels Exec Becomes CEO at Cellulosic Ethanol Company SunEthanol

4 June 2008

SunEthanol has hired William Frey, Ph.D., as the cellulosic ethanol company’s new CEO. Previously, Dr. Frey led the efforts to commercialize advanced biofuels and new cellulosic process technologies being developed by DuPont.

Frey was one of the first business development leaders who established the DuPont Bio-Based Materials business in the late 1990s, now known as DuPont Applied BioSciences. He personally led the team that developed DuPont Biofuels as a business unit in 2002, and has broad partnership experience with industry leaders such as BP, British Sugar, Tate & Lyle and Genencor. Dr. Frey had been with DuPont for 28 years prior to accepting the position as CEO of SunEthanol.

SunEthanol Inc. is commcerializing its consolidated bio-processing (CBP) technology based on the “Q Microbe” (Clostridium phytofermentans). Consolidated bio-processing condenses the multiple steps of biofuel production into a single process, potentially resulting in a lower cost of production. (Earlier post.)

C. phytofermentans is an anaerobic, cellulose-fermenting microbe that rapidly degrades and ferments cellulose, pectin, starch, and xylan to produce H₂ and exceptionally large amounts of ethanol, according to Dr. Susan Leschine at the University of Massachusetts, who reported the discovery of the microbe in 2002.

SunEthanol has licensed the technology from the university, and Dr. Leschine serves as a senior advisor to SunEthanol.

Recently, the research team has achieved a ten-fold increase in its C3 (Complete Cellulosic Conversion) technology platform, using the Q Microbe  to convert cellulosic plant material into ethanol. This significant increase in ethanol production capability took place in the past five months.

SunEthanol’s C3 process holds great promise because of the robustness of the Q Microbe and its ability to convert a wide variety of feedstocks into clean, usable ethanol. I look forward to making SunEthanol a world leader in the race to displace gasoline with home-grown biofuels.

—Dr. Frey