Companies Close to Biogas to Liquid Fuels Process

Novus Energy, Oxford Catalysts building pilot plant
January 8, 2008. By David Ehrlich, cleantech.com

The above companies are working on the production of cellulosic ethanol made from organic waste.

Cellulosic ethanol is getting a new team with Minneapolis, Minn.- based Novus Energy joining up with the U.K.'s Oxford Catalysts for a pilot plant that will produce the next generation fuel from organic waste.

The new 100 gallon per day facility is expected to be up and running in the spring of this year.

"We're in the final stages," John Offerman, president of Novus Energy, told Cleantech.com. "We're fabricating the components right now to do the biogas to liquid fuels process."

Offerman said Novus has been working on the project with the U.S. Department of Energy for the past three years and has already run the process at a room-size scale.

The company, which is in the middle of raising a $7.5 million C round from angel investors, plans to use an anaerobic bio-digester to process waste, setting up plants on-site at food and agricultural processors, landfills and municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Novus' system will produce methane-rich biogas, and then use Oxford Catalysts' technology to convert the biogas into feedstock for fuel-grade alcohol.

The pilot plant will go up in Laramie, Wy., at the Western Research Institute, which is affiliated with the University of Wyoming.

But Novus isn't the only company trying to get ethanol from waste.

Broomfield, Colo.'s Range Fuels, which started work on a planned 100 million gallon per year plant in Georgia in November, also expects to be able to use a similar assortment of feedstocks for its process (see Range Fuels' Mitch Mandich breaks ground). More...