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I’ve given readers a look into Coskata’s history and process, now I’ll take a little liberty and give my opinion on the partnership and the future of ethanol in transportation.

I have to admit, since the days of “Live Green, Go Yellow” – I’ve been perplexed a why GM would chase a blatantly unsustainable solution to our energy dependence problems – Corn ethanol. Despite what the public may feel about GM’s environmental record, I’ve met only extremely bright people working in GM’s environmental department. I’m sure that they have access to a calculator, and could do the math and figure out we’d need to cultivate nearly the entire land area of the US to grow enough corn to produce the ethanol needed to fuel our cars and trucks for a year (Pimentel 2001).

Turns out, they weren’t banking on endless fields of corn to produce the ethanol needed. Their strategy has been to look to ’second-generation’ biofuels in the form of cellulosic ethanol. (I was told that the ‘live green go yellow’ ad campaign has since been retired).

A senior executive confirmed over lunch that a foreign auto company had approached Coskata prior to GM looking to invest in their technology. The story goes that that executive contacted GM, to see if they would be interested in investing and keeping the company domestic. GM and Coskata were able to work out a plan over the past 6 months for them to take a large (undisclosed) stake in the company, and the deal was announced in January at the Detroit International Auto Show.

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Three important things make Coskata stand out from the other cellulosic technologies that are in development.

1. Bacteria that are able to process syngas into ethanol in a constant process.
2. The Coskata process uses a filter, rather than distillation to separate the ethanol from water.
3. Multiple feedstocks can be used.

Constant process:

Most cellulosic research has used the batch process, allowing only large batches to be produced and then a enzyme used to breakdown the cellulose into sugar. Coskata’s process uses bacteria that are able to process syngas into ethanol in approximately 2 mins, and then is ready to keep going back for more, reducing the production time. And we’ve all heard the adage “time is money”, and it is no different in this case.

Filter, Not Distillation

This is where Coskata is able to really improve on the EROEI of the ethanol process. Traditional ethanol production, and even second-generation technologies involve thermal distillation to remove the ethanol from alcohol. Big batches of “beer” are cooked down, requiring large amounts of energy to do so. Coskata’s ability to use their proprietary technology to filter out the ethanol without having to put in large amounts of energy to do so greatly improves not only the EROEI, but again the cost.

Multiple Feedstocks

Here’s where things get interesting. The flexibility the Coskata process offers is one of its greatest strengths, and also a possible detriment. The picture to the right is the stock photo that the company gave us in their presentation. Along with the picture, they described the flexibility to use virtually any combustible, carbon containing good to be turned into the syngas used in their process, even municipal waste.

However, Coskata emphasized that they are focused environmentally friendly sources of biomass to use as a feedstock. In fact their models use $50/ton as the cost of feedstock – which is the cost per ton of harvested wood – in their equation to come up with a cost of $1/gallon. This allows them to take new instituted producer credits for ethanol production that passed in last years energy bill.

Tires were mentioned as a great source of carbon, but also noted that these are prized by waste to energy facilities, and the cost of tires is higher than other sources.

Coskata hopes to roll out production to all 50 states, allowing local economies to produce ethanol and use it directly for local transportation needs. The multiple sources allowed by the Coskata process will allow these individual sites to use the feedstocks that are available specific to that location. (e.g. corn fodder in Iowa, wood waste and biomass in Maine.)

However this apparently flexibility might be Coskata’s achilles heel in the eyes of environmentalists. Here’s why:

Coal.

Two lines of questions that I could not get a direct answer to from the Coskata and GM representatives:

1. What is the business model that Coskata sees going forward? Who would control what feedstocks would be used?
2. In a capitalist economy, wouldn’t one assume that the least expensive, and most energy dense feedstock would be used to increase return on investment? Wouldn’t that dense, cheap, readily available most likely be coal? (Dave from Green Options also mentions this idea in his post on the trip – at cleantechnica)

The responses we received were unclear at best. They tried to put on an altruistic front, and stay on track with the “green” and renewable possibilities that this process offers.

And maybe they were being honest. Maybe GM and Coskata do have nothing but the best intentions for this technology. However if they do demonstrate the viability of this technology with multiple feedstocks, there might be a large company out there, sitting on a pile of record revenue with diminishing reserves that might be willing to spend enough money to break that altruism and buy the technology to run their own plant fired by coal with the Coskata process. Or perhaps a company that happens to be sitting on a large pile of that dense, energy rich fossil fuel – maybe they’d want to get into the game.

Walking away from this demonstration, I felt very positive about Coskata’s ability to deliver on what they promise. I actually see that we could be significantly increasing the percentage of transportation fuel in the form of ethanol in the not too distant future.

However whether this process will be a panacea or a Pandora’s box is yet to be seen.

[disclaimer: GM paid for Groovy Green's travel, room, and food to allow us to attend this presentation.]