20 August 2013
Details
Optinol Inc.
has achieved energy cost parity feasibility
with ethanol for the production of bio-butanol (n-butanol)
from a wide variety of sugars.
Based on preliminary engineering studies to
estimate the capital and operating costs for
commercial scale production, the company has concluded that
it is feasibleto produce bio-butanol at cost parity with ethanol.
The process has been tested with a wide variety of feedstocks
including
* sugar cane juice,
* corn starch,
* sweet sorghum juice,
* molasses types including sugar cane and beets
* and cellulosic sugars.
All forms of sugar performed equally well.
The bulk of the lab and pilot work has been conducted
at Louisiana State University,Final feasibility studies
are targeting optimization of the extraction medium.
Optinol,
Jack Oswald, Interim CEO
- Optinol has taken an alternative approach to
producing butanol compared to companies like
Gevo, Cobalt and Butamax.
- In lieu of genetic modification of the organism or
other hosts such as yeast or E.coli, the Optinol process
uses a patented non-GMO clostridium strain that
naturally and prolifically favors the production of butanol,
and without acetone or ethanol.
- The Optinol team chose to engineer a production solution
tailored to the organism rather than trying to tailor the
organism to existing production processes.
- The net result is
high yield and commercially robust process
to produce low cost butanol
at a price competitive with ethanol.
Ravi Randhava, PhD, CTO
- The Optinol process centers on
continuous flow through fermentation of our organism
in inexpensive immobilzed cell columns.
- Low cost fermentation combined with
low cost continuous extraction and
low energy distillation processes
provide the basis for a
low cost commerically robust production platform.
About bio-butanol
- Unlike ethanol, bio-butanol is hydrophobic and
has similar energy content to that of gasoline.
- As such, it can be transported in standard pipelines
without corrosion and other water-based issues
caused by ethanol.
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