Range Fuels Awarded Permit for Wood-Waste Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
02 July 2007
The state of Georgia has awarded Range Fuels a construction permit to build a 100-million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant that will use wood waste from Georgia’s forests as its feedstock.
Phase 1 of the plant is scheduled to complete construction in 2008 with a production capacity of 20 million gallons a year.
Range Fuels, formerly Kergy, uses a two-step thermochemical conversion process. It first gasifies biomass waste such as wood chips, agricultural wastes, grasses, cornstalks, hog manure, municipal garbage, sawdust and paper pulp to create a syngas that it then converts catalytically to ethanol. (Earlier post.)
Range Fuels, with Governor Perdue, announced plans to build the plant on 7 February. The company was subsequently selected to negotiate for up to $76M in a grant from the Department of Energy on 28 February.
Very interesting development. Next year 20 million gallons per year capacity. This is soon and it is not a pilot project anymore. There web say they plan 1 billion gallons a year for their combined projects under development. They must be rather certain of the economics behind their technology.
Posted by: Henrik | 02 July 2007 at 10:50 AM
I knew you could synthesize ethanol from gasifying biomass. This just shows that it can be done in a BIG way.
Posted by: sjc | 01 January 2008 at 01:06 PM