The company also announced it was buying out the remaining 50% interest in Sand Creek Energy (SCE) for $1.4 million. Rentech plans to use the currently mothballed Sand Creek property to build and to operate a fully-integrated Fischer-Tropsch, coal-to-liquids (CTL), Product Development Unit (PDU) facility.

The SCE plant will produce ultra-clean diesel and aviation fuels and naphtha from various domestic coals, petroleum coke and biomass feedstocks on a demonstration scale. The products from the plant will supply test quantities of these synthetic fuels to the groups (DoD, sate and metropolitan entities) which have expressed interest in acquiring commercial quantities of Rentech’s fuels.

Rentech expects the PDU to be the first Coal-to-Liquids project in the country to capitalize on the tax credits available for commercialization of this technology under the new Energy act.

Rentech’s CTL Poly-Generation Vision

Since its founding in 1981, Rentech has been a technology development company, and has yet to operate at a profit. It is now trying to shift its position to becoming the “first-mover” in CTL commercialization in the US, with a particular focus on poly-generation projects—i.e., converting coal to fertilizer, fuel and power.

Accordingly, it has brought in a new president (although not from the energy industry), and is making financial moves such as those noted above.