Mascoma, Chevron partner to produce ethanol, lignin

In New Hampshire, Mascoma announced that it has entered into a feedstock processing and lignin supply agreement with Chevron Technology Ventures.  Under terms of the agreement, CTV will provide various sources of lignocellulosic feedstock to Mascoma.  Mascoma will then convert the feedstock to cellulosic ethanol through its proprietary process, which produces lignin as a by-product.  Mascoma will provide this lignin to CTV for evaluation.

“This is an important moment for us at Mascoma,” said Dr. Jim Flatt, President of Mascoma. “The upgrading of our byproduct lignin to high value transportation fuels is an important step in our effort to prove the effectiveness of integrated biorefineries. It has been our goal all along to make our process as integrated and sustainable as possible.”

Lignin is a complex chemical compound derived from woody biomass. After biomass has been converted through Mascoma’s proprietary Consolidated Bio Processing method, which breaks down the sugars in the cellulose and turns it into ethanol, energy-rich lignin is left over.

Michael Kannelos at Greentech Media commented, “The lignin angle is interesting. Ligning keeps microbes from gobbling up plants. It is why we have coal: the lignin outlasted the microbes and the cellulosic material fossilized into coal over millions of years.”

It’s a high-energy material. Some ethanol companies plan to burn lignin to run their own plants. Others transform it thermochemically and add the byproducts back into the ethanol mix.

There has been considerable research on the use of lignin as a feedstock for hydrocarbon-based fuels, and last year, Chevron and Weyerhaeuser announced the formation of a joint venture, Catchlight Energy, to research the production of fuels from forest materials, including lignin. Green Car Congress is also reporting on two patent applications from Chevron on a “process for generating a hydrocarbon feedstock from lignin”.

Chemrec has also made progress on the production of biofuels made from “black liquor,” a soup of dissolved wood substance, mostly lignin, and spent pulping chemicals.

The project will last for two years, and Mascoma is hopeful that the developed technology may be suitable for a wide variety of feedstocks. In December 2008, Mascoma began creating ethanol from cellulosic biomass with positive results at its demonstration facility in Rome, New York. The company, in collaboration with its commercialization subsidiary Frontier Renewable Resources, is in the process of financing its first full-scale ethanol facility in Kinross, Michigan. The company plans to break ground on that facility during the first half of 2010.

Mascoma background

Last month, Mascoma announced that CEO Bruce Jamerson is stepping down, and Mascoma’s VP for R&D of R&D and operations,  Jim Flatt, will take the role as acting president and lead the company temporarily while the company searches for a new CEO. Jamerson will become chairman of Mascoma and CEO of the company’s Frontier Renewable Resources subsidiary that is developing a 40 Mgy cellulosic ethanol plant in Kinross, Michigan.

In the announcement, Jamerson, who arrived from now-bankrupt VeraSun Energy in 2007 and eventually forced out former president Colin Smith, emphasized that it was time to find a CEO more focused on operations and scale-up, rather than an executive skilled in financing and other early-stage activities. Similar themes were cited in the arrival of Bill Haywood as CEO of LS9, the departure of Martin Tobias from Imperium at Christmastime in 2007, and the replacement of Range Fuels founder and CEO Mitch Mandich, who led the company through an $100 million capital raise and secured $80 million funding for cellulosic ethanol demonstration from the DOE, with David Aldous, a former EVP of Strategy and Portfolio for Shell.

Last May, there was brighter news from Mascoma. It announced a breakthrough that is reducing the cost of cellulosic ethanol production by up to 60 percent in lab tests. The breakthrough related to consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) – a transformational technology which the DOE/USDA 2006 Roadmap called “the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation,” and which reduces or eliminates the need for added enzymes to process pretreated lignocellulose into ethanol.

Mascoma has reported that, in the lab, based on multiple runs with reduced enzyme requirements, it is seeing normalized per gallon operating costs in March at just under 40 percent of  its  June 2008 baseline. Mascoma’s results are demonstrating that CBP is much closer than thought, but it is clear that the Mascoma board believes that proof of concept in the lab is not being translated quickly enough into production results at the plant.

Mascoma’s 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy candidate profile

Chevron background

Forest biomass and lignin: In March 2008, timber colossus Weyerhaeuser and Chevron announced a joint venture, Catchlight, to explore cellulosic ethanol technologies. The joint venture is an outcome of a research partnership between the two companies that commenced in the spring of 2007. The joint venture is the second forest-products deal announced by Chevron in recent months. Chevron Technology Ventures recently partnered with Georgia Tech, C2 Biofuels, the Georgia Research Alliance and one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s new BioEnergy Research Centers to explore the production of biofuels from forest products.

Jatropha: Last December, the University of California, Davis commenced a pilot project to determine opportunities for cultivating jatropha in Southern California. Seeds from India for the drought-tolerant plant are being tested at the UC Desert Research and Extension Center in Holtville, in a trial financed by Chevron.

Biocrude: In March 2008, the Wall Street Journal profiled the sharply increased tempo of activities of Bio Oil in the research and production of bio-oil, or bio-crude. The current energy-transportation system “has been a hundred years and billions of dollars in the making,” Rick Zalesky, vice president for biofuels and hydrogen at Chevron’s alternative-energy arm told the Journal. “The ideal outcome of our research is to develop biomass-based transportation fuels that have chemical properties similar to those of gasoline and diesel,” he said. The profile covers efforts by Chevron, BP, Marathon, ConocoPhillips, and Shell to produce a viable alternative to petroleum that can utilize the existing oil company infrastructure.

Algae: Chevron is partnered with Solazyme and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for R&D purposes. Chevron has also reportedly invested in Solazyme, although the terms and amounts have not been disclosed.

Oil company execs taking over biofuels business?

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