Company Name
BioGasol

Company Web Site
http://www.biogasol.com/

Headquarters
Denmark

Latest News
February 20, 2009
Denmark-based BioGasol ApS, has received $13.4 million from the Danish Energy Agency' s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program to help finance building its 5 million liter (1.3 MMgy) BornBioFuel cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant project in Aakirkeby on the island of Bornholm, Denmark.

BioGasol received $4.6 million from the agency in December 2007 for the $45 million project.

"We are very happy with this grant," said Birgitte Ahring, chief executive officer at BioGasol. "The current financial crisis makes it even more difficult to find financing for demonstration plant activities, but this significant grant has increased BioGasol's opportunities of entering into partnerships with industrial partners or financial investors."

In the U.S., BioGasol is collaborating with Pacific Ethanol Inc. to build a 2.7 MMgy cellulosic ethanol demonstration-scale plant colocated with Pacific Ethanol' s 35 MMgy corn-based ethanol facility in Boardman, Ore. The Joint BioEnergy Institute http://www.jbei.org/ is also a partner in the project, which received $24 million from the U.S. DOE in January 2008.. The demonstration plant is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Funding
No additional funding information.

Technology
BioGasol has developed proprietary technologies within pretreatment, biogas production and a unique C5-fermentation for maximum ethanol production. The BioGasol concept is a well integrated technology with more than 90% utilization of the energy potential in the biomass. The production of other biofuels such as methane hydrogen and solid fuels adds value to the overall process benefit.

The technology can be used for green field plants or for bolt on plants to existing first generation ethanol plants. Using the yields obtained in the pilot plant 1.36 USD per Gallon is a valid estimate of the Minimum Ethanol Sales Price (MESP) for the Nth plant and BioGasol believes that its current development projects will reduce the MESP to about 1.0 USD per Gallon.

Our road map towards the market consists of four gates. We are in the third gate where we have a number of projects related to demonstration plants and technology development projects with international partners such as Tate & Lyle.

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BioGasol has developed a new highly efficient and cost effective pre-treatment process for the opening of lignocellulosic biomasses and a unique C5-fermentation which allows the conversion of all carbohydrates available in the biomass into ethanol and to increase and maximize the ethanol yield remarkably.

Our focus is to produce bioethanol as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. Our concept therefore includes the recirculation and reuse of all streams produced in the process. The reuse of process water is possible when we integrate a biogas production part in the process. This way the toxic wastewater is purified, can be reused in the system and at the same time biogas is being produced. This part of our concept is patented.

A combination of these innovative ideas along with the best available technologies has ensured an economical feasibility with a competitive advantage compared to competitors.

Process Technology

The BioGasol Concept consists of the following process steps:

Pre-treatment
Hydrolysis
Fermentation
Anaerobic digestion of process water and recirculation

A great advance with the concept is that nearly all carbohydrates in the raw material are converted into bioethanol (the main product) and hydrogen while the unused fraction is converted into methane. Approximately 15 percent of the input material will be separated out as a solid fuel, which can be used for combustion. This fraction can be increased or recirculated to the pretreatment unit and used together with fresh raw material.

1. Step: Pre-treatment
BioGasol has developed a new highly efficient and cost effective pretreatment process for the opening of lignocellulosic biomasses. The pretreatment process is a newly developed method called wet explosion and is a combination of steam-explosion and wet oxidation, applying both the addition of oxygen and a pressure release at high temperature (170-200° C).

The biomass is cut and mixed with water before pretreatment. BioGasol s method uses no chemicals and only a small amount of oxygen is added.

2. Step: Hydrolysis and glucose fermentation
To enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated biomass material a combined hydrolysis and fermentation is used. The main product from the hydrolysis is glucose and xylose. The glucose is simultaneously fermented into ethanol by yeast and after the fermentation the process stream is separated into a solid and a liquid fraction. The latter is led to the xylose fermentation reactor.

3. Step: Xylose fermentation
Many biomasses and agricultural wastes contain xylose in the order of 10-40 percent of the total carbohydrates and xylose is therefore the second most abundant carbohydrate monomer after glucose.

Fermentation of xylose is therefore a crucial step forward in reducing the cost of ethanol production from lignocellulosic raw materials. However, the fermentation of xylose has been proven to be highly difficult to impossible.

BioGasol has developed propriety technology for the fermentation of xylose into ethanol. The xylose fermentation is performed in an "immobilized" reactor at 70° C where the pentoses are transformed into bioethanol using a thermophilic anaerobic bacterium that is able to convert both hexoses and pentoses into ethanol or ethanol/ hydrogen.

This step is unique and one of BioGasols patented processes.

4. Step: Biogas production and recirculation of the process water
After the ethanol production a part of the organics still remains in the process water. Anaerobic digestion has been used for a long time as treatment of organic waste streams. The advantages are a high reduction of organic matter in the water and the production of methane, which can be used as energy source. The great benefits, in contrast to aerobic waste treatment, are the reuse of the process water and an overall positive energy balance of the waste treatment process. The income from the methane produced will furthermore lower the price for the ethanol production significantly.

Since 2006 this concept is implemented in pilot scale at Denmark s Technical University in Copenhagen, Denmark. BioGasol is currently working on two projects, one in Denmark and one in the state of Oregon in the United States. In Denmark, BioGasol is building a feedstock flexible plant, BornBioFuel, on the island of Bornholm, that will demonstrate how the process concept can be cost efficient adapted to the low cost available feedstocks in the region. In collaboration with Pacific Ethanol a cellulosic ethanol plant will be buildt co-located with an existing corn to ethanol plant in Boardman, Oregon, on the US North West Coast.