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As I stated earlier, Groovy Green was invited to Chicago on behalf of GM to tour Coskata, and meet with their executives for a presentation. (Full Disclosure: GM paid my way for the trip.)

We were given a dearth of information, on the history, development and future plans for the GM and Coskata partnership. Wes Bolsen – Coskata Chief Marketing Officer, William Roe – Coskata President & CEO, and Mary Beth Stanek – Director GM Environment & Energy Policy and Commercialization all presented to our group.

Here are some of my initial thoughts.

History – This information can be found at their website:

Coskata was founded in July 2006 by Todd Kimmel and Rathin Datta with tremendous support from Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and GreatPoint Ventures. Todd Kimmel and the GreatPoint Ventures team (Aaron Mandell, Andrew Perlman, Avi Goldberg) had collaborated previously on an energy investment. Upon the identification of a strong set of anaerobic microorganisms for the conversion of synthesis gas to ethanol at Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma by the founding consortium, Todd began licensing discussions with the collective universities, and the process of pulling together a funding round. On July 1, 2006, after closing an exclusive license to the technology with the universities and detailed discussions with Samir Kaul and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, and Bill Wiberg of Advanced Technology Ventures, Coskata was born. The team initiated experimental work at Argonne National Laboratories, and started their work to advance the organism.

Beyond this information, what I learned was that the organisms that Coskata uses as part of its proprietary process were discovered by Dr. Ralph Tanner at OSU. This bacteria strain was found to turn carbon monoxide into ethanol as a by product of its energy cycle. The company was formed in 2006, and after negotiations were finalized delivery took place in January 2007. Since then the 5 original strains of bacteria have been turned into “thoroughbred” bacteria that create ethanol with nearly 50x the original efficiency of the strains. This was done without the use of genetic engineering, but the company has not ruled out the use of gene manipulation in future efforts to increase their productivity.

These “bugs” lie at the heart of the Coskata process, transforming a continuous strain of syngas into ethanol. The entire process takes 2 minutes. This allows ethanol to be produced continuously, rather than in batch form – the current method of producing ethanol from corn, sugar, or other starches.

Here’s what Coskata’s process can accomplish: (Caveats noted below)

Efficiency:

• 100 gal from 1 ton dry material.
• Less than one gal of water to produce a gal of ethanol. (4 gallons used in corn ethanol production.)
• Up to 7.7 times energy returned as used in ethanol production process*. (Compare to 1.3 EROEI of corn ethanol.)
• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 84% compared to conventional gasoline**

Affordable:

• Ethanol produced for under $1 per gallon, which should equate to 50 cents to $1.00 less than gasoline at the pump.***

Flexible:

• Multiple non-food sources are used to make ethanol
• Geographically flexible by using resources from almost every country around the globe

Caveats -
* this supposes that wood chips at 20% moisture content were used as fuel for the gasification process, as well as the feed stock.
** also uses above stipulations. Data is from a model, and has not been tested in the lab.
*** uses $50 per ton cost of feedstock – sustainably harvested wood. Doesn’t include cost to provide a return on capital equipment investment.