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December 2, 2009
ZeaChem Inc. on Friday said it has been awarded a $25 million federal stimulus grant it will put toward its cellulosic ethanol plant under construction in Boardman.
Lakewood, Colo.-based ZeaChem announced last month that it had started construction on the 250,000-gallon-capacity plant, which will be capable of converting organic material such as forest waste and wood pulp into fuel.
The company's core technology, which will result in a chemical called ethyl acetate, will be online by 2010. The $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will be used to build and integrate additional components that will enable final production of cellulosic ethanol.
ZeaChem was one of 19 organizations to be selected for a total of $564 million in stimulus grants targeted for advanced biorefinery projects.
The roughly $34 million biorefinery will use poplar trees as its principal feedstock. The trees will be supplied by GreenWood Resources Inc., a Portland company that operates a 17,000-acre tree farm near Boardman. If successful, the company hopes to expand the Boardman plant to commercial-scale production in the range of 25 million to 50 million gallons of fuel annually.
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November 20, 2009
A Colorado company that has developed a process to convert wood to fuel is starting construction of what will eventually be a commercial-scale production plant.
Lakewood-based ZeaChem Inc. is working with Hazen Research of Golden to build the first units of its biofuels refinery. ZeaChem President and CEO Jim Imbler says the company will transfer the modular units to Boardman, Ore., where it will eventually run a commercial refinery.
ZeaChem plans to start production at a demonstration facility in Oregon by the end of next year.
ZeaChem uses a bacteria to break down the cellulose in wood to make fuel. Imbler says the process, unlike traditional fermentation with yeast, produces little carbon dioxide.
The company raised $34 million earlier this year to help build a refinery.
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January 7, 2008
(From earth2tech.com)
Cellulosic ethanol startup ZeaChem is one of the firms that has been racing to build a next-generation biofuel plant in the United States. On Wednesday, the company announced that it has raised a sizable round of funding - $34 million - to help implement that goal, and the company expects to start construction on a 1.5 million gallon per year plant in Boardman, Ore., sometime in 2009.
Fundraising is no easy task in this economic climate. But it's easier for a company like ZeaChem, which is already 7 years old and has moved past the R&D phase. CEO Jim Imbler told us on Tuesday that he thinks it will be the biofuel businesses that are closer to execution that will survive this difficult year - "If you're still focused on the "magic" of the technology it's going to be a tough year ahead," said Imbler.
Another milestone for ZeaChem is that giant petroleum refiner Valero Energy Corporation joined the company's latest round as a strategic investor, and the company could help when it comes to reaching the massive scale needed to supply fuels for mainstream transportation needs. Valero has also invested in other renewable fuel companies like algae fuel developer Solix Biofuels.
ZeaChem's funding was co-led by Globespan Partners and PrairieGold Venture Partners (a South Dakota firm) and also included Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Firelake Capital. This latest funding brings the company's total to $40 million, including a $6 million round raised in the summer of 2007.
ZeaChem says its process of converting plants and trees into ethanol produces 40 percent more ethanol per ton of biomass than any known competitor. That's a bold claim, given the number of competitors (which includes startups Coskata, Mascoma and Range Fuels and larger companies like Iogen and Poet).
ZeaChem's process uses a combination of biological processes to convert the sugars into acetate and then gasifies the remainder, tough lignin and all, into hydrogen before mixing the two streams in a reaction called hydrogenolysis to produce ethanol. The company is first concentrating on poplar trees - one of the reasons it chose the Boardman, Ore., location - as a low cost feedstock, and has a deal with GreenWood Resources for its (sustainably harvested!) poplar supply.
ZeaChem's funding is one of the first larger cleantech investments of 2009. In 2008, biofuel was the second-most-funded area, and it received 11 percent (or $904 million) of the year's total funding, according to the Cleantech Group. We're predicting that biofuels receive less funding in 2009, but for now, the sector is off to a good start.
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April 14, 2008
ZeaChem says they have created a new means of developing ethanol from wood chips, switch grass, and several other sources that is more efficient than competing methods. Developed by experts from the Coors brewery, crude oil refining, and other chemical industries, the process involves joining biomass in a fermenter with a naturally occurring microorganism (found in sources such as termites or horse manure) that unlike other methods uses all fractions of the plant, meaning the energy of all fractions of the biomass end up in the product.
According to the company, their process will theoretically produce a maximum 160 gallons of ethanol for every ton of biomass, and a biomass farm with an eight-mile radius could support a refinery producing approximately 300 million gallons of the fuel per year. In addition, ZeaChem says their method is more efficient than others, citing a "net energy ratio" of between 10 and 12, meaning that for every unit of fossil energy used, 10 -12 units of renewable energy are produced. In contrast, the company claims corn-based ethanol has an approximate net energy ratio of only 1.6.
According to ZeaChem CEO James Imber, the company will be able to produce ethanol at 80 cents per gallon at the plant, which he estimates would equal a price of about $1.50 at the pump.
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Feb. 11 /PRNewswire/
ZeaChem, Inc. and GreenWood Resources, Inc. (GWR), on behalf of GreenWood Tree Farm Fund, LP ("GTFF") announced today the signing of a non-binding Letter of Intent to supply poplar tree (aka Pacific Albus) feed stock under a long-term agreement to support the operation of an initial 1.5 million gallon per year ZeaChem cellulosic Bio-Refinery located near GTFF's Boardman, Oregon Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified Pacific Albus tree farm in the Columbia River Basin. Additionally, ZeaChem and GWR agreed to explore increasing the scope of the relationship to accommodate additional capacity at this Bio-Refinery and other future sites through the potential development of short-rotation poplar biomass energy tree farms integrated with ethanol conversion technology.
ZeaChem will be responsible for financing, constructing and operating the Bio-Refinery. The Bio-Refinery will be located at the Port of Morrow near GTFF's existing Pacific Albus tree farms. Initial engineering for the site has already begun.
Jeff Nuss, President and CEO of GWR, said, "We are pleased to have the opportunity to utilize a portion of the existing residual fiber from the GreenWood Tree Farms, and to bring our expertise in silviculture, germplasm, irrigation technology and global organizational reach together with ZeaChem's novel approach to producing cellulosic-based chemicals and ethanol. We look forward to working with ZeaChem as it commercializes its process and believe it sets the stage for the development of future short rotation poplar biomass energy tree farms integrated with emerging technologies for converting to ethanol."
"Today's announcement is a win-win for both companies. It allows GreenWood to benefit from the development of the growing market demand for cellulosic-based chemicals and ethanol, while providing ZeaChem with a dedicated long-term cellulosic feed stock source from the leader in intensively-managed hybrid poplar trees for our planned initial 1.5 million GPY Bio-Refinery and other future sites," said James Imbler, President and Chief Executive Officer of ZeaChem, Inc.
GreenWood Resources (GWR) is the global leader in the development and management of short-rotation, high yield hardwood tree farms for a range of products and end uses.
The GreenWood Tree Farm Fund, LP ("GTFF"), a $175,000,000 fund organized by GWR, has invested in the consolidation of existing high-yield, fast-growing tree farm assets in the Pacific Northwest. GTFF currently owns 35,000 acres of sustainable tree farms certified under FSC in the Columbia Basin in Oregon and Washington. Investment management for the GTFF is provided through GreenWood Capital Management North America, LLC (a majority control subsidiary of GWR). GWR also provides tree farm property and irrigation management for GTFF. GTFF has also organized to capture unrealized value from its tree farms, by developing value-added processing with The Collins Companies of Portland, Oregon, to move logs into solid wood products markets. Collins provides management to the mills planned by GTFF, and marketing and sales activities for the FSC-certified Pacific Albus wood generated from the manufacturing.
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January 26, 2008
(From the San Jose Mercury News)
ZeaChem's "secret sauce," according to co-founder and research executive vice president Dan Verser, is both how it breaks down biomass -waste wood from poplar trees at first -as well as how it uses wood residue to produce the hydrogen it mixes with ethyl acetate to make ethanol.
One key: A bacteria commonly found in the gut of a termite or in pond scum helps convert the trees to fuel. "Our bug is very tough," said Jim Imbler, ZeaChem's president and chief executive officer.
In its labs, in a nondescript office park not far from Highway 101, ZeaChem has a fancy bottle filled with one liter of its ethanol, the first batch of what it hopes will be millions of gallons. It has begun designing a small-scale production facility on the Oregon coast. It has a ready supply of wood nearby, a tree farm growing poplars for paper companies. Production should start in 2009.
Don't expect to see a ZeaChem station across from Exxon or Shell at every intersection. The company intends to sell its products -ethanol and others that can be derived from its process -to refiners or third-party energy brokers. As a venture-backed start-up, if successful it'll be a prime candidate for an IPO or purchase by a large energy company.
Its method for making ethanol means greater efficiency and higher yields, Imbler. In theory, ZeaChem can create 150 to 160 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass. That's triple the amount made from a ton of corn, and 35 percent to 45 percent more than companies using another method to make ethanol.
"We maximize the value of every molecule," Imbler said. "I wish I could talk more about that, but that's where the (intellectual property) is."
The size of the market -about 146 billion gallons of gasoline are consumed in the United States each year -has attracted many other players.
Dan Kammen, a UC-Berkeley professor and director of its Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, said 20 U.S. companies are doing the "real nuts-and-bolts work" of making ethanol, with 50 more or so still in stealth mode or formulating business plans.
"It's a huge space," Imbler said. "There's plenty of room for plenty of competitors."
Impressed by the pace of technological development in the segment, Kammen still offers caution about how fast it'll all take place. From securing steady supplies of feedstock to building refineries to figuring out how to get the fuel to market to actually building enough E85 pumps and making enough cars that can use the fuel means that, at first, ethanol makers will only fill a market niche. "They'll be hard-pressed to produce enough to really register as a big chunk," he said.
Jim McMillan, a Bay Area native and a bioenergy manager with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., is familiar with ZeaChem's process and calls it "a very innovative way of combining biochemistry and thermochemistry to maximize ethanol."
Its next challenge will be to show its real-world potential. "Now, they have to demonstrate it," McMillan said.
Imbler said the ZeaChem process will allow it make ethanol at about $1 per gallon."
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