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May 18, 2009
MARSHALL, MO.: Saline Green LLC of Missouri announced Marshall will be the building site of a full commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol biorefinery facility that will produce fuel, chemical products and electricity.
Frank Imo, chief executive officer of the Saline Green Project, said the organization has examined the possibility of constructing a biorefinery facility in Marshall for about the last year. He said the local support for the proposal has been encouraging and helped make the project possible.
"We have been interested in Marshall for over a year now," Imo said. "We are very pleased that our biorefinery facility will come to fruition in such a deserving community."
Saline Green is providing the start-up money for the project, and the company will seek investors when the project nears completion.
Saline Green spokesman Donte Tamprateep said the company has been working with a group of scientists who helped develop the technology required to efficiently convert cellulosic biomass to its simple sugar state.
Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses and inedible plant parts. Tamprateep said the biggest challenge the company faced was finding a way to break down cellulose in a cost-effective manner.
Irshad Ahmed, president an CEO of New Jersey-based Pure Energy Corporation said his company spent more than $30 million over the last 15 years in an effort to develop the next generation of cellulosic ethanol technology. He said Pure Energy's technological contributions to the project will have a positive environmental impact and generate affordable ethanol.
"The Saline Green Project will serve as both a world-class sustainable energy production facility and also a showcase of cutting edge technology in the cellulosic ethanol, chemical and green electricity fields," Ahmed said.
Marshall Mayor Connie Latimer was excited about the opportunity to host the energy production and research facility, "which will not only benefit the local community but also make great contributions to the security of both our local and national energy concerns."
Latimer said the city has selected a location for the facility but much of the planning for the project is yet to be finalized. Latimer expected that about 40 or 50 jobs would be created once the facility is operational, and she is hopeful that the plant will develop more employment opportunities in the near future.
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April 7, 2008
Raven Biofuels International Corp. and Pure Energy Corp. have announced a proposed merger. The two companies are developing multiple plants using Pure Energy's technology to produce ethanol and furfural from several biomass sources. Furfural is a chemical compound derived from agricultural byproducts, such as corncobs, sawdust, or oat and wheat bran.
Under the proposed terms of the agreement, Pure Energy shareholders will receive Raven shares representing a majority interest in the company and $3 million in cash, which is based on a Raven share valued at $1.85. The combined company will operate under the Pure Energy name and trade under the symbol of RVBF.OB, said Irshad Ahmed, CEO of Pure Energy.
The two companies have a total of four plants under development using Pure Energy's technology, which uses a double dilute sulfuric acid pretreatment to create separate streams of five and six carbon sugars and lignin. The five carbon sugars from the hemicellulose fraction will be converted furfural, while the six carbon sugars from the cellulose fraction will be fermented into ethanol. The lignin fraction, which has an energy content of 8,000 British Thermal Units per pound, will be burnt to provide process heat for the facilities. "We are the first cellulosic ethanol company based on an oil refinery model where the same barrel of crude gives you both fuels and chemicals," Ahmed said. "We view biomass as a raw material created by nature to support both fuel and chemical production."
The company's first project is a demonstration scale facility in the Panoli Industrial Estate in the state of Gujarat, India. The plant will process 145,000 tons of sugar cane bagasse into 5 million gallons of ethanol and 17,000 tons of furfural annually. Ahmed said the plant should come online in the second quarter of 2009.
The company is building full scale projects with about four times the capacity of the Indian plant in Washington, Idaho, Pennsylvania and British Columbia, Canada. The Canadian project will use pine trees killed by invasive bark beetles that have devastated large forested areas in the province, while the Washington and Pennsylvania plants will use wood chips for feedstock. The Idaho plant, which will utilize corn cobs, is expected to be the first of the larger plants completed and operational in the third quarter of 2009.
Ahmed said the furfural market is excellent for producers at the moment. On a weight basis, furfural is three to five times more valuable than ethanol. Chinese imports wiped out the U.S. furfural industry in the 1990s. "We are 100 percent dependent on China for our furfural, and so is the rest of the world," he said. However, the Chinese government has moved against many small, highly polluting furfural producers in an effort to clean up environmental problems prior to the Beijing Olympic Games. That has nearly tripled furfural prices in a matter of less than six months. Furfural is used in the plastics industry in applications ranging from spandex to fiber glass and is also an important corrosion inhibitor and component in pharmaceuticals.
Pure Energy is also looking for partners to license its technology. "We are making our technology available to whoever wants to go build a biorefinery project," Ahmed said. "It is a very simplified technology model where there is a technology licensing fee and a very small royalty."
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July 6, 2006 --Pure Energy Corporation announced today that it has entered into a Joint Venture with Green Star Products, Inc. (OTC:GSPI) (GreenStarUSA.com) and Bio-Clean Fuels, Inc. to undertake integrated ethanol and biodiesel production projects in the United States and certain select countries internationally. The JV Company, known as Green Star International, Inc., was formed pursuant to a Joint Venture Agreement executed by the parties in March of this year.
The new entity, which is fifty-percent owned by Pure Energy, and twenty-five-percent owned by each of Green Star Products and Bio-Clean Fuels, marks Pure Energy's first ever strategic partnership to integrate it's cellulosic ethanol production technology with a modular methyl ester (biodiesel) processing platform in the United States.
"This partnership reflects many years of combined experience that the management of Pure Energy Corporation, Green Star Products, and Bio-Clean Fuels have gained by developing and delivering innovative biofuels manufacturing systems," said Irshad Ahmed, Pure Energy's President and Chief Executive Officer. "If successful, Green Star International has the potential to reshape the biofuels industry by enabling the first ever Total Biofuels Biorefinery capable of producing ethanol, biodiesel, and other value-added chemicals and co-products in a single processing facility."
The concept of integrating Pure Energy's biomass-to-ethanol two-stage dilute acid hydrolysis Biorefinery processing platform with Bio-Clean Fuels and Green Star Products'continuous-flow transesterification technology for the production of biodiesel offers several key advantages; including energy savings and utilization of waste heat; product marketing and logistical synergies; sharing of laboratory and QC facilities; sharing of maintenance equipment and plant operating and management personnel; and significant improvements to the overall production economics versus stand-alone facilities.
Green Star Products'President, Joseph P. LaStella, stated, "The Green Star International joint venture represents all of the various elements required to create successful world-class biorefinery manufacturing projects both economically and practically." Green Star Products has been a strategic alliance partner of Pure Energy Corporation for a number of years, having jointly undertaken the production and supply of shipments of biodiesel to major oil companies in India from the United States. "Integration of Green Star Products'biodiesel engineering and production capabilities with Bio-Clean Fuels'technical and procurement background, and Pure Energy's patented cellulosic-ethanol technology and project implementation competence represents a well-rounded team capable of implementing multi-tiered biofuels projects efficiently and cost-effectively."
"Each of the JV partners brings extraordinarily well-matched technologies, relationships, and capabilities which complement each other very well; said LaStella "By combining our respective resources and personnel, Green Star International is well-positioned to compete in the rapidly expanding biofuels market."
The Joint Venture, as a project implementation entity, is presently developing several United States based biorefinery projects in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Idaho, Washington, and California, as well as a number of projects outside of the United States, each with a focus on integrating ethanol and biodiesel production under one roof.
Pure Energy Corporation, a leader in engineered alternative fuel formulations, is credited for incorporating renewable fuel components, such as ethanol, into conventional fossil fuels, to create cleaner gasoline and diesel-based fuel blends for use in passenger cars and trucks. Pure Energy's patented Puranol and polymeric fuel additive systems for ethanol-diesel blends (E-Diesel) are at the core of several of the company's breakthrough alternative fuels, which have been demonstrated in over one million combined miles with the Chicago Transit Authority (TransitChicago.com), Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) (ADMWorld.com) and Waste Management Inc., (NYSE: WMI) (wm.com) and other industry partners in the United States and abroad. Operated non-stop between 1999 through 2001, the E-Diesel demonstration project with ADM Trucking utilized actual operational fleet trucks at Decatur, Illinois, and was considered as one of the longest alternative fuels demonstration projects in the country.
Pure Energy's integrated biorefinery technology platform for producing ethanol and chemicals from agricultural and municipal waste biomass represents a significantly lower-cost ethanol production process as compared to conventional technologies based on corn or sugarcane. Pure Energy is also credited as the only privately held company in the United States with a successful designation of an Alternative Fuel, P-Series, under the Energy Policy Act of 1992 at the United States Department of Energy (http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/p-series.html).
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