A flood of questions and concerns ensued—many from the ethanol industry—because Coskata was relatively unknown at that time. Plus, the company says it can produce ethanol from ag and forestry waste, and municipal solid waste—even tires—for less than $1 per gallon, far cheaper than other technologies. “Some people get angry when we talk about the $1-per-gallon production cost,” Bolsen says. “I don’t know why except that it’s such a provocative statement. Some of those people have been working so long in a different direction.”
That “different direction” is an enzyme-based cellulosic ethanol conversion process, a direction Coskata didn’t follow. Instead, the company avoids the expensive pretreatment of cellulose, uses no enzymes on the front end and doesn’t deal with slurry, which varies depending on the quality of the feedstock. Despite some doubters, others are taking notice of Coskata’s technology. “We’ve had interest from the White House, various state governors and conference planners,” Bolsen says. Since the GM announcement, he was invited to speak at the National Ethanol Conference, the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, and the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo. In all of his speaking engagements, Bolsen finds himself answering this question a lot: How is this method of inexpensive ethanol production possible?
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Origination
The key to Coskata’s ethanol production process is anaerobic organisms that were found at the bottom of a lagoon on the campus of Oklahoma State University years ago. A man named Ralph Tanner not only discovered these “bugs,” but also found that when they eat carbon monoxide and hydrogen, they secrete ethanol.
Around the same time, Aaron Mandell of Cambridge, Mass.-based GreatPoint Energy was developing a process to turn coal into synthetic natural gas through gasification. In 2005, he read a paper published by Tanner that detailed his discovery and syngas-to-ethanol idea. Mandell called his friend and fellow entrepreneur Todd Kimmel of Advanced Technology Ventures in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Kimmel and Rathin Datta, founder of technology, manufacturing and marketing company Vertic Biosolvents, went to Oklahoma in early 2006 to see the organisms first-hand. They liked what they saw. Mandell secured rights to license the technology, and the group quickly reached out to Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures for some financial help. “In one meeting, [Khosla] decided this [technology] could have a major impact,” Bolsen says. “He looks for truly disruptive technologies. He saw Coskata’s feedstock flexibility and knew it could be a worldwide, transformative technology.”
With financial backing, the technology was moved from Oklahoma to Argonne National Laboratory, just outside of Chicago, where GreatPoint Energy incorporated Coskata in July 2006. Five staff members came on board, including Kimmel and Datta. Kimmel has since returned to Advanced Technology Ventures, and although Datta doesn’t work at Coskata full-time, he remains the company’s chief scientific officer.
Bolsen joined Coskata in February 2007, along with former Dow Chemical Site Manager Richard Tobey. When the contract with Argonne National Laboratory expired, Bolsen says Coskata chose to remain in the Chicago area because the Midwest has amazing talent at research companies such as Abbott Labs, Eli Lilly & Co., Dow Chemical Co. and Nalco Co. An office was opened in Warrenville, Ill., a Chicago suburb, in May 2007. In October 2007, the company hired its Chief Executive Officer William Roe, formerly chief operating officer of Nalco.
The company now has 40 people on staff, 30 of whom are microbiologists. “When you have a technology, you don’t let money stop you from getting the best people,” Bolsen says, adding the combined intellect at Coskata makes it a world-class research institute. “We think this is the only high-throughput screening facility. We can look at 150,000 different organisms per year. Some of those are mutations of the original organism because you want to breed for higher-value traits, higher production, more tolerance for oxygen and chemicals, and robustness.” However, even without genetically modifying the organism found at the bottom of the Oklahoma lagoon, Bolsen says it has the capability to produce ethanol on a commercial scale.
The Process
Behind its immaculate lobby, offices and conference rooms in Warrenville, a laboratory allows the company to test its technology on a pilot scale. Since the first quarter of 2008, the company has been growing organisms in various fermentors. It isn’t using biomass as a feedstock, but it’s running the equivalent of stranded natural gas, industrial waste gases and methane from landfills through a commercially available catalyst to produce synthesis gas. The syngas is then directed through membranes resembling hundreds of straws inside a four-foot plastic tube, called a bioreactor, a piece of equipment that allows the company to avoid high stainless steel costs. The organisms are placed outside the membranes, but because they seek out the carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the syngas, they affix themselves to the outside of the membranes. They secrete ethanol, which is then rinsed out of the tube with water. A distillation process separates the ethanol from the water, which is recycled.
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