Los Angeles County to rule on Bluefire Ethanol wood waste ethanol plant this week

In California, Los Angeles County Planning Commission is expected to rule this week on a proposed $30 million BlueFire ethanol plant at Lancaster that will use garden, wood waste and unrecyclable paper as feedstocks. The 3 Mgy plant will be joined in the Bluefire lineup by a 19 Mgy plant in Corona that received a $40 million grant from the Department of Energy and will be operational in 2010. The Lancaster plant will consume 175 tons of waste biomass per day.

BlueFire Ethanol Fuels had hoped to break ground in April but faced delays in obtaining air permits before commencing construction. BlueFire closed its $15 million financing round last month to provide working capital and project funds for its 17 Mgy cellulosic ethanol project in Southern California.

In the financing agreement, the Quercus environmental trust acquired $15 million in common stock and warrants, while Aurarian Capital Partners and Aurarian Capital converted their senior convertible notes
into common stock.

Bluefire holds the exclusive North American license to employ the Arkenol Process Technology, a patented system that transforms cellulosic waste into usable ethanol.

BlueFire’s CEO said that the company plans to build to a capacity of up to 550 Mgy by 2013 using agricultural and wood waste and non-food crops including switchgrass. The company said that its sulfuric acid-based process for breaking down cellulose is superior to enzyme- or thermochemical-based approaches to the problem. “It’s an issue of financing, not technology,” BlueFire CEO Arnold Klann told CheckBioTech in discussing the company’s barriers to growth.

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