DETROIT (Reuters) - Start-up biofuel company Coskata Inc said on Wednesday it teamed up with engineering firm ICM Inc to build a commercial plant to mass produce cellulose-based ethanol using Coskata-developed technology.
The plant will be designed and constructed by ICM, which specializes in ethanol plant design. It is due to open in late 2010 and will be Coskata's first ethanol plant.
Cellulose is a structural material contained in nearly every plant, tree, and bush all over the world without agricultural effort or cost needed to make it grow.
The new U.S. energy bill signed into law by President George W. Bush in December calls for a huge jump in biofuels production for America's automobiles - 36 billion gallons by 2022, with 16 billion gallons from cellulosic ethanol.
Tests carried out by Argonne National Laboratory have shown Coskata's cellulosic ethanol generates 7.7 times the energy used to produce it, compared with 1.3 times for corn-based ethanol.
