Glycol Biotechnologies to produce ethanol from glycerine in Texas by mid 2008

In Texas, Glycol Biotechnologies, a firm founded by Rice University researchers that has developed a technology that converts glycerine into ethanol, will begin producing ethanol at a pilot plant in Houston by mid 2008. The company uses a strain of E. coli for its process.

Glycerine is a 10 percent by-product of biodiesel production, and the boom in biodiesel has resulted in a glycerine glut and depressed the finances of the biodiesel plants who make it. According to one of the company’s co-founders, they have received unsolicited queries from producers representing more than half of biodiesel production.

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